Rating: 
Summary: Excellent debunking of common web UI design myths
Review: One of my challenges in dealing with clients is convincing them that design solutions for one medium rarely apply to another. Imagine trying to make a bicycle frame out of wood using the same design you'd use for steel. It's quite possible to have a wooden frame, but they look *nothing* like the steel frame."Web Site Usability" is excellent source of material for me when I'm trying to explain and/or justify differences in design approaches based on functional requirements. This book, which makes no pretense of being a comprehensive, academic review of theoretical methods instead presents a broad variety of *real world* attempts to solve web UI problems and then describes both the strong and weak points discovered. It is, if you will, a narrative approach to understanding the issues involved in usability design, and to a lesser extent, user interface design. This narrative approach has proved far more helpful in dealing with the increasing numbers of non-technical folks who're being given the problem of creating interesting, usable, *and* attractive web sites than the typical academic approaches couched in jargon and steeped in rigid methodology. Regardless of your degree of technical knowledge, reading this book will help you in establish a strong foundation for understanding usability in all its contexts.
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Summary: Good questions, but do they matter!
Review: One of the current buzz terms around is "usability". Everyone likes to advertise their sites are designed with the user in mind when very little usability testing is truly done. I had the pleasure of attending a conference where Jared was speaking and listened to him for a day long lecture on usability. It was the first time I had thought about the "usability" of a web site. This book covers much of the "research" UIE has done on usability. The problem with the whole concept of usability is, does it really matter? People tend to adapt to what they are given. If you give them crap and that is all they know, then they will adapt to it and use it. This is how many badly designed pages are successful. This will probably not last (can anyone say boo.com). Eventually people will want good design. Jared's book opens the door, but I don't think it is the answer (nor do I think Jared considers this the answer). Usability testing takes time and money, two things most designers lack. So until he can develop a quick method of testing usability, the jury is still out.
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Summary: Save Yourself Hundreds of Dollars
Review: Save yourself hundreds of dollars by buying this book. No, that is not an offer, but if you were to pay a consultant for this good advice, it would easily cost hundreds of dollars (I know, I am a consultant). The advice is good and concise. Much of it is counter to conventional wisdom, but is in line with more experienced Web designers.
Rating:
Summary: Save Yourself Hundreds of Dollars
Review: Save yourself hundreds of dollars by buying this book. No, that is not an offer, but if you were to pay a consultant for this good advice, it would easily cost hundreds of dollars (I know, I am a consultant). The advice is good and concise. Much of it is counter to conventional wisdom, but is in line with more experienced Web designers.
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Summary: Practical Information for Information-based Sites
Review: Some web sites are for fun, to imprint branding, or to show off artistic talents. This book would not be particularly helpful in designing those sites. This book helps design sites which provide information. All factors were considered in the context of getting the site visitor to the information they need. A massive usability study was undertaken on about 10 big-name sites. Records were kept of how difficult it was for motivated users to answer specific questions for which the answers were contained in the sites' content. Many different design factors were the tested for significant correlations and the results reported. As other reviewers have reported, tables of correlation coefficients are not presented, and some of the specifics of the study are not outlined in detail, and yet given the experience of the authors and the nature of the study they conducted, I am disposed to use the results. The book also provides enough information to guide the reader in conducting their own studies, which is even more valuable a tool than any book. The study itself may have been conducted in 1996, but in the new millenium we are still interested in providing a design which gets people to the information they need as efficiently as possible. The mistakes uncovered in this work are still routinely committed.. thus the lessons are still needed.
Rating: 
Summary: No data to speak of = no scientific conclusions possible
Review: The authors claim that their research "provides actual data -- not opinions -- about what makes web sites usable". (Page 1). Unfortunately, their research is so poorly described that their claims are as good as opinions at the very best. To illustrate, we have no idea how many participants were tested in their study (1,2, or 200?) or who they were (college students, web designers, retirees?). In the whole book (all 157 pages of it), we were able to locate only 2 figures (one figure is repeated several times) and 1 table reporting any research findings with data. Various claims about correlations or lack of thereof are not substantiated by any presented data. In our opinion, the book is not worth 2 cents. Your money is better spent on Jacob Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability".
Rating:
Summary: No data to speak of = no scientific conclusions possible
Review: The authors claim that their research "provides actual data -- not opinions -- about what makes web sites usable." (page 1). Unfortunately, their research is so poorly described that their claims are as good as opinions at the very best. To illustrate, we have no idea how many participants were tested in their study (1, 2, or 200?) or who they were (college students, web designers, retirees?). In the whole book (all 157 pages of it), we were able to locate only 2 figures (one figure is repeated several times) and 1 table reporting any research findings. Various claims about correlations or lack of thereoff are not substantiated by any presented data. In our opinion, the book is not worth 2 cents. Your money is better spent on Jacob Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability".
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Summary: A short report on research-based Web usability studies
Review: The authors work for User Interface Engineering and this book documents the results of Web usability tests conducted in 1997 but the results are equally valid today. Rather than measuring the "coolness" of a site, this report rates the effectiveness of Web features in helping visitors find information on a site. This is particularly important in business-to-business sites where visitors are searching, not surfing. This book is very readable and gives quantitative data that should be of great interest to anyone building a Web site. A fast read, you should burn through the 150 pages in less than two well-spent hours.
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Summary: Right questions, no answers
Review: The idea is good: take a bunch of existing sites and see how they fare in terms of usability through tests. With this technique, the authors arrive at interesting points, which (surprising- and sadly) they fail to dig into. So the reader gets confronted over and over with sentences like: "This was an interesting idea, but as we didn't contact the designers, we can only guess" WHAT? WHY didn't they contact the designers of the site? After all, in Cyberspace, they're only a click away! Or: "We think this helped the users, but we didn't explore further" WHY not? So, to wrap it up: nice comments, some of them quite interesting, often the right questions in hand, but the authors didn't dig deeper. And at that price I expect them to. Oh, and the comment of another reader ("it looks like it was produced on a Xerox Docutech or similar device") is sadly correct. Hopefully the authors will take the ideas and techniques they developed for this book an explore further in subsequentials works. Webdesigners need this kind of studies.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent foundation book in producing workable web sites
Review: The value of this book is that it makes a strong case for thinking in navigation terms when constructing web sites. The content is about how people succeed or fail, when they try to find information , on web pages. It uses real web sites as examples and explains how users rated them. The section on how to regard images and animation is crucial information for beginners to web design. The authors' scientific approach to evidence is honest. If they feel that interpretation is uncertain they say so. Overall, the book contains solid workable solutions for building effective and sensible web pages. I would recommend this book to anybody who is thinking of putting up a web site and is not sure of what approach to take.
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