http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog It's all about Usability! Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:38:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Usability in Mobile Applications is really an important factor and a challenge in today's scenario where there are several applications getting designed for Intranets as well as for end-users. Most of them don't serve completely as intended to the end-user's needs, being not designed from the mobile usability perspective. [caption id="attachment_219" ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2010/02/research-reports-mobile-usability/ Mobile web has emerged as another area of interest for designers and developers. Mobile web has its own advantages and limitations, from both developers and end-users perspective.  Mobile Web platform has empowered organizations as well as end-users to access information / applications on the move and achieve 'mobile productivity'. In ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/07/mobile-web-application-development-strategies-guide/ When a user visits a website, the very first thing he tries to find is a way to access a website or an application - that's "navigation". If the navigation is not designed properly, precisely a non-intuitive navigation, it is obviously going to make user's life difficult. If we are ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/07/web-site-navigation-design-guidelines-best-practices/ Banners are common form of advertising on web, especially on portals like news sites. Paradox is, even though users do notice the presence of banners on the web page, they tend to ignore it quickly. Almost everything that looks like a banner on the web page is about to get ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/07/what-is-banner-blindness-banners-usability/ Using drop down menus is cumbersome for users, as it needs scrolling efforts by end-users, leading to usability and accessibility issues. Now, there is a new trend in the web design – of using large drop down menus. New mega drop downs are far better than regular drop downs, which ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/06/drop-down-menus-usability-accessibility/ With the increasing usage of web on mobile devices, the need to understand the end-users has emerged with prime importance. End-users’ experience of web on desktop and mobile devices is almost entirely different and even these users has a different kind of ‘mental model’. Interface or navigation designs that works ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/06/mobile-web-navigation-design-usability-for-mobile-website/ Nowadays, we can see an increasing usage of touch screen-based ‘Kiosks’ – the self-service mechanism at several places, including Bank ATMs, Shopping Malls and such other places where an assisted system is required but need to cater a large amount of users in an unorganized, non-formal way. Kiosks are mean to ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/06/usability-kiosk-touch-screen-based-applications-hardware-design-guidelines/ In Usability, evaluation and testing is an important aspect of the application / product development. There are several methods to evaluate and test the web or application interface. Such tests gather information about the usability of specific applications or its components individually with performing some specific tasks. Heuristic Evaluation is a ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/06/usability-testing-heuristic-evaluation-discounted-usability-testing-methods/ In the recent times, web has got matured enough from simple text-only or brochure wares, to advanced web applications like e-commerce websites, database driven applications and rich internet applications (RIAs) which gives you “almost-like-desktop” kind of experience using your browser. This has also lead to the growth of online sales. E-Retailing ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/05/information-architecture-for-e-commerce-websites-online-sales-eretailing/ To understand users & their usage patterns online, we can use a testing tool called "heat maps". By using heat maps, we can produce visual displays of where end-users are actually clicking and which ones are the popular locations on your website (or a specific page). Heat maps provide you ... http://www.usabilityfactors.in/blog/2009/05/usability-testing-heat-maps-eye-tracking/