This is the first of a series of posts that will present the different sections of The Usability Page. We will start by introducing the Websites section.

This section revolves around websites submitted by the community. Here people can review and rate the websites that are submitted and can comment and vote on the best reviews that they have read. If you are looking for some ideas and feedback about your work, or if you just saw the most amazing website ever this is the right place to share it and get opinions on it.

But remember to make this an amazing journey it is important that, when submitting a website, you give some information about it, like background info or the purpose of the website. That way the other users will be able to better understand what you are sharing.

Submitted websites can then be rated through a 5-star rating system, and are open to be reviewed by the community. it is common sense that no matter how good you are you can always get better, you can always improve, and there is always something new to learn. So the ability to have your work reviewed by other experts and be able to review others’ work is simply great! But we aren’t here to create flame wars, so please whenever you’re doing a review try to explain why you think what you think and how could they improve their work.

As The Usability Page is a community driven website there is also the option to vote on the different reviews of websites, restoring the balance to the force, or to the community for that matter. You can also leave short comments on the reviews, allowing you to engage in a conversation with the reviewer and to better understand the ideas behind the review.

The key words here, and in the whole of The Usability Page, is share, review, vote and comment, and most important of all… learn while doing it!

Ladies and gentlemen we are proud to announce that the The Usability Page beta version is now live! This beta version is now accessible through our main page (http://www.theusabilitypage.com).

In this beta version will be gradually inviting users that are interested in helping us test it and in making suggestions. After this phase of tests will then be ready to leave beta with a powerful fully tested website!

So if you would like to help us, please visit The Usability Page and sign up for the beta!

We hope you enjoy it!

The Usability Page is almost out from the oven!

And as every user-centred design project, The Usability Page need user testing! So we are looking for a small group of Dynamic Usability Enthusiasts to help us out, testing it. If you want to accept the challenge send an email to theusabilitypage@gmail.com or just leave a comment here with your email address.

We are planning to start testing it early next week. Hurry up.

The Usability Page Team is at SAPO Codebits 2009 in Lisbon, Portugal.

If you are interested by Usability, Web Entrepreneurship or Web Development come to Table 61 to talk with us!

A few months ago, The Usability Page team was hired to work as usability consultant at Infovini Portal – an interesting project that aims to market and promote Portuguese wine and the sector.s culture, not only in Portugal, but also internationally. Infovini wants to enable users to share knowledge and experiences related to wine and its culture.

Together with the development team, it was possible to perform an extensive analysis and deliver a large number of recommendations focused on usability improvements. A few days ago, Infovini Portal was released to public. We are glad to see that most of our recommendations were integrated to this Beta version, resulting in an excellent website.

On behalf The Usability Page team, I would like to say that we are proud to be part of this project and wish great success and achievement to it initiative.

Yesterday, WebDesigner Depot published an interesting interview with Jakob Nielsen, the man called .the guru of Web page usability. by the New York Times and .the king of usability. by Internet Magazine.

Although Usability Research is getting complex while developing, Jakob Nielsen keeps simple what is simple.

In your opinion, what is the best way to test the usability of a website?

Follow the 3 basic rules: get representative customers, ask them to perform realistic tasks, and shut up and let them do the talking.

I do agree. To perform basic usability tests that is everything you need to know. Your representative customers will indirectly tell you all the usability principals you have to follow.

Jakob Nielsen also refers some interesting thoughts about breadcrumbs:

So breadcrumbs are definitely useful. Just as important, they don.t harm those users who don.t use them. Some studies have found that many users don.t use breadcrumbs.

But that.s OK, because the breadcrumbs don.t cause any trouble for these users, and since they.re a very lightweight design element, breadcrumbs are worth including for the substantial good they offer to those users who do use them.

It is interesting to think that we should thinking about each feature not only as positive or negative for users, but also as positive for some and non-negative for others.

Definitely an article that is worth reading.

We are back!

I’m proud to announce that after a few months dedicated to Master Thesis and Usability Consultancy, we are back! Together with a new team, we bring some great news… oh boy… you will see, great news are coming!

In a few weeks we’ll make available to our community a new version of The Usability Page, more open, more complete, more interesting and more useful to everybody. Despite being an Usability Professional or an Usability Enthusiastic, The Usability Page is looking forward to help you develop your passion and knowledge about Usability, User Experience, Information Architecture, Interaction Design and more.

Stay tuned to receive more updates.

I recently saw a link on Twitter about the “next level in human-computer interaction”.

This is how I found about Oblong Industries, a LA-based group, with another lab in Barcelona. These were the guys behind the technology on Minority Report. Yes, that was working. Just see:

They want to take information to a new level. They want it to be literally spatial.

Oblong Industries came to life as a company just recently on November 13th, but they have been working since a long time ago.

They have another video demo and a blog, be sure to check them. This is promising.

Leah Buley, Adaptive Path, made a very interesting presentation about “How to Be a UX Team of One” at IA Summit 2008. She takes an interesting approach on how to make stakeholders contribute and link to the project, generating ideas and validating them later.

This presentation can be specially important for those who are starting to do Usability projects as individual, however all information shown can be applied in UX Teams. Thumbs up to presentation design as well.

More Leah Buley presentations available here.

Recently arrived at The Usability Page headquarters information about the third edition of the dual professional Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Madeira (www.labuse.org/mhci).

HCI Education is growing (in number and quality) and The Usability Page Team thinks it is important to support it. More information about this Master below.

Carnegie Mellon University (www.cmu.edu) and the University of Madeira (www.uma.pt) in Portugal launched a joint program in 2007 for a dual master’s degree in human-computer interaction that will involve course work on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

The 16-month program is sponsored by the CMU|Portugal partnership (www.cmuportugal.org). It includes a semester of core courses at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (www.hcii.cmu.edu) in the fall, followed by 12 months of further course work and a capstone project course at the University of Madeira. The capstone project involves an interdisciplinary team of students working under the guidance of an industrial or organizational sponsor to produce a prototype product or service and is a key component in the Master of Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) program.

Students will receive two MHCI degrees under the dual program . one from Carnegie Mellon and one from the University of Madeira. The program is directed at Carnegie Mellon by Associate Professor of Design Shelley Evenson and at the University of Madeira by Nuno Jardim Nunes, researcher at the Laboratory for Usage-centered Software Engineering (www.labuse.org).

Carnegie Mellon’s HCII is an interdisciplinary program that explores technology’s impact on people and how technology can be designed to be usable, efficient and enjoyable. Part of the School of Computer Science, the HCII includes researchers with expertise in computer science, engineering, design and behavioral science.

The program is open to students with backgrounds in psychology, design and computer science. Students are required to have GRE and TOEFL tests for admission, more information can be found at mhci.dme.uma.pt or contact mhci@uma.pt. First round of admission for next academic year is due January 31, 2009.

http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/July/july23_dual-hci-degree.shtml
The Carnegie Mellon-Portugal Program (www.cmuportugal.org) is run by the Information and Communications Technologies Institute (ICTI) – www.cmu.edu/portugal

Have a look!