Welcome to Internetworking 2.3!
This publication marks the end of our 1999 series. Over the past 2 years, Internetworking has become an important reference of record for professionals from all disciplines who are concerned with usability on the web. We have provided leading edge information on technologies, methodologies, and scientific thought. Of course, we will not rest on these accomplishments. We intend to grow our readership and our impact. We will be adding standard columns for accessibility and e-commerce, and continue our series of workshops and book reviews. We will reach out to our international colleagues, showing them the value of our content, and encouraging them to contribute to our publication. And, we will make Internetworking easier to find for our colleagues.
Featured in this issue, Shirley Martin shows how to design a well organized, user-centered web site by relying on card sorting and cluster analysis techniques. This article is particularly useful because it outlines the methodology in such a way that makes it easy to generalize to any web site. She also provides very concrete recommendations for her methodology.
Also featured in this issue is an interesting article from Michael Etgen. He points out that just as in life, there are certain events that happen on web sites that consistently annoy users, and that fixing these "bugs" would result in a better "quality of life" for users. Michael lists several such problems, and more importantly, he provides the technical solutions. We would like to encourage readers to continue to submit there own web site quality of life issues-- hopefully with a solution in mind.
In a compelling article, Chris Forsythe continues his approach to assessing the life cycle of web sites using an ecological model. He argues that web products are like living organisms who have the common purpose of perpetuating their existence through sustained usage. If Chris is correct, then an ecological approach could provide substantial value to companies who invest significant money in a web presence.
I am very pleased to announce that we will be posting a new column on accessibility. Wendy Chisholm and Shawn Henry, both well established experts in this area will be writing a column for each issue that provides tips, tools, and will keep up informed of initiatives that focus on universal accessibility. Welcome aboard Shawn and Wendy!
Pawan Vora has begun a series of usability workshops for our publication. In this issue, he provides tips an examples for how to avoid user errors with good design.
From our librarian Keith Instone, we are reminded that usableweb.com is an excellent site for references on web topics, conference dates, and related information.
In our book review section, Pawan examines a book that describes a controversial prediction about the role of "intermediaries" in the future of e-commerce. Will there be marketing businesses that web users trust with all of their buying habits and related information. Will this information be for sale?
Finally, the annual ITG business meeting has produced some exciting possibilities for 2000 and beyond. ITG is offering a special "late" session at IEA/HFES 2000, so check out the call for papers. Also, we will try to have HFWeb, an annual conference dedicated to web usability become a formal meeting of the ITG. And speaking of HFWeb, we are expecting a sister conference in Europe in 2001.
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We hope that you enjoy this latest issue, and please continue to send articles, summaries, book reviews, workshops, and commentaries.
Judy Cantor
AT&T Laboratories
jcantor@att.com
(732) 420-2876
© Internet Technical Group
Last update: December 21, 1999
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