Wrangle that content

When I first met Bob Boiko, he had recently left Microsoft and struck out on his own to use what he had learned about managing large amounts of content and apply it to law firms and others who were just beginning to digitize all that paper they accumulate.
After growing Chase -Bobko to a saleable size, he moved to teaching information management at the University of Washington and doing content management consulting via Metatorial Services Inc..
He also conducts content management workshops, is the author of The Content Management Bible, and helped spur the creation of CM Pros (Content Management Professionals) where practitioners could come together.
Where does all this intersect with usability? Taxonomy development. If they can't find it, it ain't there.
Metatorial Services use a "comprehensive CM technology taxonomy" and a "folksonomy" for collaborative term definition as part of their services. A sample of the latter can be found on the Metatorial site.

Resources for Testing Documentation Usability

Usability References

Click a category below to see the items in that category.

Sites and reading for beginners

Professional organizations

Information on related fields and practices

The best web sites on documentation usability

The best web sites on general usability

The best articles on documentation usability

The best books on documentation usability

Sites and reading for usability beginners

 To Contents 

• Getting Started With Usability by David Dick, Usability Interface, October 1998b


• The Usability Bookshelf


• Usability.gov - originally developed for the Web sites of the National Cancer Institute, this site has become a standard. It is also available for download as a book.


• What Does Usability Mean: Looking Beyond ‘Ease of Use’  Whitney Quesenbery


• What’s in a Number? by Carol M. Barnum, Usability Interface, January 2003

Professional organizations

 To Contents 

• Guild of Accessible Web Designers


• IEEE Professional Communication Society PCS is an IEEE society composed of an international mix of engineers, researchers, educators, and practitioners who are dedicated to understanding and promoting effective communication in engineering, scientific, and other technical environments.


• SIGCHI, a special interest group of the ACM


• Society for Technical Communication, Usability and User Experience Community The site of this special interest group of the Society for Technical Communications has articles, many resource lists, and a library of templates and sample documents provided by members of the SIG and free for use by other members of the SIG and visitors to the site. They created the Usability Toolkit in 2000 and continue to maintain it. You can download the toolkit from their site.


• Usability Professional’s Association This U.S. professional organization for usability practitioners.

Information on related fields and practices

 To Contents 

• An Introduction to Information Architecture, Usability and Information Architecture .


• Mayhew, D. J. The Usability Engineering Life Cycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 1999 .
• Rosenfeld, L. and Morville, P. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, second edition, O'Reilly, 2002.

The best web sites on documentation usability

 To Contents 

• STC Usability & User Experience Community The site of this special interest group of the Society for Technical Communications has articles, many resource lists, and a library of templates and sample documents provided by members of the SIG and free for use by other members of the SIG and visitors to the site. They created the Usability Toolkit in 2000 and continue to maintain it. You can download the toolkit from their site.


• The Usability section of the TC Library on eserver, This link is sorted by category; it
  includes foreign language entries as well as English entries. All are links
  to publications, articles, and other resources found on the Web. Many have
  been rated by readers and contributors. Contributors are practicing
  technical communicators or technical communication educators.

The best web sites on general usability

 To Contents 

• AIGA-ED - American Institute of Graphic Artists - Experience Design


• ASIS - American Society for Information Science and Technology Once the librarians professional group, it now covers Web design and information architecture as it relates to large databases


• A List Apart


• Blink Interactive This consultancy has several excellent case studies and white papers on the practice of usability.


• Boxes and Arrows - an online magazine focused on information architecture, but with lots of usability stuff thrown in.


• Digital Web


• Elegant Hack


• For Use; The site of Constantine & Lockwood, early proponents of user-center-red design for software.


• HCI Bibliography
• HFES - Human Factors and Ergonomics Society


• Information Design - compilations of good articles in the field, by date and category. You can get a feed or ask for the weekly email.  


• Online Information Design listing on Craig Marion's Software Design Smorgasbord; several other categories are included.


• Joe Dolson: Accessible Web Design
• Scottberkun.com (formerly uiweb.com)


• Sitepoint - Aimed at Web developers, it often has articles on usability and user-centered design


• SIGCHI - ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
  


• The Usability Bookshelf More books and articles than you could ever possibly read.


• UPA - Usability Professionals Association This is the primary professional organization for usability practitioners in the US


• Usability in ACT (Advanced Communication Technologies and Services)  - Human factors, usability, and user-centered design resources. There are links to tutorials on usability, style guides, and other human-computer interaction (HCI) sites.
• Usability News.co - news and articles from the British HCI group


• Usability for Technical Communicators; This paper, written by Gerry Gaffney, discusses the relationship between usability and technical communication. Gaffney owns a usability consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia.


• Usability.gov Originally developed for the Web sites of the National Cancer Institute, this site has become a standard. It is also available for download as a book.


• UsabilityNet- A resource collection, with emphasis on methods. Developed and sponsored by the European Union.


