- Peter’s Newest Report: Give the Gift of Labels!
- Jeff and Peter in Amsterdam: Cocktails and De Balie
- Lane’s Essay: “90% of All Usability Testing is Useless”
In this week’s newsletter, Peter gets label happy, Jeff and Peter head to Amsterdam, and Lane wants everyone to stop doing usability testing.
Give the Gift of Labels
On most Web sites, visitors read the text to figure out what’s available and how to get to it. Perhaps the biggest oversight in Web design is not paying keen attention to your labels and nomenclature.
To address this, we’ve just published our first Best Practices Brief, “How Labels Affect Usability and Branding”, by Peter Merholz. Inside you’ll find 8 explicit recommendations and 2 tools to addresses common labeling problems. This report is extensively illustrated and demonstrates good and bad practices when it comes to words.
In our experience, unclear terminology often does not originate from the Web team, but from the other departments it works with. This report helps you make the case for clear labels throughout your organization.
And while you’re giving the gift of labels, why not get yourself something nice as well? Use coupon code LABELSDEAL for 15% off your entire order when you buy our labels report.
Peter and Jeff in Amsterdam: Cocktails and a New Venue
We’re happy to announce that Adaptive Path is sponsoring the next edition of the Amsterdam IA Cocktail Hour on Tuesday, June 22, 2004!
After Adaptive Path partners Peter Merholz and Jeff Veen present their workshop “Beyond Usability: Designing the Complete User Experience” in Amsterdam on June 22-23, we’re buying the beer.
If you’re in the neighborhood, visit the next Amsterdam IA Cocktail Hour:
Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Time: 18:30 and beyond
Location: De Balie, Leidseplein
Theme: The Complete User Experience
AndIn order to accommodate groups of attendees from the BBC, the United Nations, Rabofacet, EZGov, and the Danish Broadcast Corporation, we have moved our Amsterdam workshop to the De Balie Cultural Center.
More information about our Amsterdam workshop available here.
As always, friends of Adaptive Path get 15% off all workshops. Just use the promotion code FOAP and we’ll knock the registration fee down.
90% of All Usability Testing is Useless
by Lane Becker
Ninety percent of all usability testing performed on Web sites is useless. This is not to say that it doesn’t have a significant role to play in user experience design. When done right, usability testing will improve your Web site and your development process, but the current culture surrounding Web site usability testing is such that it rarely benefits the design. Worse, this misapplication can undermine the acceptance of this important technique throughout an organization.
Read the rest of Lane’s essay »
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