

10 Ways to Improve Usability When You Thought it Was Too Late - ashleytowers
http://usabilityfriction.com/2008/11/05/10-ways-to-improve-usability-when-you-thought-it-was-too-late/

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timcederman
Some good advice, however, a few things I disagree with here.

Firstly, regarding the 80/20 rule -- sure, only 20% of your features are used
80% of the time, but it's rarely the same 20%. That's why Microsoft Office has
so much cruft.

Regarding fields for MAC addresses, etc, how do you handle credit cards? The
standard is currently to have a single textbox, and it's what people are used
to. Shifting that to a split box model introduces all sorts of other problems.
A smarter option is to have good input handling (that strips out spaces,
dashes, etc)

Splitting out forms can actually decrease task completion. If you're going to
reduce cognitive load by doing this, you need to let them know where they are
in the task.

Also, I was a little disappointed at how common-sense a lot of this was, and
also thought there'd be some good "easy fix" stuff for people who already had
a completed site. This is going around fixing a lot of stuff which should've
been done correctly in the first place.

