Rating: 
Summary: A milestone publication in web usability testing.
Review: This book is the first coherent documentation of the application of usability testing to the web that I have seen. Although I tend to question the validity of some of the statistical methods employed and the sample that the researchers used, this book is important because it addresses the need to develop a set of tools for making the web a usable place, not just a place to "surf"; it also makes the important point that the rules for usability are vastly different for web documents than any other medium tested so far. I would caution the readers that, rather than blindly apply the findings presented in this book, they should take the principles of usablility testing that are presented and develop their own tools for usability testing. All in all, I believe that this home-brewed book (it looks like it was produced on a Xerox Docutech or similar device) is a worthwhile addition to the web developer's library.
Rating:
Summary: flawed but provocative
Review: A useful book, if only because it challenges some shibboleths of design - for example, their conclusion that graphics have no measurable impact, adverse or otherwise, on site usability. They unfortunately offer up such gems ( and there are some very thought-provoking conclusions they reach) with insufficient methodological rigour to convince me that the conclusion is justified from the data. I would dearly have liked to have known some demographic info about their sample of test subject - or even the sample size, which remains a complete mystery. Other reviewers have pointed to the poor layout and design standards and I have to agree. It reads and looks like a corporate-commissioned report puffed up into a book-like object. Notwithstanding all of the above reservations, I still rate this highly for its attempt, however flawed, to bring some numbers to bear on the mythology of web design and also for turning some conventions on their heads - even if we only end up admiring them better from that angle!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Book
Review: Although this book will not appeal to anyone studying graphic design, it sure appealed to me. Basically it supported the fact that people don't care about your spinning, flashing, logo in the upper right hand corner. They care about content and usability. I'm a beginning a web page for my office. It will be for information extraction only. This study changes the way I think about user habits and preferences. If you are interested in creating an informative web site you should read this book. Don't listen to the folks who bash this book, they probably have degrees in Graphic Design.....
Rating: 
Summary: give my copy for free
Review: An "empirical" study without a solid scientific model.
Too many words to express few ideas that can be
explained in 10 pages.
Better choices: Nielsen, Norman or Mayhew.
Rating:
Summary: Designers will hate this book.
Review: As a long-time web developer and interface designer, I liked this book a lot. It challenges a lot of the assumptions (dogma?) of the web "design" community by taking the approach that end-users are the ones who have the most to tell us about good and bad design, not creative directors. I had a recent experience with a designer who was invited to observe a focus group of prospective users of a large commercial real estate she had designed. She declined the invitation to attend with the following statement: "I have no need to know what people think of the design. I designed it with a specific purpose in mind, and I believe I achieved my goal. What could I learn?" What arrogance! Well, guess what folks? The users testing the site found it confusing, hard to navigate, difficult to search, and therefore not something they'd be likely to use. I guess if her purpose was to drive people to better sites, she succeeded. I've used techniques similar to the ones described in this book to test sites I've designed. They work! It's not always fun to hear users tell you what you've created is clumsy, confusing or downright stupid, but if you don't listen to your users and design for them, you are doomed! Don't be like the designer I mentioned above, read this book and learn something. Your sites will be better, and your users will thank you for it.
Rating:
Summary: Designers will hate this book.
Review: As a long-time web developer and interface designer, I liked this book a lot. It challenges a lot of the assumptions (dogma?) of the web "design" community by taking the approach that end-users are the ones who have the most to tell us about good and bad design, not creative directors. I had a recent experience with a designer who was invited to observe a focus group of prospective users of a large commercial real estate she had designed. She declined the invitation to attend with the following statement: "I have no need to know what people think of the design. I designed it with a specific purpose in mind, and I believe I achieved my goal. What could I learn?" What arrogance! Well, guess what folks? The users testing the site found it confusing, hard to navigate, difficult to search, and therefore not something they'd be likely to use. I guess if her purpose was to drive people to better sites, she succeeded. I've used techniques similar to the ones described in this book to test sites I've designed. They work! It's not always fun to hear users tell you what you've created is clumsy, confusing or downright stupid, but if you don't listen to your users and design for them, you are doomed! Don't be like the designer I mentioned above, read this book and learn something. Your sites will be better, and your users will thank you for it.
