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Links and Resources
Contents of this page:
General User Interface Information
Usability information
Ethnography and Field Studies
International and Global design
The Digital Divide
Accessibility and "universal usability" of the Web
General User Interface Information
Task-Centered User Interface Design: A Practical Introduction
http://hcibib.org/tcuid
Also available in HTML version at: http://hcibib.org/tcuid/
A superb shareware book written by Clayton Lewis and John
Reiman. It is short, pragmatic, gives lots of good examples
and leads the reader through the interface development process
from start to finish. Although the book was published in 1993,
the humans we design for haven't changed much during the interim.
A great place to start.
The
HCI bibliography project
http://www.hcibib.org/
The Human-Computer Interaction bibliography project -- the
searchable "first source" for abstracts of just
about everything ever written in the field of Human Factors
in UI design. Gary Perlman, the founder and maintainer has
done a stellar job of pulling together resources.
Gary
Perlman's Suggested Readings in Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI), User Interface (UI) Development, & Human Factors
(HF)
http://www.hcibib.org/readings.html
Gary's excellent annotated and searchable collection of recommended
books for user interface developers, this is a subset of the
HCI Bibliograhy listed above. It has links to Amazon.com should
you wish to order these books. This will result in a royalty
that will be donated entirely to BuckCHI, the Central Ohio
ACM SIGCHI Chapter. If you are going to buy the books anyway,
it might as well benefit a good cause.
ACM
SIGCHI
http://www.sigchi.org
Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group
in Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is the premier international
professional organization in Human-computer interaction. This
site has many interesting links, including to conferences
and other resources.
Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society
http://hfes.org/
The oldest professional organization in a broad of Human Factors
- including user interface design and usability. Links to
a wide-range of information on many topics.
Usability
Professionals Association
http://www.upassoc.org/
UPA is a practitioner-oriented organization dedicated to enhancing
the skills and professional success of usability professionals
created in 1991. Most of the site is organization-focused.
Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility
http://www.cpsr.org/
CPSR members work to direct public attention to critical choices
concerning the applications of information technology and
how those choices affect society
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Usability
Usability.gov
http://usability.gov/index.html
Basics about Usability, and links to other sites with more
information. A good place to start for an overview and a sense
of the field.
Usability
Methods Toolbox
http://jthom.best.vwh.net/usability/usable.htm
James Hom compiled this great set of information for his Masters
project. It is somewhat outdated (from 1998), but gives a
good set of links. Definitely worth the stop.
Testing
tools and methods from the University of Maryland Guide to
Usability for Software Engineers (GUSE)
http://www.otal.umd.edu/guse/testing.html
Put together by Masters level students, this page gives a
good set of starter links to a variety of tools and methods
for doing usability testing. It is somewhat dated (from 1998)
but the more conceptual things are still helpful.
Web
site Analysis and MeasureMent Inventory (WAMMI)
http://www.wammi.com/
WAMMI is a particularly good, user-centered evaluation tool
for web sites. It is based on a questionnaire that your visitors
fill out, and which gives you a measure of how easy to use
they think your web site is. The questionnaire has been developed
based on research, and has an international database of results
from a large number of web sites.
http://www.gargaro.com/test.html
An interesting case study by Carolyn Gargaro reporting on
testing to compare Netscape Navigator with Microsoft Internet
Explorer. In addition to giving an idea of how she did the
evaluation, this site also provides an idea of how usability
can be done to compare competing products.
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Ethnography and Field Studies
Anthropology
Resources on the Web
http://www.aaanet.org/resources/
Originally compiled by Alan Lutins, and now maintained by The American Anthropological Association. Exhaustive links to sites, online discussion groups, listservs, and other resources available online. The best place to start for an introduction to traditional ethnographic information, with a decidedly anthropological flavor.
CSAC
Ethnographics Gallery
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/
Maintained by the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing
-- University of Kent, this site contains information on research
at CSAC, reference resources of special use to anthropologists,
and a range of resources useful in the teaching and learning
of anthropology. CSAC has undertaken three Internet-based
ethnographic projects. Lots of great links.
WWW
http://info.lib.uh.edu/libraries/anthropology.html?feed_item_id=3
Lots of links, mostly to "pure" anthropology sites.
ANTHAP
http://www.webxinteractive.com/law/xcategorynews.cfm?xcat=16&xsubid=168&xwsid=3021&read=1
The Applied Anthropology Computer Network
Ethnographics
Laboratory
http://www.usc.edu/dept/elab/welcome/
A teaching, research and archival facility for new media at
USC. More "pure" anthropology, but interesting.
The
Anthropology Review Database
http://wings.buffalo.edu/anthropology/ARD/
A site for doing searches on specific topics in anthropology.
Cyber-Sociology
http://www.socio.demon.co.uk/home.html
Site with information and links to other sources on "electronic
ethnographies" and observation of online behavior. Some
interesting information on computer-mediated communication
(CMC) including MUDs (multi-user dungeons), including online
and annotated bibliography
Cybersociology
http://www.cybersociology.org/
Cybersociology Magazine is a forum for the discussion of the
social scientific study of cyberspace. Every few months, this
e-zine will strive to publish at least three original articles
dealing with cyberspace, the Internet, and online communities.
