Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better - Softcover

Reiss, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1118185471 ISBN 13: 9781118185476

Publisher: Wiley, 2012

Synopsis

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!

About this title

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

From the Back Cover

I stopped reading because I was tempted to steal stuff for my next book!"
Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think

"I just want it to work!"

That's what "usability" means to the user. It's about whether a product or service does what the user wants and expects it to do. And that's what makes people want or not want what you have to sell. This book is packed with suggestions, steps, and guidelines to help you create products and services that do what users want. Many of them are unbelievably simple. They just work.

HOW TO CREATE USABLE STUFF

• Have clear goals for what you want to accomplish
• Use the checklists in each chapter to help you spot potential problems
• Learn what makes users happy or not happy
• Discover three keys to responsiveness
• Put logical reasoning to work for you
• Improve profitability by improving usability

From the Inside Flap

I stopped reading because I was tempted to steal stuff for my next book!"
—Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think

"I just want it to work!"

That's what "usability" means to the user. It's about whether a product or service does what the user wants—and expects—it to do. And that's what makes people want—or not want—what you have to sell. This book is packed with suggestions, steps, and guidelines to help you create products and services that do what users want. Many of them are unbelievably simple. They just work.

HOW TO CREATE USABLE STUFF

• Have clear goals for what you want to accomplish
• Use the checklists in each chapter to help you spot potential problems
• Learn what makes users happy—or not happy
• Discover three keys to responsiveness
• Put logical reasoning to work for you
• Improve profitability by improving usability

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1118185471
• ISBN 13: 9781118185476
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256