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References - usability websites

  • Web pages that Suck
    Vincent Flander's project to "Learn usability and good web design by looking at bad web design". Cruel sometimes, but makes very good points and has a good list of resources to avoid "sucking" yourself.
  • University of Minnesota Duluth collection of web references on web design
    Good collection of links to sites on many topics to do with web design. Also has a good newlsletter.
  • GUUUI.com - a site about interacton design
    Good site about interaction design; weekly short posts and quarterly longer articles; also a tool to help with making prototypes in Visio.
  • webanalytics (Yahoo! group)
    Good place to hang out is you like lots of technical discusion about how to collect and analyse statistics about visitors to your website.
  • london_usability (Yahoo! group)
    Group about usability - recently (summer/autumn 2006) most posts have been about job vacancies or usability events in London.
  • uk-usability email discussion group
    Another good email discussion group from www.chinwag.com
  • uk-netmarketing email discussion group
    Good and busy group covering a wide range of things of interest to anyone trying to run a website.
  • Cre8asite forums
    aimed at "building better websites together" this excellent site has forums (fora?) on usability;site planning and preparation;website design;website programming;graphic design;CSS, style and positioning;writing copy and content for the web;online marketing and promotion; Business and marketing; Internet law and ethics; computer maintenance and security; Blogs, RSS and syndication; tutorials and virtual learning; measuring your success; and search engine optimisation.
  • Research-based web design and usability guidelines
    Research-based web design and usability guidelines produced by the (American) National Cancer Institute. What they have done is to trawl through the usability literature to see what, on the whole, is being reported. They have tried to Gage the strength of evidence that something is important.This technique is known in the medical world as a meta-trial. This is very useful if you are settling discussions about whether something is known to be bad or good practice.
  • Jakob Neilsen's website useit.com
    Jakob Neilsen is a noted, if contraversial usability consultant and author. His regular useit email newsletter is good reading so that you can either agree with it, or moan about how he sounds off; or a mixture of both. This site has links to the various books, reports, courses etc. that the Norman Neilsen Group produce.

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One-Line Bio

A freelance project manager specialising in electronic publishing projects.

Biography

Since 2002, I have been a freelance project manager specialising in electronic publishing projects. Based in Oxfordshire, UK, I have been working with a range of UK publishers including Professional Engineering Publishing, Harcourt Education, the Consumers Association, and Oxford University Press. You can find a list of my recent projects here. In 2007 I set up a Limited Company Chris Baker Project Management Limited to carry out this work.

Before 2002, I worked at Oxford University Press for six years in the Electronic Publishing Department and its successors, eventually becoming the Web and Electronic Development Manager.

Further back in time still, I worked for CONNECT Pharma Ltd. (a consultancy) and for Current Biology Ltd. where I was an editor on the staff of Structure, a monthly academic journal for biologists.

Before that, I was a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof Chris Leaver at Oxford University, having moved there from my PhD in molecular biology with Prof Alan Coleman at Birmingham University. That in turn followed from an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from Girton College, Cambridge University.

That in turn takes us back to my schooling in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.

My work involves lots of projects to build websites and CD-ROMs, and so I have become interested in how to make things that customers can use easily and with satisfaction ("usability" in its widest sense, hence the title of the blog). This means having at least a working understanding of several things, including usability, web design, interaction design, search engine optimisation, web site testing, information architecture, email marketing and so on. Then there is the stuff that is or should be invisible to the customer - the workflows and systems that allow a publisher to create something fit for purpose. So I write about many things that are different specialties in their own right, and certainly don't claim to be the Ultimate Expert of any of them. Instead, I am publishing here the things I learn as I go along, in the hope that it is useful to others as well as a handy format for me. Occasionally I also write about Project Management.

This blog uses Google Analytics for the purpose of counting visitors, and studying their use of the site. There is a privacy policy here http://usabilitynotes.typepad.com/usabilitynotes/privacy-policy.html

Interests

project management, professional interests: electronic publishing, usability, information architecture, accessibility, content management, web metrics, amateur pianist, chess player, back office systems. other interests: treasurer of oxford oxfam group