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Steve Krug has written what in my opinion is THE book on Web Usability: “Don’t Make Me Think!“. It’s a short book that contains what you need to know about Usability, and how to apply it to your Web project. On this (rare) video, Steve tells us about the least you can do about usability. Watch it, and if you are at all interested on Web usability, read the book (if you haven’t already).

This is always a question I come accross when starting a new project: How to approach the stakeholder(s)? I tend to vary, according to my knowledge of the person, from formal to relaxed, but always maintaining a high level of professionalism.

This article by Steve Baty offers several guidelines on how to conduct a successful interview with with project stakeholders, that include:

• Leave at least 30 minutes between interviews
• Limit an interview to just three or four major topics
• Talk about culture, challenges, and goals, not features
• Be prepared for your interviews

Worth a read.

Mark Hurst writes about “A bank customer experience” he recently had. Enough to say that it lead him to close his account and open a new one at another bank. His example comes from to the offline world, but one can easily have the same experience online.
What he notes, and this is a very important point, is that the experience would be seen as highly successful by the usability experts, the branding executives, and the mass-marketers alike. But not by the customer experience folks (and certainly not by the customer).
This goes to show that our jobs as Web People (for lack of a better title) is much harder than may look at first sight. We have to keep track and know about many different areas, to be able to provide the right experience for our visitors.