is 214 :: resources

InfoSys 214 - Needs Assessment and Evaluation of Information Systems

Books, articles, links, and other materials relevant to the topic of needs assessment, usability and user-centered design.

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, by Joseph S. Dumas, Janice C. Redish. [Published by Intellect, Limited, Oct 1999.]

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, by Jakob Nielsen, Marie Tahir. [Published by New Riders Publishing, Nov 2001.]

Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs, by Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt. [Published by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Jul 1998.]

Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context, Albert Badre. (Read chapter 1 in ACM's Ubiquity.) [Published by Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated, Jan 2002.]

User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach by Karel Vredenburg, Scott Isensee, Carol Righi. [Published by Prentice Hall PTR, Dec 2001.]

The following sites offer examples of survey question design:

http://www.web-surveys.net/demo/index.html

http://www.nooro.com/n/ss01/sample01.asp

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)

UnabilityNet'sMethods Table -- A good matrix of methods classified by stage in project. Not exhaustive, but useful.

Questionnaires in Usability Engineering -- A reasonably good site, however, the link they provide to their own web usability survey is currently broken.

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 -- A forum to promote usability concepts and techniques worldwide.

Usable Web -- A comprehensive guide to resources about Web usability.

Usability Testing and Research by Carol Barnum -- Links to web resources on usability tied to Barnum's book on usability.

Usability Methods Toolbox Bibliography -- Recommended by a knowledgeable usability professional, it references useful sources (maintained by James Hom).

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox -- One-stop shopping for Nielsen's view of the (web) world.

AskTog.com -- Bruce Tognazzini’s columns on design.

Usability SIG (Society for Technical Communication) -- Lots of useful references.

The HCI Bibliograhy -- The most comprehensive source on human-computer interaction.

Bobby -- A web site from the Center for Applied Special Technology that will analyze any web page for conformity with the W3C web content accessibility guidelines. Try it out!

Usability.gov -- National Cancer Institute resource for designing usable web sites and user interfaces.

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