• Usability News;, a newsletter of the Software Usability Research Laboratory, Wichita State University. This lab, located in the Psychology Department, publishes multiple student studies each issue. It also publishes studies from faculty members.


• Usable Web - an indexed collection no longer maintained by Keith Instone, but full of good information


• Using Technical Communication Skills in User Experience - Boxes and
  Arrows


• UseIt  - Jakob Nielsen's site with articles and commentary


• UXMatters - regular articles on user experience with some excellent ones about user assistance.


• UXnet - User Experience Network


• WebWord - articles and commentary


• User Interface Engineering - a usability consultancy and publishers of the Eye for Design, newsletter. The site also has regular articles by is staff.

The best articles on documentation usability

 To Contents 

• Anatomy of a Help File: An Iterative Approach — Mike Hughes, May 2007, UX Matters


• Dalvi, Meghashri, Effective User Assistance Design: Ten Best Practices , February 2007, UX Matters


• Dick, David, Justification for Documentation Testing April 2000, Usability Interface


• Don't test users; test hypotheses, Boxes and Arrows


• Documentation Usability Techniques  from the Usability Toolkit
• Dworman, G., and Rosenbaum, S, 2004. Helping users to use help: improving interaction with help systems. In CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Vienna, Austria, April 24 - 29, 2004). CHI '04. ACM Press, New York, NY, 1717-1718. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985921.986198


• Ellison, Matthew, Secondary Windows in Online Help - What do Users Really Make of Them? January 2001, Usability Interface


• Grayling, Trevor, If We Build it, Will They Come: A Usability Test of Two Browser-Based Embedded Help Systems, May 2002 Technical Communication, Volume 49, Number 2, p 193-209


• Hughes, Mike Instructional Text in the User Interface: Some Counterintuitive Implications of User Behaviors, March 2007, UX Matters


• Hughes, Mike User Assistance in the Role of Domain Expert, January, 2007, UX Matters


• Hughes, Mike User Assistance Walkthroughs: Helping Best Practices Emerge, July 2007, UX Matters


• Improving User Documentation and Customer Care, Usability of Documentation and Help -Topics in Usability


• Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training - Boxes and Arrows.


• Justification for Documentation Testing, Usability of Documentation and Help -Topics in Usability.


• Kaner, Cem and Pels, David. Improving User Documentation and Customer Care April 2000, Usability Interface


• Kantner, Laurie, Shroyer, Roberta and Rosenbaum, Stephanie. tructured Heuristic Evaluation of Online Documentation. Heuristics for navigating through and finding content. Keywords heuristic evaluation, online documentation, usability, online help.


• Keirnan, T., Anschuetz, L., and Rosenbaum, S. 2002. Combining usability research with documentation development for improved user support. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual international Conference on Computer Documentation (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 20 - 23, 2002). SIGDOC '02. ACM Press, New York, NY, 84-89. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/584955.584968


• McDaniel, Scott. Looking for Information about Usability Testing Documentation? April 2000, Usability Interface


• Not The Usual Suspects: How To Recruit Usability Test Participants, Usability and Information Architecture


• Novick, D. G. and Ward, K. 2006. What users say they want in documentation. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on Design of Communication (Myrtle Beach, SC, USA, October 18 - 20, 2006). SIGDOC '06. ACM Press, New York, NY, 84-91. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1166324.1166346


• Novick, D. G. and Ward, K. 2006. Why don't people read the manual?. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on Design of Communication (Myrtle Beach, SC, USA, October 18 - 20, 2006). SIGDOC '06. ACM Press, New York, NY, 11-18. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1166324.1166329


• Parush, Avi and Parush, Debi K. Online Help - Too Much of a Good Thing? January 2001, Usability Interface


• Purho, Vesa. Evaluating the Usability of Documentation - Heuristic Inspections for Documentation April 2000, Usability Interface


• Quesenbery, Whitney New Life for Product Documentation August 2006, UX Matters


• Ramey, J. 1991. Studying document usability: grasping the nettles. SIGDOC Asterisk J. Comput. Doc. 15, 2 (Sep. 1991), 37-40. doi.acm.org/10.1145/1111136.1111141


• ROI of Usability - UPA's User Experience Winter 2002


• Rosenbaum, S. and Ramey, J. 2006. Current issues in assessing and improving information usability. In CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22 - 27, 2006). CHI '06. ACM Press, New York, NY, 411-413. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1125451.1125540


• Simpson, M. 1990. How usability testing can aid the development of online documentation. In Proceedings of the 8th Annual international Conference on Systems Documentation (Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, October 31 - November 02, 1990). SIGDOC '90. ACM Press, New York, NY, 41-48. doi.acm.org/10.1145/97426.97991


• Spool, Jared, Streamlining Usability Testing by Avoiding the Lab, Usability Interface Engineering


• Usability Checklist for Documentation - A checklist used for local STC chapter online competitions (RTF file)


• Usability Toolkit, found at http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/docs-usability.html


• Why You Don't Need a Usability Lab, Usability and Information Architecture


• Wroblewski, Luke Dynamic Help in Web Forms May 2007, UX Matters


• Yeats, D. 2004. Revising documentation deliverables based on usability evaluation findings: a case study. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual international Conference on Design of Communication: the Engineering of Quality Documentation (Memphis, Tennessee, USA, October 10 - 13, 2004). SIGDOC '04. ACM Press, New York, NY, 17-18. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1026533.1026540

The best books on documentation usability

 To Contents 

• Fleming, J. Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience. O'Reilly: Sebastopol, CA, 1998. ISBN 1-56592-351-0.


