Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better

Eric Reiss

John Wiley & Sons, Jun 28, 2012 - Computers - 256 pages

The A-to-Z guide to spotting and fixing usability problems

Frustrated by pop-ups? Forms that make you start over if you miss a field? Nonsensical error messages? You're not alone! This book helps you simply get it right the first time (or fix what's broken). Boasting a full-color interior packed with design and layout examples, this book teaches you how to understand a user's needs, divulges techniques for exceeding a user's expectations, and provides a host of hard won advice for improving the overall quality of a user's experience. World-renowned UX guru Eric Reiss shares his knowledge from decades of experience making products useable for everyone...all in an engaging, easy-to-apply manner.

• Reveals proven tools that simply make products better, from the users' perspective
• Provides simple guidelines and checklists to help you evaluate and improve your own products
• Zeroes in on essential elements to consider when planning a product, such as its functionality and responsiveness, whether or not it is ergonomic, making it foolproof, and more
• Addresses considerations for product clarity, including its visibility, understandability, logicalness, consistency, and predictability

Usable Usability walks you through numerous techniques that will help ensure happy customers and successful products!

Contents

• PART ONE EASE OF USE: 1
• CHAPTER TWO Responsive: 25
• CHAPTER THREE Ergonomic: 43
• CHAPTER FOUR Convenient: 63
• CHAPTER FIVE Foolproof: 85
• PART TWO ELEGANCE AND CLARITY: 109
• CHAPTER NINE: 130
• Understandable: 137
• Logical: 157
• Consistent: 171
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: 178
• Predictable: 189
• Next steps: 207

About the author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Reiss has been meddling with service- and product-design projects for longer than he cares to remember. Today, he is CEO of The FatDUX Group, an international user-experience design company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. Eric has also lectured on design principles at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, is a former Professor of Usability and Design at the IE Business School in Madrid, and serves on the advisory boards of several universities and institutes in both Europe and the United States. His Web Dogma, a design philosophy that transcends both fashion and technology, has been adopted by thousands of developers and companies around the world. You can follow Eric Reiss on Twitter: @elreiss

Bibliographic information

• Title: Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better
• Author: Eric Reiss
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2012
• ISBN: 111824043X, 9781118240434
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Computers / Computer Science; Computers / Programming / General; Computers / User Interfaces