Usability Articles
Articles We've Written
These are published articles we've written, with the most recent at the top.
Creating Quality User Experiences Helps Online Advertising Success (2-page PDF, 5MB)
December 2007. Shailesh Manga talks to Yahoo!Xtra advertisers in The Hotness magazine about appropriate deliervy of online advertising.
Optimising Utalising ... say what?!
June 2007. Ruth Brown, one of our senior consultants here at Optimal Usability, provides some key principles on website design for advertisers in the June 2007 edition of the AdMedia.
CUSTOMER FOCUS : Usability
April 2007. This New Zealand Marketing magazine article discusses why user testing is needed if you want to create world-class customer experiences.
Usability Engineering in New Zealand
July 2006. This article was written for the Volume 5, Issue 2, 2006 edition of the User Experience magazine and looks at the usability industry in New Zealand. "In the future we expect to see more companies hiring internal usability consultants and developing strategic, cross-channel usability programs. We expect that most experienced usability professionals will continue to come from overseas, until New Zealand-based education catches up with demand." This magazine can be bought from the UPA online store.
Optimal Usability
February 2006. This article for the February 2006 edition of the NZ Business magazine looks at how small and medium-sized companies can benefit from usability.
Common website design blunders (4-page PDF, 390KB)
8 November 2005. This front page article for the IT Brief magazine looks at the top 10 web design mistakes that we've seen in the 170+ websites that we've evaluated. It expands on our Top Ten Web Usability Mistakes blog posting with screenshots and more detail.
Make sure your websites are easy to use
23 May 2005. This article was written for the Dominion Post newspaper, and covers common usability problems that we've observed testing websites across a large number of industries and clients. Our recommendations are simple: be consistent, provide goal-driven content and design for wayfinding.
Asian trade agencies and web usability (1-page PDF, 500KB)
May 2005. Early in 2005 we reviewed 13 websites from around the Asia-Pacific region for violations of well-known usability principles. This article summarises the results of the analysis and appeared in the May-June issue of Public Sector Technology & Management magazine, Asia's only bi-monthly publication covering "the use of Information Technology to improve the efficiency, transparency and accountability of the region's public sector."
How to earn web credibility (2-page PDF, 70KB)
1 December 2003. This article addresses the importance of having credibility on the web, and how to go about earning it. The article was written for the December issue of IT Brief, a monthly magazine written to increase the knowledge of senior managers about matters relating to IT.
Articles Others Have Written
These are newspaper and magazine articles that have been written about us or that have quoted us, with the most recent at the top.
Usability testing key to website user satisfaction
27 October 2007. When Trent gave a case study on XtraMSN to the New Zealand Computer Scoiety, m-net came along and reported on what he said.
AMP's website enjoys a new lease on life
September 2007. This press release is about the use of lifestage-based navigation in a recent re-launch of the AMP website. We were involved in user testing the new approach. " As a marketer, no matter how great you think your vision is, it’s always coming from your perspective and it’s the customer’s perspective that counts. The cost of getting it wrong is a mistake you can’t risk."
Online sorter boost usability
30 August 2007. " Wellington-based internet consulting company Optimal Usability has launched an online card-sorting system, which it originally developed for in-house use. The process reduces the time needed to run a card-sort from weeks to hours."
Start me up
June 2007. This article from Unlimited showcases the winners of the 2006 Incubator awards. Optimal Usability won the Hall of Fame award. "When Sam Ng and Trent Mankelow started Optimal Usability in 2003, they were charting a new course in New Zealand. Ng came from an industrial design background, Mankelow from computer science. Both had been working for large IT companies and were familiar with projects that hadn’t been fully realised because not enough attention was paid to the customer’s point of view."
When design goes bad
October 2006. This interesting article from Idealog looks at the influence of poor designs. Blake and Shailesh are quoted throughout the article (especially on page 4). "A lot of time web or software developers aren’t that close to their users, they develop for who they perceive to be their users."
Smart Dialogue (4-page, 155KB PDF)
August/September 2006. Sam is quoted in this Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Topics magazine article, talking about the leasons we've learnt about IVR usability. "“One of the key challenges of course with a system like IVR is that it’s a very singular medium. It’s very linear as well. It’s not like looking at a screen and from there we’ve got almost an infinite degree of freedom to communicate with the viewer. But when it comes to voice, we’re very much limited in what we can process at one time.”"
Try Not to Be Too Flash (2-page, 228KB PDF)
December/January 2006. Trent is extensively quoted in this Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Topics magazine article, talking about Flash design. "People have gone a bit too nuts in terms of being too creative, creating all these fancy ways to navigate and fancy ways to show content which basically make it less usable for a person just trying to find out information. People can go mad with the use of the technology and not really think about how others will use it."
Making technology more user-friendly
11 October 2005. This article appeared in the technology section of the New Zealand Herald and is a general introduction to the company.
It May Be Your Website, But It's Not About You (1-page, 1MB PDF)
August/September 2005. Trent is quoted in this Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Topics magazine article, talking about designing with the user's goals in mind.
Many business websites too hard to use - expert
14 March 2005. This article appeared in the Keeping Company section of Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper and is a general introduction to Optimal Usability.
High demand for user-friendly goods
15 October 2003. This article appeared in the Employment section of the New Zealand Herald, and introduces interaction design and usability as viable career options. We were interviewed about the industry in New Zealand, what consultants can expect to earn and what we consider to be desirable skills.
Tell us what you think of the way that we've put these articles online. Are they too big? Would you like to see them in a different format? You can get in touch with us at feedback@optimalusability.com.
