Ideally, this website will provide you with ‘one-stop shopping’ as you seek after information and tools that will help you optimize the user interface. This includes providing the best books, most useful software tools, helpful user profile information, effective training, and access to the latest research from conference proceedings, journals, websites and blogs.

The primary audience for this site are website and web application designers and developers. These are the people that are expected to make the many tough decisions related to the creation of effective, efficient and enjoyable human-computer interfaces. It is expected that most usability decisions are made by this group of people, and that most websites and web applications are constructed without the benefit of usability professionals.

The secondary audience for this site are those people who specialize in optimizing the human-computer interface of websites and web applications. Many of these people, although not all, have university degrees related to user interface design. Others have gained valuable usability expertise by being involved in the design and development of a large number of successful sites. Usability professionals will benefit from this site by updating their knowledge when reading the new books, reviewing the newest research, and taking appropriate training courses. But the most significant impact will be to find, and effectively use, the appropriate software tools that are now available.

University professors and their students are the final audience for this site. The WebUsability website provides considerable up-to-date information, and an exhaustive list of usability software tools. Usability graduates, like trained practitioners in other research-based fields, are expected to be familiar with the current state-of-the-art, including all available tools. They should be able to select and effectively use the most appropriate tools as they are needed.

In 1982, I published my first book on computer usability, Human Performance Engineering. At that time, there were no other books that directly addressed the steps necessary to optimize computer system usability. Ben Shneiderman eventually published his excellent book, Designing the User Interface, in 1987.

During the previous 20-year period (1962-1982), there had been some book chapters written, and a few books that focused primarily on improving the input-output hardware. These are listed below:

• Gagne (1962) – Psychological Principles in System Development (Men and Computers)
• DeGreene (1970) – Systems Psychology (Man-Computer Interrelationships)
• VanCott and Kinkade (1972) – Human Engineering Guide to Equipment Design (Data Entry Devices and Procedures)
• Martin (1973) – Design of Man-Computer Dialogs
• Engel and Granda (1975) – Guidelines for Man/Display Interfaces
• Ramsey and Atwood (1979) – Human Factors in Computer Systems: A Review of the Literature
• Schneiderman (1980) – Software Psychology
• Cakir, Hart and Stewart (1980) – Visual Display Terminals 

A search of the Amazon database using the term ‘usability’ returned a list of 1,949 books. If the terms ‘web usability’ are used, Amazon returned 662 books. Finally, by using the terms ‘user experience’ Amazon returned a list of 438 books. It was clear that the amount of information concerning the usability of computer systems has increased substantially.

I narrowed the Amazon search, and tried to find out how many books were currently available that purported to cover the general topic of computer usability – primarily ‘web usability’. I then eliminated all of the books that had not been published or updated in the past ten years. Finally, I dropped those few books that covered only the usability of a specific topic, such as the usability of ‘search’, the usability of games, the usability of speech inputs (and other non-traditional interfaces), and the usability of cell phones. There were 58 books in my final list.

Using ‘Amazon’s Best Sellers’ ranks, I identified the 20 usability books that were currently selling best. Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think (2^nd Edition and revised in 2005), was at the top of the list. Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things, which was published in 2002 was in second place. The next three were either first published, or updated and revised, within the last year or two. Access the list of Best Sellers to see the ‘Top 20’.

Amazon does not release the actual number of books sold each week, except to the authors a couple of times per year along with their royalty checks. But a rough estimate can be made based on the ‘Best Seller’ rankings. My best guess is that Krug’s ‘best selling’ book probably sells an average of about 50 copies per week, whereas the book in 20^th place could sell as few as 5 copies per week.

We will continue to update the list of Best Selling usability books monthly. 

We have put the full set of tools into categories that should help developers find those that may be of greatest value for creating optimal website interfaces:

• Accessibility evaluation tools
• Card sorting and analysis
• Content evaluators
• Graphic design tools
• Screen design and layout
• Screen size and compatibility tools
• Usability patterns
• Usability testing tools

The number of tools in each category is uneven. There are many, many accessibility evaluation tools, but only about eight card sorting tools. There are over 40 wireframing and prototyping tools, but only about 20 usability testing tools.

There is a need for certain tools that have not yet been posted, such as a tool for quickly determining the actual size of characters (in true points) for different page sizes; or the ‘scanability’ rating of a web page based on the number and location of links (not another print-oriented ‘readability’ score). There are other web-based usability tools that are in beta form, and some of these will not be ready for primetime for a long time (if ever).

Our staff has tried to find as many useful tools as possible, but we recognize that there are probably other valuable tools that we have missed.

Introduction
We have been using a new, very effective methodology for conducting usability tests on websites. Over the past couple of years, we have been evaluating, refining, and enhancing ‘FirstClick’ usability testing. FirstClick testing focuses on the user’s first click on the first page that users encounter in a website. We then compare the success of that click with whether or not the user successfully completes the task.

Method
We used Bailey’s Usability Testing Environment (UTE) to collect data during the tests. The tool enabled us to (a) present the task scenarios to each user, (b) determine which link was selected (clicked) on the first page, (c) follow the user’s path to determine whether each user got to the target page, and (d) record whether the user was able to successfully answer a multiple-choice question related to the target page. This provided the data we needed to do the FirstClick analyses.

Conclusion
In addition, those scenarios that had incorrect first clicks tended to take longer to complete, and required more page views. In general, we found that participants were about twice as likely to succeed if they selected the correct response on the first page with which they had to deal. The average correct/incorrect ratio was 1.9. ions.

This approach offers many benefits. The first major benefit is that it allows (encourages) the use of a much wider selection of tasks in each one-hour test than has been used in the past. A traditional usability test usually includes 10-15 task scenarios, but a FirstClick usability test can include 50 or more scenarios. A second benefit is that designers/developers can systematically begin their testing with the homepage, and then after making the necessary improvements, move on to major second-level pages.

Results
We analyzed the results of data collected on twelve usability studies on different websites, each with varying amounts and types of content, a range of subject matter complexity, and distinct user interfaces. The results showed that if the first click was correct, the chances of getting the entire scenario correct was .87 (almost 90% were successful). On the other hand, if the first click was incorrect, the chance of eventually getting the scenario correct was only .46, which is less than a 50-50 chance of being successful.

In addition, those scenarios that had incorrect first clicks tended to take longer to complete, and required more page views. In general, we found that participants were about twice as likely to succeed if they selected the correct response on the first page with which they had to deal. The average correct/incorrect ratio was 1.9.

A third benefit is that the FirstClick test results can show clearly which of the scenarios elicits the worst performance. The poor performers are the tasks that require the most attention. The close relationship between FirstClick performance and full Homepage-to-Content performance suggests that by staying focused on optimizing the participant’s first clicks first, it will provide major steps toward substantially improving a site.

References
Bailey, R.W. (2007), User Interface Update – 2007: An annual review of the usability literature for practitioners, Computer Psychology Training Course.

Bailey, R.W., Wolfson, C.A. and Nall, J. (2008), Revising a Homepage: Applying Usability Methods that Guarantee Success, Proceedings of the UPA.

Bailey, R.W., Wolfson, C.A. and Nall, J., Redesign of the CDC Website, In T.S. Tullis and B. Albert, Measuring the User Experience, Boston: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008, 252-262.

Wolfson, C.A., Bailey, R.W., Nall, J. and Koyani, S. (2008), Contextual card sorting (or FirstClick testing): A new methodology for validating information architectures, Proceedings of the UPA.