J. Blustein

Suggested Thesis Topics

Web Usability Measures

Can we develop automated measures of how good a web page or web site is? (A longer description of this project is available from my main project page).

Students

• Trevor Holm-Laursen is working on this as an independent study for his honours degree in 2003
• Joanna Farmer will be working on this during the tenure of her summer NSERC USRA in 2003
• More students are welcome to join this research stream

Contents List

1. Some Good Starting Points
   1. HCI in general
   2. HCI specifically for the WWW
   3. Existing tools
2. Sources for rules
   1. Rules in general
   2. Basic books about colour
   3. Colour on the WWW
3. Cascading Style Sheets
4. About This Webpage

1. Some Good Starting Points

   1. HCI in general

      http://www.hcibib.org/

      The HCI Bibliography project

      http://www.ida.liu.se/labs/aslab/groups/um/hci/

      Human-Computer Interaction Resources on the Net by Mikael Ericsson

      http://www.slis.indiana.edu/hcilab/Papers.html

      HCI publications by members of the faculty at Indiana Univ.

      http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/main.cgi

      HCI glossary at UsabilityFirst.com

      http://jthom.best.vwh.net/usability/biblio.htm

      Suggested Reading for Usability Testing by James Hom

   2. HCI specifically for the WWW

      http://www.usableweb.com/

      Usable Web by Keith Instone

      http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/

      Guidelines and research about WWW usability (at US National Cancer Institute)

      http://www.usability.gov/

      Main WWW Usability website (at US National Cancer Institute)

      http://www.useit.com/

      Useit.com by Jakob Nielsen, including Alertbox and guidelines

   3. Existing tools

      Yunfeng (Henry) Shan found most of these

      http://www.snow.utoronto.ca

      A-Prompt from UofT's Adaptive Technology Resource Centre

      http://www.cast.org/bobby

      Bobby from CAST

      http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML

      Doctor HTML

      http://www.usablenet.com

      LIFT: web preflight and usability assistant

      http://www.watchfire.com/news/press.asp

      LinkBot, MacroBot, and MetaBot

      http://www.netmechanic.com

      NetMechanic

      http://http://www.webcriteria.com

      WebCriteria

      http://websitegarage.netscape.com

      WebGarage from Netscape

      http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebSAT

      WebSAT from NIST

      http://webtango.berkeley.edu

      WebTANGO from UC Berkley

      eyePilot

      software to help colour blind people understand computer interfaces

      Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility

      at the W3C's web accessibility initiative (WAI) website

      Tools for Creating and Verifying Accessible Web Page at Univ. of Illinois

2. Sources for rules

   1. Rules in general

      http://www.w3.org/WAI/

      W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

      http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Design_Arts/Graphic_Design/Web_Page_Design_and_Layout/Accessibility/

      Yahoo! category

      http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Web_Usability/

      Google Web Directory category

      http://nadc.ucla.edu/dawpi.htm

      National Arts and Disability Centre

      http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/

      Joe Hallock's Colour Assignment

   2. Basic books about colour

      Principles of Color

      by Faber Birren

      © 1987

      published by Schiffer Publishing, Inc. (77 Lower Valley Road, Atglen PA, 19310-9717, USA)

      ISBN 0-88740-103-1

      Interaction of Color

      by Josef Albers

      published by Yale University Press

      Revised pocket edition © 1975

      Revised edition ISBN 0-30001-846-0

   3. Colour on the WWW

      1. Notes

         • NOTE: when searching for information about colour also look for color (without the u).
         • WebTANGO (listed in existing tools section, above) might do some colour contrast checks

      2. List of Resources

         10 colour contrast checking tools to improve the accessibility of your design by Roger Johansson

         http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/08/newman/

         Considering the Color-Blind (an article in Web Techniques)

         http://www.btexact.com/ces/colours/

         Customer Experience Solutions

         http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~muter/pmuter1.htm

         Optimization of Reading

         Hill & Scharff

         • http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/survreslts.html

           study of text/background colour combinations (by Alyson L. Hill and Dr. Lauren Scharff)

         • http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html

           Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color Combinations, Font Types And Word Styles by Alyson L. Hill (with Dr. Lauren Scharff)

         http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/

         Color in Motion: An interactive Experience of Color Communication and Color Symbolism by Claudia Cortés (via Bibi's Box blog)

         http://www.bibi.org/box/archives/2005/03/this_post_is_ab.html

         This post is about colour and art at Bibi's Box blog

         http://www.firelily.com/opinions/color.html

         Color Perception Issues

         http://vischeck.com/showme.shtml

         vischeck: color vision simulator

         http://www.humanfactors.com/color/colorblind.asp

         Accomodate Colorblind Users (at Human Factors International website)

         follow the links on the left of their page

         http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~muter/pmuter1.htm

         Optimization of Reading by Paul Muter in Cognitive aspects of electronic text processing (1996)

         http://web.archive.org/web/20030407084913/www.usability.gov/guidelines/accessibility.html#one

         Simulated example of colour deficiency on the WWW from old version of Research-Based Web Design & Usabiliyt Guidelines provided by the USA's National Cancer Institute usability.gov) [from archive.org's wayback engine]

         http://sig.enst.fr/~brettel/

         Research and Code about colour deficiencies

3. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

   http://css.nu

   CSS Pointers Group

   http://richinstyle.com/guides/css2.html

   CSS2 tutorial at RichInStyle.com

   http://www.webreview.com/style/css1/glossary.shtml

   CSS glossary by Eric A. Meyer (at webreview.com)

See Also

I have a list of more suggested thesis topics.