Design for Usability - Web Design for Usability

Overview

Usability and good user experience are crucial to the success of all web sites or intranets and particularly for e-commerce.

This one-day course covers best practice in web and intranet usability from a design perspective. It isn't just a collection of guidelines and tips – it includes several practical activities to improve the design process and provide persuasive evidence of the need for usable design to colleagues and managers. One of the highlights is an introductory session on our innovative approach to card sorting.

The course is aimed primarily at designers and developers but will also prove valuable to developers and managers. This course has been a regular feature of several international conferences and was most recently presented at UPA 2010 in Munich.

On this page:

» Duration
» Benefits
» Features
» Audience
» Participants' comments
» Instructor

Duration

Full day (9:30 pm to 5:00 pm), including breakfast and lunch (breakfast from 8:30)

Benefits

Understand the principles of user centred design and how it improves usability
Be able to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of alternative designs
Appreciate the need for clear conceptual models and early design
Be aware of the importance of users in the design process
Have a good understanding of basic usability and accessibility guidelines

Features

Getting users to what they want
Navigation design with card sorting
Representing users with personas
Quick prototyping and evaluation on paper
Accessibility (and why you should have it even you don't think you need it)
Information architecture (IA)
Writing effective content
Search optimization (SEO)
Visual design (grids, colour, images and forms)
Error messages and feedback
Usability evaluation

Audience

Web designers, developers and project managers. Usability, user-centred design and user experience practitioners who are looking for techniques to persuade colleagues and managers of the need for usable design.

Participants' comments

Evaluation comments from participants – about the course:

My expectations were fully met, I learned a lot.
Lots of new hints + tips.
Expectations met very well & with a lot of additional sources of info suggested.
The course was very informative and gave me a great overview of usability on the web.

and about the tutor:

Excellent tutor.
Very knowledgeable.
Informative, interesting, combined theory with practical sessions.
Informative, knowledgeable, good communicator.
Friendly & approachable, knowledgeable of the subject, presented in easy to
understand terms (even for non-web site designers!).
Good pace + content. Allowed time for discussion + clarifications.
Good knowledge, clear. Well timed – for discussion and content.

Instructor

William Hudson is a User Experience Strategist who consults, writes and teaches in the fields of user-centred design, user experience and usability. He has over 40 years experience in the development of interactive systems, initially with a background in software engineering. William was the product and user interface designer for the Emmy-award-winning "boujou"; now an indispensable tool in major film studios. He has specialized in interaction design and human-computer interaction since the late 1980's. William has written and taught courses that have been presented to hundreds of software and web developers, designers and managers in the UK, North America and Europe. He is the founder and principal consultant of Syntagm, a consultancy specializing in the design of interactive systems established in 1985.

William has presented papers, talks and tutorials at a number of international conferences including CHI, UPA and Nielsen Norman Group Usability Week.

William has worked with a wide variety of clients, from startups to established multi-nationals (click here to see our client list). He is was the courses co-chair for CHI 2013 and is the creator of persona stories.