Who Doesn’t Love Leo DiCaprio?

Actually truth be told, I have no opinion about him one way or another, but somehow, he became the namesake for an easy but misleading line of usability testing. Usability testing, just like everything else in fundraising and communications, requires passion to go right.

Everyone in the usability world seems to have different, and sometimes conflicting shticks. I find for instance that Jakob Nielsen’s notion of usability is based more on notions of how people should approach things, rather than how they actually approach them.

Steve Krug, whose book is the absolute bible in many ways, champions more of a “jungle medicine” approach, which fits nicely with the non-profit sector.

But the folks I want to be like when i grow up are the smart people at User Interface Engineering, who really get into users’ heads, tell great stories, and offer up tactics that, while more complicated than Steve Krug’s trunk test, are replicable in the real world.

For instance, UIE discovered through extensive testing that word links should be between 7 and 12 words long. It’s a sensible and useful rule, that creates a much more conducive click target than a single, easily missed word.