Web Usability: A User-Centered Design Approach

User Interface Design/Human Computer Interaction

Jonathan Lazar, Towson University

ISBN 0-321-32135-9

DESIGN WITH THE USER IN MIND

A Web site design that does not consider its user is a Web site that is destined to be a disappointing experience for the user. This new book by Jonathan Lazar provides readers with the concepts and tools needed to develop Web sites that maximize the user experience. It takes readers through the entire User-Centered Development Life Cycle, demonstrating practical skills and techniques that will help them for years to come.

THE USER-CENTERED DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE

The User-Centered Development Life Cycle ensures that the needs of a Web site’s users are the focus of the Web site’s design, from its inception through its implementation and management. Keeping this focus–while collecting requirements, designing pages, and performing usability testing–results in a more effective design and more satisfied users.

Real-world applications are highlighted in four Case Studies, which demonstrate how both commercial and noncommercial organizations designed user-centered Web sites:

• kodak.com (Eastman Kodak)

• PlayFootball.com (National Football League site for children)

• CancerNet.gov (National Cancer Institute)

• asha.org (American Speech-Language Hearing Association)

“Jonathan Lazar’s unique combination of expertise–teaching, research, and practice of HCI, informatics, IT, and accessibility–is what really sets him apart from the other ‘Web experts’ publishing today. His text reflects the diversity that successful Web design requires by balancing user-centeredness with a solid understanding of technical and business issues.”

—ARNIE LUND, Director of Design and Usability,Microsoft Corporation

“This text is magic; it packs experience between the covers of a book. Lazar’s energetic style is filled with examples, focused lists, and Case Studies that walk readers through the Web design process and give them the confidence to do it themselves. He makes user-centered design seem easy by making sure that people matter. If every designer trained from this book, the World Wide Web would be a better place.”

—BEN SHNEIDERMAN, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland