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User experience specialists
Userlab Inc.
1-800-295-6354

Web site and software usability:
consulting, training, testing.

Internet usability efforts retain customers and increase sales
A user's experience on your web site or with your software will be determined by your attention to usability. Just look at what some research has shown:

  • 62% of web shoppers gave up looking for something they wanted to buy,
  • 40% of people never return to a web site after a bad experience,
  • Three quarters of all large systems are operating failures. They either do not function as intended or are not used at all,
  • 63% of large software projects significantly overrun their estimates.

We address the underlying issues in a cost effective way.

Internet/Intranet usability efforts can produce huge benefits
 Intranet's are often neglected and end up being worse than the company's public Intranet. The result is a huge internal cost. Here are comments on changes that we recommended for a major bank's Intranet:

"Your feedback on our last redesign of our branch intranet has paid huge dividends.

Initially staff hated the redesign [people do not like change] but even our worst critics agreed that at least now they can find everything they are looking for..."

In a Jan. 2005 Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen said "About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today." Not only do we agree, but a few years ago we took the original report of 944 guidelines (in the public domain) and made a revised guideline, correcting a few errors and adding a table of contents and an index.

Bad Apples
Apple products used to be good examples of usability and software design. The Mac OS user interface was consistent and a model of good design.

  • In Dec. 1996, Steve Jobs returned to Apple,
  • In 1997 Apple's Human Interface Group was disbanded,
  • By mid 1999 the Quicktime 4.0 Player was the first Apple product to be inducted into the now defunct Interface Hall of Shame by Isys Information Architecture

Mac OS X has some glaring faults in its user interface and the number increases with each release.

When I got an iPod Shuffle, which I love, some usability issues bothered me. So, I decided to establish a bad Apples page with some of Apple's blunders (and others).

 
Company description

We have been improving usability for a long list of satisfied clients since 1985. We have experience with the latest e-commerce sites, military systems, consumer products, even legacy mainframe systems. The benefits include reduced support costs, greater client retention, faster development cycles, reduced development costs.

We are experienced at data gathering and analyzing, surveys, questionnaire design and can show you how to get better data from focus groups.

Usability course descriptions,

 

 Technology changes rapidly but human's don't. Our usability training starts with on a firm understanding of human information processing. We then show you how to apply that knowledge to interface design with whatever technology that you are using. You learn quickly with our interactive exercises and "live" examples.

Check out our Vision demos

Download a free usability training PowerPoint file.

 
Usability testing

You may not give your software a usability test, but your customers will. Failure then costs you a lot more than conducting a usability test.

We have fully equipped, portable usability testing labs to suit any need. If we can fly it to Fargo in February (it was minus 32 all week), we can go anywhere.
 
Free  usability downloads Download free usability notes, Simplified English notes, HTML bookmark to usability sites, and more...
   
Usability book recommendations books on usability and web designusability reading list

Thank you for visiting our site.

Russ Brown, Ph.D., CPE
President

or phone 1-800-295-6354

© 2002 UserLab Inc.
1-800-295-6354
updated 12 March, 2005