Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Resources on the Web

Note: The most current version of this page can be found on the Library Digital Programs Usability Services portal.

Contents:
Collections of Usability Resources
Accessibility
Usability Evaluation and Testing Methods
Professional Associations
Libraries and Usability
Digital Library Projects
Digital Library Publications
HCI/Usability Labs and Research Groups

Collections of Usability Resources

• Alertbox - Jakob Nielsen's biweekly column on current issues in web usability
• Craig Marion's Software Design Smorgasbord
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Usability Engineering
• Greater Boston SIGCHI Links to CHI on the Web
• HCI Bibliography - Search over 29,000 records of Human-Computer Interaction books, articles, and web sites
• HCI Index - Calendar of Human-Computer Interaction conferences and lists of various other HCI resources
• Human-Computer Interaction Resource Network - A collection of brief articles on HCI topics. Some articles are free; some require a subscription.
• Human-Computer Interaction Resources on the Net - no longer being updated
• International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Special Issue: World Wide Web Usability
• Resources for Web Design and Usability Testing - collected by Susan McMullen, Roger Williams University
• Usability.gov - a resource for designing usable, useful, and accessible Web sites and user interfaces provided by the National Cancer Institute
• Usability First - An online guide to usability resources provided by Diamond Bullet Design
• Usable Web - no longer being updated - 970 links about web usability

Accessibility

General Resources

• Accessibility Resources - Links to accessibility guidelines, techniques, and tools from the National Cancer Institute's Usability.gov Web site
• Accessible Web Design - A list of links maintained by DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology), a program of the University of Washington
• Dive Into Accessibility - an online book offering 30 days to a more accessible web site
• Making Your Web Site Accessible to the Blind - Article from the National Federation of the Blind
• WebAIM: Web Accessibility in Mind - A wide range of resources, including techniques, rationale, tools, and training materials

Guidelines

• IBM Web Accessibility Checklist - A list of checkpoints, accompanied by rationale and techniques, from the IBM Accessibility Center
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act - Information on the U.S. federal government's Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards from the Access Board, a federal agency committed to accessible design
• Section 508 - Federal government homepage on Section 508
• Side-by-side Comparison of WCAG and Section 508 - from Jim Thatcher
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Home Page - A project of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Getting Started: Making a Web Site Accessible - W3C Web Accessibility Initiative introduction to resources
• Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - An appendix to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, organized as a checklist for Web content developers
• Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility - The W3C maintains a list of tools for identifying and fixing web accessibility problems

Evaluation Tools

• WebXACT - A tool for identifying web page accessibility problems (replacement for the Bobby Online Service)
• Web Developer Extension - This extension for Firefox and Mozilla offers a toolbar with many features useful for evaluating accessibility, such as highlighting images that lack alt text.
• Lynx Viewer - A service that allows web authors to see what their pages will look like when viewed with a text-mode web browser
• Testing Web Accessibility with Home Page Reader - explanation from the IBM Accessibility Center of how to use the IBM Home Page Reader to check the accessibility of a web site
• Vischeck - A tool for simulating how a web page will look to someone with a color deficit
• Colour Contrast Analyser - A tool that calculates whether two colors have sufficient contrast to be used as a background and foreground

Usability Evaluation and Testing Methods

• Automatic web usability evaluation: What needs to be done? - A paper by Giorgio Brajnik describing his survey of the abilities of automatic usability evaluation tools, presented at the 6th Conference on Human Factors and the Web (June 2000)
• Card Sorting
  • Analyzing Card Sort Results with a Spreadsheet Template - An article from Boxes and Arrows
  • Card Sorting - An overview of the method from UsabilityNet, a European Union project
  • Archived Studies - This page lists several past usability tests undertaken by the University of Washington Library Systems Usability group, including a card sort done in Fall 2001.
• Heuristic Evaluation - Jakob Nielsen's instructions for conducting a heuristic evaluation, his list of heuristics, and his method for rating severity of the usability problems discovered in a heuristic evaluation
• Paper prototyping - PDF - An article by Carolyn Snyder on when, how, and why to use this usability testing method
• Remote Usability Testing - A brief overview of remote testing and an explanation of the steps the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) follows when they do remote testing. See also general information on usability testing at OCLC.
• Site Usability Heuristics for the Web - Keith Instone's adaptation of Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics for the Web
• The Usability Methods Toolbox - James Hom's list of usability evaluation and testing methods, with explanations of when and how to use them