• Garrand, T. Writing for Multimedia: Entertainment, Education, Training, Advertising, and the World Wide Web. Focal Press: Boston, MA, 1997. ISBN 0-240-80247-0.


• Gloor, P. Elements of Hypermedia Design: Techniques for Navigation & Visualization in Cyberspace. Birkhäuser: Boston, MA, 1997.


• Greenbaum, T. The practical handbook and guide to focus group research Heath and Company, Lexington, MA, 1988


• Hackos, J. T. and Redish, J. C. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. Wiley: New York, 1998. ISBN: 0-471-17831-4
  
  

  Review:
  
  Have you ever looked for a book that explains how to create the world's greatest user interface or write better documentation? Bookshelves overflow with books about designing user interfaces, usability testing, and writing documentation. It's difficult to choose the best book with so many choices on the market. Authors admit that task analysis is the first phase of any design process but bury the topic in the tomb of the book between pages 227 and 230. I wished for a book that thoroughly covers task analysis, and my prayers were answered.
  
  JoAnn Hackos and Ginny Redish, renowned for their work in technical communication and usability, have written an intriguing book on the study of users. They share their knowledge and experiences about users, how to work toward the interface design, and documentation. The book begins with an introduction to prepare you for understanding the context of users and task analysis. Usually, this is the beginning of the end for most books. Instead, the authors describe how to prepare for site visits, how to conduct site visits, and how to make the transition from analysis to design. Topics are thoroughly researched, candidly written, and appropriately illustrated.
  
  I was attracted this book because of the high praises it received from members of TECHWR-L and a popular newsgroup dedicated to usability. Having read the book and put some of the instructions into practice, I assure you that the praises are justified. This is a one of a kind book that belongs in your library. (David Dick - Usability Interface October 1998)



• Hackos, J. T. and Stevens, D. M. Standards for Online Communication: Publishing Information for The Internet/world Wide Web/Help Systems/ Corporate Intranets. Wiley: New York, NY,1997.
  

  Review:
  
  Hackos and Stevens have pulled together a set of critical guidelines for developing modern information systems. These guidelines are often overlooked as companies rush to get on the Web or establish corporate intranets. The book covers three main topics: analyzing information needs (something often neglected), designing online systems, and implementing designs. This book contains a CD-ROM with a Windows Help file that has the guidelines discussed in the paper version.
  

  
  


• Horton, W. Designing and Writing Online Documentation. Wiley: New York, NY, 1994.


• Kuniavsky, M. Observing the user experience: A practitioner's guide to user research. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 2003


• Lynch, P. and Horton, S., Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1999.


• Mayhew, D. J., The Usability Engineering Life Cycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 1999


• Rosenfeld, L. and Morville, P., Information Architecture, second edition, O'Reilly, 2002.


• Rubin, J. Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. Wiley: New York, NY, 1994.
• Salant, P. A. and Dillman, D. A. How to Conduct Your Own Survey. Wiley: New York, NY, 1994.


• Schriver, K. A. Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers. Wiley: New York, NY,1997.
  
  

  Review:
  
  Schrivers’ book describes how document design has evolved, discusses how users react to different facets of documents (for example typography, illustrations, and examples). The book uses case studies extensively and draws on research from rhetoric, design, writing, and cognitive science. Schriver’s work highlights how interactions among different variables (for example, justification, word spacing, and leading) affect readability and interpretation and how designers should be cautious about basing decisions on "main effects".

• Snyder, C., Paper Prototyping: Fast and Simple Techniques for Designing and Refining the User Interface, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, 2003.

A look at copyright from an historical and political viewpoint

(In the interest of full-disclosure, the author of this piece at New TeeVee is my son.)

Steal This Film II is a Must-See
on New TeeVee, part of the GigaOm blog network, is review of the second installment in a video series by J.J. King that explores the debate over intellectual property in the age of the Internet.

Both the video and the reviewer favor an open exchange of creative efforts. As reviewer Jackson West states, "After all, long before Hammurabi’s Code, there was art and inquiry. And that’s where the piece excels — in making clear that the web is just an extension of our anthropologically deep desire to share culture with each other, a desire that predates modern social, political and economic institutions."

"Paradox of Choice:" Does too much choice make us miserable?

Swarthmore sociology professor Barry Swartz argues it does. Watch his presentation at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference.
You can learn more about TED at http://www.ted.com and read or subscribe to the TEDblog