[The following article originally appeared in the FreePint Newsletter at http://www.freepint.com.]
My Favourite Tipples
By Peter Maureemootoo
As an expert in how people interact with computers, I always try to think of the simplest way to present information to learners when building and publishing online courses. I turn to these sites time and again for creating a better user experience.
- The Usability Toolkit from the Society for Technical Communication <http://www.stcsig.org/usability/resources/toolkit/toolkit.html> contains scads of checklists and templates that help you organise online course design.
- Q&A with Don Norman <http://digbig.com/4sdjj>. I respect usability guru Don Norman enormously, and in this excellent article, he shows what he knows about how people learn.
- Gadwin PrintScreen <http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/> is one tool I can’t live without when building courses. This free software makes creating custom-sized screen grabs a snap.
- Why People Can’t Use eLearning <http://digbig.com/4sdjk> is a compelling white paper that shows the other side of the hype – when e-learning goes bad.
- The WellStyled Workshop’s Color Schemes Generator 2 <http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html> lets you create pleasing colour palettes that always work on the Web.
Peter Maureemootoo is president and co-founder of Talance, Inc., <http://www.talance.com/>, a company that publishes and builds online courses and robust, large-scale websites. He has special expertise in creating intuitive and compelling systems for all users.