Posted by
Marianne on
January 29, 2010 – 09:05
I appreciate the response posted by Bryan Minihan to the IXDA discussion list a couple of months ago for being a much needed dose of good sense. Thank you Leah Buhley for bring it to our attention.
“The greatest mistake I ever made, working for my first big company (70K employees back in 1996) was thinking they were big enough to have solved all of the little problems. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It took 4 years at that company, and another 4 at my next big one (120K folks) before this sank into my thick head:
Both large and small companies not only suffer from similar problems, but they repeat them over and over again – because every company is comprised of human beings, all of whom want to leave their own mark on their respective organizations.
Over time, I have evolved a few mantras that (for me, at least) ensure my design work makes it to production intact: Read More »
Posted by
Marianne on
January 25, 2010 – 22:27
Wireframes, flow diagrams, personas, card sorts, content strategy documents, etc. All of these things are important to design, and designers need some combination of them to synthesize their user research and communicate what they’re doing with the other members of the team.
But too often these deliverables are the last line of contact for designers. Too often these deliverables are what designers prepare and then hand off to implementors. Then they shuffle off to create more deliverables and the cycle is repeated.
In the end deliverables are merely artifacts of the design process. They are not the final design, they are not the artifact of experience. The end user never interacts with them…they interact with the product or service that is actually delivered.
That’s the difference: deliverables are divorced from delivery. Read More »
Posted by
Marianne on
January 24, 2010 – 18:11
Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work.
Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites.
- Form labels work best about the field
- Users focus on faces
- Quality of design is an indicator of credibility
- Most users do not
- Blue is the best color for links
- The ideal search box is 27-characters wide
- White space improves comprehension
- Effective user testing doesn’t have to be extensive
- Informative product pages help you stand out
- Most users are blind to advertising
For more in-depth explanations of the basics, visit Smashing Magazine’s article here.
Posted by
Marianne on
January 18, 2010 – 09:52
After 3 years online, the old flash site has at last been laid to rest and a new blog format site started. The focus will be usability (work) related for the most, with the odd post about things in general and developments here in Copenhagen. That said – blogs seems to be creatures of their own, so it’ll be interesting (for me that is) to see what kind of life this thing takes on.
The flash site was tricky to update, couldn’t be indexed by search engines (which is just scandalous when I advocate SEO friendly site design to my clients), and well – had served it’s time. The blog site took a bit of patience (had to relearn come CSS coding to get it looking the way I wanted) and is – like all healthy websites – organic and therefore forever ‘in the works’. I’ll be using the space to test tracking code, design, new features – so I’ll preemptively suck air in through my teeth and predict that I’ll break the site a few times along the way too. Still tweaking – there are some bugs I need to fix (they’re invading my dreams at night), but think I’ll launch today and iron out the kinks along the way. Hello world.
Previous site retired to the archives