Userfocus Usability Newsletter, September 2014

Welcome to the September edition of the Userfocus usability and user experience newsletter!

Message from the Editor

This month we have an end-of-Summer double issue. I've written about car parking payment machines (bear with me, there's a serious point) and we have our first ever guest post. The guest post is by Ori Zmora, and it's a short intro to the Kano Model, along with an Excel spreadsheet that will help you do the fiddly calculations.

Talking of guest posts, if you have something to say about user experience, and can get it across in an engaging way, please let me know. I'd love to turn more of our readers into writers!

David Travis

Feature article: What car park payment machines can teach us about usability

Car park payment machines provide an every-day example of poor usability. They teach us that technology should not drive design, that less important tasks should not dominate the user interface and that usability is more than visual design. They also teach us that usability doesn't always matter in design, the best user interface is no interface and that usability is a differentiator only when customers have a choice. Read the article in full: What car park payment machines can teach us about usability.

Guest Post: Feature Grading: An Introduction to the Kano Model

Imagine the scenario. You're all set to design your new app. You've done your research and identified the core set of features that you would like in your product. But your budget allows for developing 25% of these features at best. What do you do? How do you identify the features that your users really want? Enter the Kano Model. Read the article in full: Feature Grading: An Introduction to the Kano Model.

What we’re reading

Some interesting usability-related articles that got our attention over the last month:

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Usability Training: Now Booking

User experience: The ultimate guide to usability

Get the inside track on web user experience in this 9-hour, online, video training course. Launched just 18 months ago, this course already has over 3300 students. Over 80% of students give the course a perfect rating of 5/5. More information about this training course: User experience: The ultimate guide to usability.

Contextual inquiry: how to plan, execute and analyse a site visit. Oct 20th, London.

This 1-day seminar will show you how to get the most from a field visit to a customer location. More information about this training course: Contextual inquiry: how to plan, execute and analyse a site visit.

User Experience quotation of the month

“No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it.” — Alan Cooper.

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