Usability Demystified and a chat with Steve Krug, Author “Don?’t Make Me Think”

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

If you?’ve been following along with this podcast then you?’re already aware that WOW was a media sponsor of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference in Nashville, TN last week. As a result, I?’ll be covering a wide variety of Web design topics.

For today?’s topic, I?’d like to talk about Usability. For starters, let?’s recap the definition of the term. To assist me with this, I revisited the Wikipedia website on the topic and here?’s what it had to say in short:

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object’s perceived efficiency or elegance.
The primary notion of usability is that an object designed with the users’ psychology and physiology in mind is, for example:

* More efficient to use—it takes less time to accomplish a particular task
* Easier to learn—operation can be learned by observing the object
* More satisfying to use

Check out for an in depth explanation of the topic Wikipedia.org.

For the remainder of this podcast, I?’ve lined up a snippet of the chat with Steve Krug and Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit regarding a question she asked Steve at the conference. Look for additional interviews with Steve in future podcast as well in depth coverage on the topics presented as well for the month of June.

Check out the three minute audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training.

A complete transcript of this podcast will be available in 24 hours.

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