Professional Associations

• ACM SIGCHI - Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, Association for Computing Machinery
• DC-CHI - Metro DC Chapter of ACM SIGCHI
• Human/Machine Interface Interest Group - An Interest Group of the American Library Association's (ALA) Library and Information Technology Association (LITA)
• ITG - The Internet Technical Group, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
• UPA - The Usability Professionals' Association

Library Usability Projects

• Build a Better Site - Evaluative Techniques for Museum and Library Websites, University of Texas at Austin
• IUB Libraries Web Assessment/Architecture Project - Indiana University Bloomington Libraries
• Library Web Sites: Trends and Issues
• LUII: Library User Interface Issues - Home of the LUII List, a forum for discussion on the usability of online subscription resources in libraries
• Testing for Usability in the Design of a New Information Gateway - University of Arizona Library
• Usability Testing - Washington State University
• User Survey and Needs Assessment - apparently no longer available - University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• User Survey Project - University of California, San Diego Libraries
• Web Site Redesign - Web Advisory Group, MIT Libraries

Digital Library Projects

• Alexandria Digital Library Project - University of California, Santa Barbara
• DeLIver: Digital Libraries Initiative - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Honore Daumier Lithographs - Brandeis University Libraries
• Informedia: Digital Video Library Research - Carnegie Mellon University
• The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music - Special Collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University
• Perseus Digital Library - Tufts University
• Roman de la Rose: Digital Surrogates of Three Manuscripts - A project of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University and The Pierpont Morgan Library
• Sheet Music Consortium - A gateway to sheet music collections at University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, Indiana University, and the Library of Congress
• Stanford Digital Library Technologies - Stanford University
• UC Berkeley Digital Library Project - University of California, Berkeley
• University of Michigan Digital Library Project - University of Michigan
• UT Library Online - Digital Library Projects- University of Texas at Austin

Digital Library Publications

• Ariadne - A quarterly magazine on digital library initiatives
• D-Lib Magazine - An electronic-only publication on digital library research and development

HCI/Usability Labs and Research Groups

• Center for Human Computer Interaction - Virginia Tech
• Design and Usability Testing Center - Bentley College, Waltham, MA
• HCI Resources: Research Labs and Projects - Links to various HCI labs around the world
• HCI Usability Lab - School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University
• Human-Computer Interaction @ Tufts University - Department of Computer Science, Tufts University
• Human-Computer Interaction Lab - University of Maryland
• Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory - Virginia Tech Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Human Factors Research Group - University College Cork's research group that has developed usability questionnaires
• Human Interface Technology Laboratory - University of Washington
• Library Research Center - The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation (LUTE) - The University of Washington Department of Technical Communication
• Online Computer Library Center, Inc. used to have a page describing their usability lab, Ulab, but now they only offer a description of the procedure for using their lab, on their page, How we do it: usability testing. A picture of the lab in use is on the page, Usability testing at OCLC.
• Research Institute on Digital Libraries - A research group at Middlesex University that works on usability evaluation of digital libraries
• Software Usability Research Laboratory - Wichita State University, home of Usability News
• Usability and Accessibility Center - Michigan State University
• The Usability Center - Florida State University, School of Information Studies Institute
• Usability Research Lab - Learning and Research Center for the Digital Age, Digital Library Inititatives, and Learning Technology Service, North Carolina State University Libraries
• The User Experience Group - Indiana University

This page was last updated August 4, 2005 by Teal Anderson.