Articles and Links

User-Centered Return on Investment for User-Centered Design. PowerPoint file. Audience: Primarily UCD professionals, but also anyone who cares about ROI for technology.

Introduction to User-Centered Design. PowerPoint file. Audience: Technology managers. By Joe Grant.

Customer-Centered Web Design. PowerPoint file. Audience: Non-technical decision-makers for web sites. By Joe Grant

Selling Usability. PowerPoint file. Audience: UCD professionals.

No Surprises Technology - An online book. By Joe Grant

stltoday.com Usability Study. Report from a usability study on a major web site in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. Includes audio / video segment from the actual study. By Joe Grant 

The Simple Story. Why projects must fight for the basic and simple story of customer success. By Joe Grant  

A Usability Test Storyboard, showing how usability testing works. By Joe Grant

 "Healing the Web." A Fortune journalist sees how usability testing uncovers .."site snafus that would probably shock most executives." By David Lidsky

  The Attraction of Complexity, a not-often-cited, yet major reason, why projects fail.  By Joe Grant

The Industry Standard reports "IAM Sues Razorfish for Poor Design." Site charged to be difficult to navigate and "unusable."

 Why Have a Web Site if People Can't Use It? Or perhaps the question should be "Is anyone minding the store?"  By Joe Grant   


What do you get when cross a computer with a camera? A computer, of course! These and other Riddles for the Information Age from Alan Cooper explain why a different way of designing software is seriously needed.

Information Week declares that "software that doesn't work well--and intuitively--will no longer fly in today's customer-driven marketplace." See the rest of their story in New Mantra: Usability.