Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself

37.8% of all Usability Pundits are wrong. That's about as accurate as any other sweeping generalisation made by any other web usability guru. This book features case-studies in usability and information architecture from the makers of eBay, the BBC news on-line site, The Economist web site, SynFonts (a flash-driven font foundry e-commerce site), evolt (fully cross-browser compatible) and metafilter. Know your audience, design for your audience, test for usability, and solicit feedback from your audience. There are no hard-and-fast rules for usability on the Web, which is why this book steers away from the rigid rules of gurus. Instead, this book looks at six very different, but highly usable sites. The web professionals behind these sites discuss the design of each site from inception to today, how they solicited and responded to feedback, how they identified and dealt with problems, and how they meet the audience's needs and expectations. This book is edited by Molly E. Holzschlag, a member of Web Standards Project and author of a dozen books on web technologies, and Bruce Lawson, the brand manager of glasshaus. - Max Gadney of the BBC talks about the trials of moving from the TV medium to the Web, and the differences in usability requirements between the main news site, and the sports and children's sites - David Wertheimer talks of how The Economist's web site involved careful design work to ensure the branding mirrored the print magazine, and looks at implementing easily distinguished free content and subscription only sections - eBay: Kelly Braun and Tom Walter look at the work involved in designing an e-commerce site that makes a profit each quarter, while meeting the needs of 42 million users - Don Synstelein of SynFonts shows how he assembled a usable Flash-driven e-commerce site, which enhances his users' experience and protects his copyright. He shows that that, when used properly, Flash can be 100% ok - Adrian Roselli, an IA guy from evolt, writes on how they needed to be on the vanguard of usability and accessibility, compatible with every browser known to man – and yet maintain branding look and feel - Matt Haughey writes of his adventures in constructing Metafilter, a great community site, on no budget. This includes usability testing, usable advertising, and community management