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PicoSearch
Usability Consulting, Specializing in Schools and Non-Profits
Reducing Training to Its Eventual Minimum... Zero?
Home Page- List of All Content Home Page- All content, in date order Resources: page describing tools you can use Morsels: just our short articles and blurbs Just our Before&After Articles Just our Before&After Articles About: details on who I am and what I do Address, phone, number,  and so on
 
 
Check out these items that can help you conquer unfriendly software:
arrow Function Tree
Destined to be an industry classic, a consolidated hierarchy of all generic software function.
arrow Results Tree
I'm not settled on the name yet, but the content is incontrovertable: afford these results or vanish.
arrow GenericUI
Style sheet and hundreds of design elements for serious data applications in a browser
arrow Website Survival Checklist
33 vital signs for every website's health
arrow Computer User's
Bill of Rights

8 rules of the of user-in-yourface common sense
arrow Winning the Business Softwar
Our 46-page book, absotively free
arrow Free Usability Criteria for RFPs
Put this text right in your Requests for Proposals, no strings attached.
  Full list of resources...

This is a list of just our Before & After articles, each of which shows a UI problem and our solution. But I find more UI challenges than I can possibly solve, so there's only one thing to do... get you to do the "after" versions. See our Solve-It page.

2009-May-2 Control Proximity Revisited, Reemphasized
2 years since my last B&A?! (What the hell have I been doing since then?) Apparently finding the same UI mistakes over and over again.
2007-Apr-24 Bret Victor's Magic Ink  Make perfect graphics and maybe you won't need to figure out all those interaction design brain teasers.
2007-Feb-19 The Primary Interface  The most basic, stripped down expectation of a user... just do it.
2006-Jun-31 Before... just before, no after! A web interface that can be used in web design classes as the starting point for an exercise on the elements of visual design.
2006-Mar-11 Your web front door: let people in immediately.
2005-Feb-12 The Triumvirate of Home Page Design: Try to build a bad website that includes these three ingredients. You just can't do it.
2005-Jan-24 Bellis's Law of Control Proximity
What can light switches tell us about software design? Put controls, even text, as close as possible to the item they control.
2005-Jan-1 Improving Linksys' Security Dialogs
Or, "How to Save Linksys $25 Million in Support Costs and Save the World Along the Way"
2003-May-16 Before&After of TravelRack.com
Which is better for instructions, a few paragraphs of prose or a bullet list?
2002-Nov-16 Redesign of the MCLinc.org Library Web Site
This was no silk-purse-from-sow's-ear turnaround, just applying some web basics and improving the words to clarify "keyword' vs. "browse."
2002-Feb-01 Best Dialog Ever?
You might be surprised. Can you guess what the "before" is?
2001-Jan Scaling Mount Everest: Redesigning Netmeeting
Try talking a non-Windows user through sound-and-video at a distance, and you'll want to tear your hair out, too. (I guess I'll never complete this one.)
2000-Mar e-Commerce Shootout (Before & After)
Which mortgage loan web site is better? You be the judge.
1999-Dec

Button Wording in a Simple Message Box
Put explicit wording on buttons instead of indirectly in the message box.


"Design is a process - an intimate collaboration between engineers, designers, and clients." — Henry Dreyfuss, Industrial Designer

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