Kaleidocycle
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Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. – Steve Krug
Steve Krug explains how we can create better Websites if we just stop wasting time on useless debates within teams and engage in 'usability testing' early on in the development process. His book provides the antidote.
He distinguishes between designers and developers in what they consider to be a 'good' website design. Designers prefer pleasant layouts, whereas developers enjoy a good amount of features. This is also compared to the duality between commercial culture and craft culture. Which is a question of aesthetics versus usability. Ideally, we would want to have both.
“Defining Goals and Concerns” and “Deciding Who Should Be Participants” – Joseph Dumas & Janice Redish
Before you begin testing it is important to set your primary evaluation goals and concerns. Once those have been defined, it will be possible to plan a usability test accordingly. Dumas & Redish raise the following processes: making choices among goals and concerns; moving from general concerns to specific ones; and understanding sources of goals and concerns.
Introducing ‘Systems Thinking’
Systems Thinking teaches us how the design of a complex information system often needs to include mechanisms to account for “short term” and “long term” (or chronic) disturbances of flow caused by environmental changes, by dealing with the “whole” system rather than its parts. By creating systems able to adapt to environmental changes and thus to learn to sustain themselves in the face of unforeseen shifts, design can plan for more effective and efficient complex information systems. This is depicted primarily in the study of Cybernetics.