The Gaslamp Quarter is a 16 & 1/2 block area in downtown San Diego. We are a nonprofit charged with marketing the area and bringing business to our merchants. Our site receives between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors a month seeking information on Gaslamp Quarter businesses and events.

One of the most popular questions we hear from web designers and usability professionals is: “How many users is enough when conducting usability tests?” Until recently, we had believed — and told our clients — that it wasn’t usually necessary to test with more than eight users. We based our recommendation on the widely held theory that eight users will detect almost all of your web site or software usability problems.

The professional manager is always looking for feedback. They test their plans and theories constantly. They are sensitive to cues within their environment, adapting as appropriate. The website manager operates within a feedback-starved environment. Thus, they need to be much more proactive in seeking feedback. Usability is a way of doing this.

Crafting a well-designed user interface for a web application is never a trivial task. It’s the one thin layer that lies between the human user and the not-so-human computer. That’s a large communication gap to bridge especially when you are trying to communicate complex system functionality across a broad user base of varying experience. A hallmark of any good UI is its ability to be used effectively by both novice and expert users alike. It is striking a balance between these two oftentimes-conflicting user bases that poses the greatest difficulty.

For novice users, clarity is of utmost importance; for expert users, efficiency. Icons and shortcut keys afford efficiencies for expert users while a fully expounded UI affords clarity for novice users. Unfortunately, here within lies the problem. The UI elements that afford efficiencies for expert users cause confusion amongst novice users. The details required of a fully expounded UI that facilitate understanding amongst novice users clutter the system for expert users. It boils down to this, clarity comes at a price – that price is clutter. By understanding the user population of the application and using an “upgrades gracefully” design, you can design a UI that strikes a balance to best achieve overall system efficacy amongst all users as a whole.

The other day I saw this photograph in a magazine which showed a steaming tea cattle, with its handle on the same side as its nozzle [or the mouth, or whatever it is called], with a caption, “A Sadistic Product Design.” In the same way, there are sites that are, sometimes it seems, specifically designed to give you the jitters, despite having the relevant content.

As a person who has just started designing web sites, I have some ideas about usability of a web site which I’m going to present pointwise.

When designing a web site, you are never sure how it appears to all people. This is because people use different browsers, resolutions, computers and connection speeds to the Internet. Your site may look good with your browser, but absolutely horrendous in other browsers. This is why you should test the usability of your site, before you expose it to the world.

“Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.”

This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of “do’s” and “don’ts” that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites.

The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990 by Congress as an all encompassing federal civil rights act to give those with disabilities the same working privileges as all citizens (Title I). Since then, four other titles have been added, including public transportation, new construction, etc. The one we will focus on is Title III, the telecommunications act. This title was added on in 1995 as protection for those previously unable to use phones, for example, because of the lack of TTY service. However, a provision was included to make Title III all encompassing to any new or unforeseen technologies that might arise. This was squarely aimed at web sites, which were just beginning their rise in popularity at this time.