Bruno Abrantes

Since the release of version 2 of the iPhone OS, developers have been able to write native applications for the iPhone platform, and make them available (free or for a price) in the iTunes App Store. In just nine months, more than a billion apps have been downloaded from the store. As a recent iPhone user, one of the first things I did with the phone was access the App Store and start downloading some applications. After a mere two weeks, I can name at least 10 applications that are so good no iPhone user should ever have to do without them. (…) more after the jump ›

The concept of fiddling with and tweaking your design project on the final stages of development is probably not foreign to you, but the idea of doing it after your project is done might be.

If you work as a freelancer, you probably live on a project-by-project basis, and you realize that you just can’t spare the time to gradually refine each and every one of your projects. However, if you’re an in-house designer or developer (or if you’re just a freelancer who runs his/her own blog), you can probably appreciate the merits of a product-oriented mindset which is concentrated on getting a product out and then refining it continuously through it’s lifespan. (…) more after the jump ›

On the Web, first impressions are everything. Your page may have great content, it may just be what users are looking for, but, if your design fails to captivate users in a mere 5 seconds, your content might just never get noticed.

Enter the 5 Second Test, a quick Usability Test that costs next to nothing and can deliver great results. It’s basically  like any other usability test you’ve probably conducted before: there are users, tasks, and the application/site you’re testing.

At the start of the test, give your user a task to perform:

You’re on Application X’s home page. What are the ways you can subscribe to the application?

After informing the user that the page will only be visible for a short period of time, ask her to try and remember everything she sees.

You would then show your user the home page for about 5 seconds, and afterwards have her write down everything she remembers about the page. Finish up by asking one or two questions to assess whether the user has completed her task.

Sounds useful, doesn’t it? There are several benefits to using this method, the most proeminent being that it’s cheap and that you can conduct a whole lot of tests in a small window of time.

Even though conducting this kind of usability test is easy, I’ve found a handy tool that simplifies it even further. As a developer, you can create three kinds of test: classical (which is the one I described), compare (in which users compare two different interfaces) and sentiment (in which users describe their mood and most and least liked elements in the interface). As a user, you can take random tests and, as the page puts it, make an interface designer happy!