Human-Computer Interaction in eCommerce, Summer and Fall, 2001

Quotes, References and Resources

Michael Vizard, "Alan Cooper of Cooper Interaction Design sees planning as key to downstream dividends". Infoworld. June 14, 2001. full article (html).

"A lot of people are saying computers are hard to use, but it will all be really easy when we get voice recognition. And that just isn't true. People said computers are hard to use, and when we get graphical user interfaces, they'll be easy to use. And that's not true."

 

"InfoWorld: What exactly are you doing today?
Cooper: We model the user, and we can tell you what features and facilities and behavior this product is going to need in order to be desired by your users. That last step tends to be eschewed by most of the people in the industry. So we get products that are tremendously powerful and that have viable business models, but that please nobody. There are a thousand firms out there that call themselves usability firms. What they'll do is let you build your Web site and then meter it and tell you what works and what doesn't. Well that works, but boy, isn't that expensive and time-consuming to build, only to discover that you've built it wrong? People need to put in some time and effort on the front end so that you can have a much better chance of knowing what's going to be right and what's going to satisfy your users when you come out of the starting gate. Instead of blundering around with time-consuming development, your development proceeds much more smoothly with fewer dead ends. If you go down a dead end during actual coding, that's enormously expensive. It leaves behind scar tissue inside your program that you may never recover from. Once you build something, it kind of takes on a life of its own. And so it becomes a real problem."

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 27, 2001: "Salary Survey: User Experience Professionals Earn Good Money"

"Usability is a well-paying profession these days: A usability specialist in California with five years' experience has an estimated cash compensation of $90,118 a year, not counting stock options or other benefits."

Here are some relevant web sites collected by Professor Ken Koedinger:

User Interface Design generally:

• http://www.best.com/~jthom/usability/usable.htm -- Summary of usability methods including ones we'll learn in this course.
• http://www.incent.com/ -- The Contextual Design web site.
• http://www.uidesign.net -- The Webzine for interaction designers.
• http://world.std.com/~uieweb -- User Interface Engineering. Getting development teams the information they need to make design decisions.
• http://www.asktog.com/ -- The Webzine for Computer Professionals, their Families, & Friends.

Web design specific:

• http://tr.pair.com -- Daily links to strategic web design news.
• http://www.usableweb.com/ -- a collection of links about human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific to the World Wide Web
• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ -- Bi-weekly column by Dr. Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group.

Newsgroup devoted to how to author for the web:

• comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html

Queued at: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html