Usability Institute- Before & After Articles

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Check out these items that can help you conquer unfriendly software:
	Function Tree Destined to be an industry classic, a consolidated hierarchy of all generic software function.
	Results Tree I'm not settled on the name yet, but the content is incontrovertable: afford these results or vanish.
	GenericUI Style sheet and hundreds of design elements for serious data applications in a browser
	Website Survival Checklist 33 vital signs for every website's health
	Computer User's Bill of Rights 8 rules of the of user-in-yourface common sense
	Winning the Business Softwar Our 46-page book, absotively free
	Free Usability Criteria for RFPs Put this text right in your Requests for Proposals, no strings attached.
	Full list of resources...

This is a list of just our Before & After articles, each of which shows a UI problem and our solution. But I find more UI challenges than I can possibly solve, so there's only one thing to do... get you to do the "after" versions. See our Solve-It page.

2007-Apr-24		Bret Victor's Magic Ink Make perfect graphics and maybe you won't need to figure out all those interaction design brain teasers.
2007-Feb-19		The Primary Interface The most basic, stripped down expectation of a user... just do it.
2006-Jun-31		Before... just before, no after! A web interface that can be used in web design classes as the starting point for an exercise on the elements of visual design.
2006-Mar-11		Your web front door: let people in immediately.
2005-Feb-12		The Triumvirate of Home Page Design: Try to build a bad website that includes these three ingredients. You just can't do it.
2005-Jan-24		Bellis's Law of Control Proximity What can light switches tell us about software design? Put controls, even text, as close as possible to the item they control.
2005-Jan-1		Improving Linksys' Security Dialogs Or, "How to Save Linksys $25 Million in Support Costs and Save the World Along the Way"
2003-May-16		Before&After of TravelRack.com Which is better for instructions, a few paragraphs of prose or a bullet list?
2002-Nov-16		Redesign of the MCLinc.org Library Web Site This was no silk-purse-from-sow's-ear turnaround, just applying some web basics and improving the words to clarify "keyword' vs. "browse."
2002-Feb-01		Best Dialog Ever? You might be surprised. Can you guess what the "before" is?
2001-Jan		Scaling Mount Everest: Redesigning Netmeeting Try talking a non-Windows user through sound-and-video at a distance, and you'll want to tear your hair out, too. (I guess I'll never complete this one.)
2000-Mar		e-Commerce Shootout (Before & After) Which mortgage loan web site is better? You be the judge.
1999-Dec		Button Wording in a Simple Message Box Put explicit wording on buttons instead of indirectly in the message box.

"My interest in usability arose from the pain and tears of patching the wounds of suffering interface designs with the inadequate bandages of help files and user guides." — Daniel Cohen