How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?

Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value
proposition can hold people's attention for much longer because
visit-durations follow a negative Weibull distribution.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for September 12:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/page-abandonment-time.html

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Usability Week 2011 conference

  * San Francisco: September 25-30
  * Austin, TX: October 3-7
  * London: November 13-18
  * Las Vegas: December 4-9

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

DEADLINE to save $200 on San Francisco advance registration:
  * Next Friday, September 23
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/san_francisco/agenda.html

The San Francisco conference is the last chance until March 2012
to take our most intensive training course, the
3-Day Camp on Usability in Practice:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/camp.html

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LAS VEGAS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCED

Caesars Palace beckons in December when the weather in Vegas is nice.

We have an extraordinarily rich program with 42 full-day training courses:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/las_vegas/agenda.html

Don Norman's evening keynote, "The Future Is Here," is open to all
attendees, no matter which seminars you're attending:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/main_event.html

This is our biggest event ever in terms of the number of full-day
seminars. New topics include:

User Experience Basic Training
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/ux_basic_training.html

SEO: Designing Your Site to be Found by Search Users
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/seo.html

Social Media: A Strategic Plan for Social UX
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/social_strategy.html

Improve the SharePoint User Experience: Optimizing Social and
Collaboration Features for Your Company
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/sharepoint.html

Micro Content Changes: How Small Text Changes Can Mean Big Wins
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/content_fixes.html

Engineering for User Experience on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/iphone_ipad_ux.html

"UX Basic Training" came to be because many attendees do not have a formal
education background in the field. That's only great: I want to expand
beyond people with degrees because there's a need for many, many more
professionals to know about user experience.

Unfortunately people without formal education often collect a scattered
set of impressions and have difficulty making sense of this when they
don't have the conceptual framework. This new course is intended to remedy
this situation.

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DESIGN COMPETITION: APPLICATION DESIGN SHOWCASE

   ** Call for Entries **

Think you have a great application, or a particularly compelling feature?
Enter the Nielsen Norman Group's Application Design Showcase competition
that will recognize the world's best applications.

The winners will be announced in February 2012, and recognized in a
published Nielsen Norman Group report and on our website. Winners will
also be invited to attend a Nielsen Norman Group Application Usability
seminar in Las Vegas (with registration fee waived).

  ** Who Should Enter **

Any well-designed application is eligible, from complex productivity
applications to lightweight Web applets to programs intended for
entertainment. We will consider apps designed for any platform including
web-based, native desktop and mobile applications.
 
While no application is perfect in every way, the winners will include
some features or elements that exemplify innovative and usable design. The
complexity of the problem space and the history of improvement will be
considered when evaluating entries.

  ** How to Enter **

Please see:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/applications/contest

  ** Deadline **
Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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NAMES AROUND THE WORLD

Good overview of the many different ways people are named around the
world:

  > http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names

This article has good guidelines for how to deal with the wide spectrum of
international names in Web forms. For many years I have advocated using a
single field for "Full Name" and let people type family name first or
last, as appropriate for their culture.

The article also recommends supplementing the full-name field with a field
for "what should we call you?" If you do this, also show examples of how
this info will be used. It's hard to decide how you'll like to be referred
to without knowing the context.

See also:

International Sites: Minimum Requirements
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050808.html

International Usability: Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/international-sites.html