Where do Usability Guidelines Come From?

As the field of web usability has matured, research has identified many common user needs, capabilities, and performance issues, which have been compiled into various sets of usability guidelines and heuristics. Jakob Nielsen is known for publishing these lists on a semi-regular basis, such as Top Ten Design Mistakes for 2005.

Usability.gov has just published a new edition of their Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines, which is an excellent guide to best practices. These guidelines stand above most others because they indicate both the importance of each guideline, and the extent to which it is supported by research. They even provide a handy (and interesting) online Guidelines Sorting Tool.

• Order Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines
• View the Guidelines Sorted by Importance and Strengh of Evidence. You can also access individual chapters from the sorting tool.