Introduction to Volume 2, Issue 4

Welcome to the fourth issue of volume 2 of JUS! In his invited essay “Surviving our success: Three radical recommendations (PDF)”, Jared Spool points out that in spite of the increasing awareness of usability issues and the growing use of usability professionals, we still need to be cautious with our practice. In his typical style, […] [Read More]

Surviving Our Success: Three Radical Recommendations

The world of usability practitioners is undergoing massive changes. I know because I read it in the New York Times. Executive Attention On July 19, 2007, the New York Times ran a story about eBay, reporting how profits are up 50%, yet the number of listings on the auction site fell 6% and the number […] [Read More]

Making Usability Recommendations Useful and Usable

Abstract This paper evaluates the quality of recommendations for improving a user interface resulting from a usability evaluation. The study compares usability comments written by different authors, but describing similar usability issues. The usability comments were provided by 17 professional teams who independently evaluated the usability of the website for the Hotel Pennsylvania in New […] [Read More]

User Research of a Voting Machine: Preliminary Findings and Experiences

Abstract This paper describes a usability study of the Nedap voting machine in the Netherlands. On the day of the national elections, 566 voters participated in our study immediately after having cast their real vote. The research focused on the correspondence between voter intents and voting results, distinguishing between usability (correspondence between voter intents and […] [Read More]

Metaphor-Based Design of High-Throughput Screening Process Interfaces

Abstract This paper describes work on developing usable interfaces for creating and editing methods for high-throughput screening of chemical and biological compounds in the domain of life sciences automation. A modified approach to metaphor-based interface design was used as a framework for developing a screening method editor prototype analogous to the presentation of a recipe […] [Read More]