Why Usability is Important

On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.
The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either.
For intranets, usability is a matter of employee productivity. Time users waste being lost on your intranet or pondering difficult instructions is money you waste by paying them to be at work without getting work done.
Current best practices call for spending about 10% of a design project's budget on usability. On average, this will more than double a website's desired quality metrics and slightly less than double an intranet's quality metrics. For software and physical products, the improvements are typically smaller — but still substantial — when you emphasize usability in the design process.
For internal design projects, think of doubling usability as cutting training budgets in half and doubling the number of transactions employees perform per hour. For external designs, think of doubling sales, doubling the number of registered users or customer leads, or doubling whatever other desired goal motivated your design project.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox (More Info)

ADDIE? Assure? Hannafin & Peck? or ?????

Base on my reading, considering to different Instructional Design models indicates that even though each of them has its properties, they are basically similar to each other. They just express the steps with focusing on any aspects of teaching. ADDIE base on behaviorism, Assure base on media selection, Hannafin & Peck base on education and so on.
However designing an application base on each popular model creates validity and reliability, but why we should limit ourselves between an exact framework and infrastructure? Any application base on its needs may be apply some different phases, however the most important thing is focusing on target group and also the objective. How this objective can be applied for this certain audience? This is a key point to make any educational program.

Instructional Design, What a strange concept!!!

Exactly when I felt I can start to design a web application, I faced to a strange terminology: Instructional Design!!! Oh…What does it mean?
In a simple word, Instructional Design (ID) refers to any systematic approach to create any instructional material. According to Dr. Zaidatun’s statement, ID just points out the stages of design, without any learning theory, and incorporating learning approaches inside the ID comes out the ID models.
When I surf the net, I face to many ID :ADDIE , Assure, Dick & Carry, Hannafin & Peck, Rapidprtotyping and so on. How can I select one of them? However some of them like ADDIE or Hannafin & Peck is more common or even popular, I am eager to know them first and then opt one of them which is the best. I need to read more and more. I wish instead of 24 hours, I have days with 48 hours to read more….

What is user Interface Design?

I tried to make a map about User Inteface Design. I have done it by Mindjet, a very helpful Mindmapping software!

Which I is more Important? Information, Interaction or Interface Design???

As we know, each website design consists of three basic elements:
1) Information Design -> Content & Strategy
2) Interaction Design -> Navigation
3) Interface Design -> Presentation
As a web designer, we have to be expert in all three above. Interface design is important which helps users to understand the message of application without any trying to read the manual or training. Interaction design is effective which actively engages users to control over the delivery of information. It seems these two elements have main role to make a relationship between users and application because of visualization, but the role of information design cannot be underestimated which involves contents and how these contents be arranged in the application.
Interaction and Interface design are important which users can see them, feel and touch them. But about the information design, it needs more understanding and deeper comprehension. Moreover, conveying a message is the main reason of creating any web production, which this role is a task of information design. Therefore, I can claim however the designing of how this message transfers is important –interface and interaction design-, the message itself –information design- is more prominent because of its value and nature.

Triple I ! for website design

Last week, the current topic of the web-based class was about the Website Design. I learnt that Information , Interaction and Interface design are 3 basic elements of any website design. However I think that I know the meaning of each part, but it's quite hard for me to discribe any of them.
Information design refers to the drawing the contents which designer supposed to convey the messages with them. Interaction design involves insertion interactivity to engage the user in order to enhance performance, and finally Interface design points out to the whatever the user can see apparently in the application.

I suppose all these three have overlap together when the interface design tries to make an interaction between the information and users. I think we cannot divide them in three parts however they are always support eachother. Is there any situation which has interaction and interface without information or converse?

I was out!

This session, when I explained my template in the class, I got I did it in a wrong way! I spent a long time, but it was not perfectly.
…When others described their templates, Dr. Zaida told you are out about the interface, but in that time I just thought I am out about both interface and content. he he he …
I am just thinking revise it or maybe I have to redo it. I have to start again asap.

Design a template, What a difficult task!!!!

Last week the subject discussed was about the design and create a template as a tool for teachers to help them in order to increase teaching performance. Basically, template is a like form letter to import the contents. The main point of template is, it helps and guides the users to import and arrange the content correctly. As an example, if the teachers have in mind to apply the Problem Based Learning, no need to know more about the steps and phases. Template leads them with some hints to arrange the contents.
Dr. Zaida asked us to create a desired template as an assignment, with a learning approach in background. I supposed to create a template for peer learning.
In first Phase, I searched about the peer learning which I got it interesting. In simple word, it is a free source to increase learning process.
Next phase, I started to design. I created just one page with some anchors, but it took a long time. Actually it was a 3dimention task. I had to consider contents, theories and needs! Wow…Sometimes I got a headache.

Principles of Web Design (Joel Sklar )- Part 2

Plan for clear presentation of information
-Break text into reasonable segments that make for easier on-screen reading
-Providing contrasting colors that are easy to read and easy on the eye.
-In online reading, users scan more and read less, skimming long pages quickly by scrolling. Include plenty of headings so users can find content quickly.
-Users cannot comprehend more than 7±2 steps or segments of information at one time

Create an unified site design
Choices of colors, fonts, graphics and page layout should communicate a visual theme to users that orients them to site’s content.

Plan smooth transition
-Reinforce the identifying elements of the site and create smooth transitions from one page to another by repeating colors and fonts and by using a page layout that allows different hierarchical levels.
-Placing navigation elements in the same position on each page.
-The overall design of a page at any information level, should reflect the identity of the site.

Use a grid to provide visual structure
Grid is a conceptual layout device that organizes the page into columns and rows. The structure of a web page is imposed by the grid or page template.

Use Active white space
White space is the blank areas of a page. Good use of white space guides the reader and defines the area of page.