What's this about?

Usability is often used as a synonym for User Friendly. And in truth, we usually do want to make things friendly - we're just that kind of good people.

But strictly speaking, usability is about making the usage of things appropriate: no one wants that nuclear missile button to be too user friendly.

However, usability has been criticised as too function drive, too time-and-motion like. Which is natural enough, much of the usability thinking comes from software development.

The web of course, is not necessarily software. Sure the transactional components - your shopping trolley's and e-forms are close cousins to applications software.

But many web pages aren't software: community pages, informational pages, brouchures, games, adverts, tutorials and the like. For these pages, user experience design is at least as important as straightforward usability.

Usability

Heuristic Evaluation - Nielsen
Nielsen's section on this popular discount usability method.
Usability.gov
US Department of Health about Usability in general, but best on 508 Accessibility.
Heuristic Evaluation, A System Checklist
A (long) checklist of things you might want to score.
Usability Evaluation Technique summary
A whole set of usability techniques summarised.
How we do it: Heuristic Evaluation
Step-by-step guide to conduction an Heuristic Evaluation.
Tour of the Hiser Toolkit
User Centred Design methodology in an (expensive) box.
Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction
Online user satisfaction survey.
WebWord Usability Blog
Excellent usability blog.
Just Say No to Dead Fragments
Critique of copy-writing that follows the dictates of usability (and help text).
Debunking the myths of UI design
An excellent resumé through the usual excuses for not keeping an adequate focus on usability.
User or Consumer
Discussion of interrelation of Marketing and HCI
A Framework for Organizing Web Usability Guidelines
Accidentally demonstrates why such guidelines are usually unworkable, because of their encyclopedic scope. Who can fail to remember good old section 2.1.2.5.1.3.2.1 Windows: title = name of task.
Alertbox Jakob Nielsen's Column
You can't beat up on Nielsen just because he's the only usability guy anyone outside the field has ever heard of, so they throw his pearls of wisdom at you as if he was the word of God, or at least Moses. Even if he trades off it.
British Human Computer Interaction Group
The worthy, if overly academic, UK specialist group.
ERGOGERO Human Factors Science
Nice to see a non-software influenced usability take.
Hand Held Usability.info
The site of the book, sadly in Flash.
IBM-Ease of Use
IBM's excellent user centred design resource.
John M. Carroll's Personal Space
For current and past projects.
The church of usability
A short who's who in usability. But it really is a lot more democratic than that.
Usability Evaluation Technique summary
Excellent summaries of all the popular user investigation techniques
Designing for the Bottom Line
Is usability worth it in ROI?
Usability First
Useful usability resource centre.
Usable Web
The daddy of usability resources.
ACM SIGCHI
The ACM's special interest group on Human Computer Interaction