Each issue will also contain book and site reviews.
Resource
Center for Cyberculture Studies
http://rccs.usfca.edu/
Cyberculture is a collection of cultures and cultural products
that exist on and/or are made possible by the Internet, along
with the stories told about these cultures and cultural products."
A tangential site that gives more of a grounding in the basis
for CMC, etc. Good annotated bibliography, although it is technically “retired”.
Anthropologists
Go Native in the Corporate Village
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/anthro.html
A classic story from the magazine Fast Company describing
early 'corporate ethnography" efforts.
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International and Global design
IWIPS
International Workshop on Internationalisation of Products
and Systems is one of the major gatherings in this topic area.
Intercultural
resources from Gary Perlman
http://www.hcibib.org/intercultural/
Building
Worldwide websites
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/web-localization.html
Language issues, specifically, translation vs. localization,
discussed in detail.
Localization
Industry Standard Association
http://www.lisa.org/
LISA is an organization for the Globalization, Internationalization,
and Localization business communities. LISA holds conferences,
training and workshops, and provides information on these
topics at their site.
CHI-SA:
Computer-Human Interaction in South Africa
http://www.chi-sa.org.za/
Includes links to the proceedings from the CHI-SA conferences
that have many papers on multi-cultural design and use.
CIA World Factbook
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
This is truly one of the best sources of international information
on the Web today. Each country of the world is listed along
with pertinent details, including languages spoken, population,
telephone use and even how many ISPs are active in the nation.
InterculturalRelations.com
http://www.interculturalrelations.com/
InterculturalRelations.com is a free online interdisciplinary
resource designed for so-called "interculturalists"
around the world to help facilitate communication among the
disciplines of intercultural relations (cultural anthropology,
cross-cultural psychology, intercultural communication, etc.).
Much interesting information, though not specifically targeted
at technology design. You can get to "The Edge"
- the e-journal of intercultural relations - from this site.
One of the issues of this e-journal is devoted to technology
issues, though primarily computer-mediated communication across
cultures.
Internet
Resource List
http://www.world-ready.com/r_intl.htm
Nancy Hoff, a pioneer from technical communication, has compiled
a list of her favorite Internet resources on globalization.
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The Digital Divide
We risk
critically increasing the separation between the "haves"
and "have-nots" in the world if the benefits of
technology are not available to everyone. Not only does technology
hardware need to be accessible, but also user interfaces need
to be designed for people who do not share the Western cultures
that have to this point given rise to Internet technology.
Follow these links to understand more about how this critical
area:
Bridges.org
http://www.bridges.org/
Bridges.org is an international non-profit organization combining
ground-level information and communication technology (ICT)
initiatives with ICT policy to help span the digital divide.
Based in South Africa and the US, their efforts are global.
The
Digital Divide Network
http://www.digitaldivide.net
A US-based site with many interesting links. Unfortunately, due to huge amounts of spam, it is not currently being updated, but there is still lots of good content to get you started.
You can find like-minded folks at the Digital Divide Network Meetup site:
http://ddn.meetup.com/
Digital
Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force)
http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/2001genoa/dotforce1.html
The DOT Force, was created by the G8 Heads of State at their
Kyushu-Okinawa Summit in July 2000. It brought together 43
teams from government, the private sector, non-profit organizations,
and international organizations, representing both developed
and developing countries, in a cooperative effort to identify
ways in which the digital revolution can benefit all the world's
people, especially the poorest and most marginalized groups.
This site details the action plans coming out of these meetings,
and reports on updates. The reports from the meetings are
also linked on this site. A good place for an overview of
some of the political processes at work in this critical area.
DigitalDivide.org
http://www.digitaldivide.org/harvardmit.html
An online initiative out of Harvard (Center for International
Development) and MIT (Media Lab) that is currently focusing
on the very nature of "policy" which is changing
in the digital era. It is their position that innovation policy
solutions must be crafted to continue the successful global
build-out of the Internet so that each country, despite considerable
economic constraints, must "shape 'e-policies' that open
floodgates learning, entrepreneurship, and investments."
United
Nations Development Programme Information and Communications
Technology
http://sdnhq.undp.org/it4dev/
Information on this program as well as a long list of really
wonderful success stories from the field. Global in scope.
"Who's not online"
http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics.aspx
Pew Internet and American Life Project includes many interesting articles on a variety of topics – mostly US-focused but including information on “digital have-not’s” in the US who are often overlooked.
"Delhi
children make play of the net"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1502000/1502820.stm
A report of an experiment by the Indian government, local
institutions and the World Bank, which showed that children
in the slums of Delhi can quickly teach themselves the rudiments
of computers and the internet. The study was done and replicated
to see what role computers might play in educating India's
illiterate millions.
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Accessibility and "universal usability" of the Web
Web
Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) commitment to lead the
Web to its full potential includes promoting a high degree
of usability for people with disabilities. WAI, in coordination
with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility
of the Web through five primary areas of work: technology,
guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and
development
Resources
for developing accessible sites
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/#gl
An excellent set of resources to help you create accessible
websites and to tell if sites are accessible.
WebAIM
http://www.webaim.org/
The Web Accessibility "How to" site. Many links
to other resources and training on why and how to design accessible
sites.
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