The wonderful Smashing Magazine has published some usability findings/guidelines that I think are great. There’s also more links at the end of the article to more findings, etc.

To summarise they are:
1. Form labels work best above the field. This is because forms tend to be vertical in nature so people find it easier to just read top-down rather than scanning left-right and then down.

2. Users focus on faces. This is nothing new, psychologists have known this for ages. I think the interesting part is that the study also shows that if the picture person’s face is looking at something, like a paragraph on the page, then the user of the site tends to focus there more as well.

3. Quality of design is an indicator or credibility. I guess this is fairly obvious, the more professional the site looks, the more credible it’s perceived, but it’s nice to have it verified.

4. Most users DO scroll. Oh the arguments I’ve had over this Years ago Jacob Nielson showed that most users didn’t scroll. Well times have changed and most users no longer have an issue with it (I can certainly back this up with user testing I’ve done at Sensis). The study suggests that users even prefer scrolling to pagination…

5. Blue is the best colour of links. Probably a less useful finding as there is a disclaimer about colour contrast, branding, etc. But if pure usability is you goal (and let’s face it, it’s rarely the only goal), then blue is your colour. Te most important point is to make the links stand-out though.

6. The ideal search box is 27 characters wide. I think this finding is a bit too general to be useful. Obviously what the site is used to search for would have a great impact on this. General search such as Google/Sensis.com.au would benefit from this finding. But I wouldn’t mind betting that the Surname field in White Pages doesn’t need to be that long.

7. White space improves comprehension. It certainly does. Jamming more info into a page is counter-productive. Sure it’s all there, but if your user can’t read or find it, it might as well not be there at all.

8. Effective user testing doesn’t have to be extensive. I think this finding has been around for quite a while. There have been many studies that have shown that as little as 5 users can uncover a majority of your usability problems, and after 10 users you don’t find many new problems. That’s why it’s best to do 2 lots of small tests than one big test with lots of users.

9. Informative product pages help you stand out. I’d put this one in the blatantly obvious pile rather than a finding. It’s interesting to note though that if you half of the findings in this list would help with this problem anyway.

10. Most users are blind to advertising. The title is a little misleading. They are mostly referring to banner ads (which is well establish finding). But users tend to excel at ignoring ads – it’s probably the thing they do best. Thankfully there are also studies that show that if the ad is relevant to the user’s task, then the ads tend to get more love.

Ok, that was longer than I was planning….