Martin Metz's Article in Software

309 Usability Terms Explained: You Ought to Consider it for Better User Interface Design Part 1
The importance of understanding the context of use when producing a successful interface design has lead to the creation of a usability method called context of use analysis that is commonly used by interaction designers and interface designers.
Posted on Feb-24-2011

331 Usability Terms Explained: Contextual Design – Part I
The Contextual Design methodology, developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holzblatt, is a User Centered Design process used to gather information and understand how users work in order to create user interface designs that are complementary to users and the process of them accomplishing their goals.
Posted on Feb-23-2011

322 Usability Terms Explained: Ethnography and Its Role in User Interface Design
Ethnography is a research methodology that is most commonly used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and sociology. Its purpose is to gather empirical data relative to humans and their interactions with each other, society, or any other external factor they encounter.
Posted on Feb-22-2011

306 Usability Terms Explained: How to conduct an ethnographical usability test?
James Hom’s Usability Methods Toolbox (usability.jameshom.com) provides a good example of how to carry out a usability test using the method of ethnography. Hom claims that ethnography as a usability method is best used in the early stages of development, when you need to know more about the issues surrounding the use of a product rather than actual metrics.
Posted on Feb-22-2011

336 Usability Terms Explained: Learnability and Its Significance for Interface Design-Part I
According to the Usability First glossary learnability is a measure of the degree to which a user interface design can be learned quickly and effectively. Learning time is the typical measure.
Posted on Feb-22-2011

353 Usability Terms Explained: Learnability and Its Significance for User Interface Design-Part II
Generalizability further expands on consistency within an interface design by looking at software applications that are similar to yours.
Posted on Feb-22-2011

424 The Wireframing Perspective
Wireframing allows you to be timely and cost-effective when tackling the issues endemic to the development of a new user interface. You create a structure that not only facilitates your creativity but also reins you in if you get too flashy or carried away during the planning and iterative processes.
Posted on Feb-22-2011

365 Computing Transparency - What is Computing Transparency?
So it is clear that the term transparent means that information or actions are clear, truthful, and easy to understand. In other words, a good term to apply to usability or UX design.
Posted on Feb-16-2011

478 User Interface Design Terms explained: Memorability and its effect on Usability
Memorability is ultimately important because users tend to forget how to use applications (i.e. navigate their user interfaces) when they do not use them all the time (e.g. only once a month), even more so when they use multiple different systems.
Posted on Feb-10-2011

290 User Interface Design Terms Explained: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Human-Computer Interaction (often abbreviated as HCI) is an interdisciplinary area of study largely concerned with the intersection where people come into contact with computers, namely user interface designs.
Posted on Feb-10-2011

418 User interface design terms explained: Gender HCI as a usability method
Gender HCI examines ways in which software (or even hardware) features can interact with gender differences. Gender HCI is a relatively new field and thus still in the formative stages of becoming a fully fledged category of HCI.
Posted on Feb-10-2011

307 User Interface Design Methods Explained Accessibility Design
Generalizability further expands on consistency within an interface design by looking at software applications that are similar to yours.
Posted on Feb-10-2011

326 User centered design and usability
User centered design tools can assist in the creation of user interfaces that are rooted in how users can, want, or need to work, instead of forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the approach taken by the software developer.
Posted on Feb-10-2011

348 User interface design tips
Why is consistency important? Because people need to learn how to use a system, and once they have found out how it functions, they develop habits and expectations. Satisfying these expectations makes it easier for people to use an interface and to be comfortable while doing so. So, consistency makes people feel comfortable.
Posted on Feb-09-2011

368 Usability Terms Explained: Contextual Design – Part II
Data consolidation is the level at which individual interviews are analyzed. A good method of processing observations from a bottom-up design approach (piecing together systems to give rise to grander systems) is by making affinity diagrams. Single observations are written on a piece of paper.
Posted on Feb-09-2011

369 Usability Methods in Interface Design: Contextual Inquiry
Contextual inquiry is a method belonging to the field of User Centered Design (UCD). It is related to the Contextual Design methodology. The contextual inquiry takes place during the initial design phase of a software development project and yields important inputs for the user interface design, requirements analysis, specification and the implementation phase.
Posted on Feb-09-2011

419 The Role of User Experience in Interface Design
The term user experience is widely applicable in many fields. User experience (often abbreviated as UX) describes a user's experience interacting with any type of product or system. In computer science, user experience comprises all of the user's interactions with a given user interface or software system.
Posted on Feb-09-2011

379 Online-Collaboration reduces Cost in Web Development
Collaborative software solutions aim to transform the way ideas, documents and rich media are shared from distributed locations in order to enable more effective team collaboration.
Posted on Feb-09-2011

368 Web Development Outsourcing – getting it right!
Have you ever thought about outsourcing some of your web developments? I did and it caused me a lot of headaches! Outsourcing services like Elance or RentACoder sound intriguing in the first place, and it seems that you get a lot of bang for your buck – in theory!
Posted on Feb-09-2011

337 How do you undergo usability testing with paper prototypes?
The users that are invited to attend should be representative of the intended customer of your product meaning you have to identify them before recruiting them for testing. Tasks, or use cases, have to be designed for users to go through before you can create the paper prototypes. Go through the paper prototypes in-house prior to usability testing.
Posted on Feb-08-2011

350 Google does it right - and wrong! An Appeal for more User Centric Design
It’s not a secret that Google’s success (or at last the fast adoption rate) has been accelerated through an exceptional example of simplicity and user centered design on their search page (homepage).
Posted on Feb-08-2011

636 Good Rules for Bad Interface Design
In the internet you can find a plethora of lists with helpful usability design guidelines and patterns. There are so many that it’s not really worth writing about. But today I have found something really cool! A great source for web designers who try just not to get it right: The ‘Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces’ by the SAP design guild.
Posted on Feb-08-2011

350 Yahoo! Design Patterns – Review of a great Source for Interface Designers
This Yahoo! Design Pattern category solves the most important problem on a website: finding the right stuff! These design patterns present best practices for all sorts of navigation challenges, filter options, pagination, navigation tabs and bars etc.
Posted on Feb-07-2011

361 Wireframe Fidelity - Part 2: High Fidelity Wireframes & Other Kinds of Wireframes
In part two of this blog we shall have a closer look at high fidelity wireframes as well as other kinds of wireframes. Wireframes are more and more important in developing today's software and web applications.
Posted on Feb-07-2011

344 Wireframe Fidelity - Part 1: Low Fidelity Wireframes
Wireframes allow designers to test, refine and adjust software user interfaces to improve user experience and functionality early in the development process when mistakes are much cheaper to rectify. Wireframes are particularly useful in the collaborative process as they ensure that team members and all stakeholders can keep track of a project's workflow.
Posted on Feb-07-2011