Rating:
Summary: Pivotal work shakes preconceptions
Review: As a report on a major usability study this one is probably pivotal and I would recommend it to anyone involved in delivering a commercial web presence. Jared Spool and the UIE team discovered many new things in the studies this book is about. Up to the point of publication, web usability and general usability were closely equated, and not just the test methodology. But Spool's studies find unpredictable users surprising our preconceptions at every turn. Some may say that the book contains too many questions, but when Spool admits "we don't really know what makes a site usable" he is reflecting the number of surprises his studies unearthed. As for the causes of those surprises... the studies were performed as 'comparison tests' between sites that fulfilled wholly different purposes.... between (for example) Disney and Edmunds (car facts)... it may be invalid to compare usability between sites even if they are in the same domain, however, let alone when they are so diverse. For it may be a usability test can only identify weaknesses, not strengths. Perhaps that's why Spool says we don't know how to design for usability. One possible weakness of the tests was that they were designed as 'scavenger hunts.' This is still very common, however, and only by studying the results of this book is one led to suspect that this approach generates an overly-directed browsing behaviour, and thereore measures only a subset of real web visitors utilising only a subset of possible tasks, which are not a proxy for general usability. If you only read three books on web usability, this should be one of them.... Essential.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book to get you thinking about web design
Review: As a Usability professional, this book dealt with Web site Usability in a fashion that I can understand as well as in a fashion that the average person that uses web sites can understand. It opens the door and shows the methodology that is used. This is the kind of exposure all testing should be given, but is rarely offered because of the potential for criticism. Unfortunately, sometimes with this type of testing, as happened here, you gain more questions than answers. But very good questions! One important thing the book brought home for me, was that a webpage is not a document. Over and over again, the testing shows here that people do not use webpages like books or documentation. Also an interesting thing that was brushed on was the separate uses of a webpage: Surfing versus information gathering. These are definitely different tasks and it was particularly useful for this report to be published to provide the preliminary information for us to start with. You really have to consider these as different applications, and test your site accordingly. You also have to ask yourself which of the uses is more important to you, if a tradeoff needs to be made. One concern I had with the testing was the task list. In each site there was specific tasks the user was assigned to do. If I were given these I would dive right into Cnet and Edmunds and stumble in all the rest. Why, because they are interests of mine. I have been to those sites and the information is familiar. However, if I were given the Fidelity task set, not only the site but the task would be unfamiliar to me. I wondered how much that played in the user's preference and usability of those sites. That is a tough thing to balance for, but may be a real factor in a user's experience in a site. Future testing (if it was not here) should probably account for the user's experience in the subject field. This I don't recall being directly addressed in the book. This book was wonderfully written, very conversational in style and lots of graphics. I learned a lot and will be reading more from these authors in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book to get you thinking about web design
Review: As a Usability professional, this book dealt with Web site Usability in a fashion that I can understand as well as in a fashion that the average person that uses web sites can understand. It opens the door and shows the methodology that is used. This is the kind of exposure all testing should be given, but is rarely offered because of the potential for criticism. Unfortunately, sometimes with this type of testing, as happened here, you gain more questions than answers. But very good questions! One important thing the book brought home for me, was that a webpage is not a document. Over and over again, the testing shows here that people do not use webpages like books or documentation. Also an interesting thing that was brushed on was the separate uses of a webpage: Surfing versus information gathering. These are definitely different tasks and it was particularly useful for this report to be published to provide the preliminary information for us to start with. You really have to consider these as different applications, and test your site accordingly. You also have to ask yourself which of the uses is more important to you, if a tradeoff needs to be made. One concern I had with the testing was the task list. In each site there was specific tasks the user was assigned to do. If I were given these I would dive right into Cnet and Edmunds and stumble in all the rest. Why, because they are interests of mine. I have been to those sites and the information is familiar. However, if I were given the Fidelity task set, not only the site but the task would be unfamiliar to me. I wondered how much that played in the user's preference and usability of those sites. That is a tough thing to balance for, but may be a real factor in a user's experience in a site. Future testing (if it was not here) should probably account for the user's experience in the subject field. This I don't recall being directly addressed in the book. This book was wonderfully written, very conversational in style and lots of graphics. I learned a lot and will be reading more from these authors in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Some Good Information; But By No Means Definitive
Review: Basically, the value of this book is that it is one of the only empirical studies of web site usability. It challenges the opinions of designers and pundits without offering any reasons why conventional wisdom may be right ot wrong. However, the book suffers from serious flaws. Granted, the $40 price reflects the number of people and hours involved in creating this book, it does not seem to offer the answers to justify it. Questions that should have been followed up on were left unanswered. Site designers were not consulted. Grammatical errors abound. However, the details of the tests ARE clearly delineated, although one would assume that would be covered in the beginning.
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