Useful links

Blogs/websites

• Boxes and Arrows is primarily about information architecture and design, but has some great tips on methods. Try searching for "card sorting" or "interviews."
• Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox -- One-stop shopping for Nielsen's view of the world. Increasingly dedicated to advertising for their (expensive) reports, but still has useful info.
• AskTog.com -- Bruce Tognazzini's columns on design.
• User Interface engineering - Jared Spool's organization. They hype their own training but have good short articles, too

Mailing lists

• Ethnography/Interviewing: Anthrodesign
• Usability: UPA mailing list
• Association of Internet Researchers

Usability in general

• IBM Ease of Use - User Engineering including Roles by Phase Matrix
• Interactive Methods Table from Usability.Net
• UsabilityNet
• Society for Technical Communication Usability SIG site - excellent source of lots of practical info
• Spin Group - good collection of articles on usability topics and methods
• UsabilityFirst.com -- This website provides information and resources for key issues related to usability in website and software design. UsabilityFirst.com believes that helping people do their work in an effective and enjoyable way should be the top priority in design because if a product is not usable, people will not use it.
• Usability Professionals' Association - Resources -- A forum to promote usability concepts and techniques worldwide.
• Usability SIG (Society for Technical Communication) -- Lots of useful references
• The HCI Bibliograhy -- The most comprehensive source on human-computer interaction.
• Usability.gov -- Really excellent site -- National Cancer Institute resource for designing usable web sites and user interfaces.
• Usability Experience Magazinel from the Usability Professional's Association

Remote user experience research tools

• Ethnio: remote usability software
• MindCanvas "online surveys meet online games"
• Cardsorting: OptimalSort is a free online cardsorting service that looks pretty well-designed, with help from Donna Maurer, card sort guru. And it's free! Websort also looks useful, but it is not free. However, it has a 50% off deal for educational use - which might make it somewhat affordable for a group project.
• Diary studies with Revelation. Don't know what the pricing is for students, but it looks like they might be willing to negotiate.

Diary studies

• USPS Household Diary Study: see sample documents and forms in 2007 Diary Appendix C
• voice mail drop box for phone diaries

Video resources

• JaredRESEARCH's videos from exploratory work on mobile phones in China
• Susan Faulkner "Real Reality TV: Using Documentary-Style Video to Place Real People at the Center of the Design Process." Intel Technology Journal, Volume 11 Issue 01 Published February 15, 2007.

Usability testing

• Usability Testing Materials

Heuristics

• Sample checklist from InfoDesign
• Sample test materials from STC usability SIG: scroll down to Usability Checklists and Heuristic Reviews; include process for heuristics review and sample checklists 1 & 2
• Heuristic Evaluation - A System Checklist By Deniese Pierotti, Xerox Corporation
• Research-based guidelines from usability.gov (128 pp.). Doesn't print well and takes a very long time load - try this version instead.
• Instone's Web usability heuristics

Surveys

• Excellent collection of web survey resources collected by Rashmi Sinha
• good Q&A on user surveys in usability
• Survey resources from usabilitynet.org

Sample Surveys

• web-surveys.net sample surveys
• http://www.perseusdevelopment.com/surveytips/samplesurveys.html
• http://www.hostedsurvey.com/Samples.asp
• http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=1246999657 (a web survey -- worth *answering*, given that we've just been talking about these things -- you may or may not want to submit your survey, but try it out to get a user's perspective on the questions. Normally, you would hear about this survey either because you were on their mailing list or because you were visiting their site.)

• http://surveymonkey.com/ (a site that is running the utne survey; follow their "types of questions" link for examples of ways of formatting questions)

Web Survey Tools

• Questionnaires in Usability Engineering -- A reasonably good site, however, the link they provide to their own web usability survey is currently broken!
• http://www.inquisite.com/
• http://www.aviva-pages.com/survey/
• Survey Monkey is a free tool with some surprisingly sophisticated capabilities.
• Zoomerang.com is an online survey tool with a limited-feature trial
Wufoo.com. Nice handling of question instructions, but no handling for forks and conditionals.
• George Mason University Center for History and New Media Survey Builder

Performative methods

• Bodystorming helpful set of links from Space and Culture
• Cultural probes online description at HCIBook
• Roleplaying Everyday Life as a Stage in Creating and Performing Scenarios for Wireless Devices. Iacucci, G. and Kuutti, K. 2002. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 6, 4 (Jan. 2002), 299-306.
• example of games as a method: Underdogs and Superheroes
• Mapping
• Mobility Mapping ­ A Discount Technique for Exploring User Needs for Future Mobile Products and Services Val Mitchell, Susan Harker, and Ken Eason Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 3160/2004

Accessibility/Universal Usability

• http://www.w3.org/WAI
• http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12
• http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/chapter3.pdf

Accessibility testing

• Bobby -- A web site originally produced by the Center for Applied Special Technology that will analyze any web page for conformity with the W3C web content accessibility guidelines. Try it out!
• http://checker.atrc.utoronto.ca/index.html
• http://www.smc.edu/disabledstudent/WebAccess/webaccess_eval.htm
• http://webxact.watchfire.com/

Statistical Tools

• http://stat-www.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/index.htm

Data analysis tools and methods

• Demystifying data analysis, Rachel Hinman

Reports

These sample reports may suggest some useful tactics and techniques for structuring your own reports.

• Comparative Usability Evaluation -CUE
• BASELINE Report Format -This archive consists mainly of BASELINE reports and material, as well as the ELPUB 105 report.
• Usability Report of "Good Documents" website
• Pew Internet and American Life: reporting survey data
• Indi Young / Adaptive Path: recommendations based on intensive user research [1] [2]
• jaredRESEARCH: Mobile China: video, global trends reporting

Organizations

• Marcus, A. (2003). When is a user not a user?: Who are we? What do we do? interactions, 10, 28-34. Useful for his list of conferences and organizations.
• ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
• AIGA:American Institute of Graphic Arts
• HFES:Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
• ICOGRADA: International Council of Graphic Design Associations
• ICSID: International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
• IEEE: Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers
• IDSA: Industrial Designers Society of America
• IIID: International Institute for Information Design
• SIGCHI: Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, a unit of ACM
• SIGGRAPH: Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interaction, a unit of ACM
• STC: Society for Technical Communication
• UPA: Usability Professionals Association

Journals

• ACM Interactions (Available free through campus)
• Journal of Usability Studies from the Usability Professionals Association

Conferences

• Usability Professionals Association events
• Designing the User Experience (dux)
• IIT Institute of Design design research conference
• EPIC: Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference