A couple weeks ago my email subscribers received a link for a “new post” that didn’t go anywhere. It’s not that the page was broken, or that the post didn’t exist. Instead the problem was that I was working on a new post that was not yet finished and accidentally hit the “Publish” button, instead of the “Save Draft” button. Of course, like any typical user, I blamed myself. (more…)

I recently gave a presentation at the South Florida User Experience Meetup on the top 10 design and layout principles you should know when designing your website. Below is a summary as well as the presentation with some screen shot examples for those who could not attend. (more…)

What are standards?

Standards are agreed upon conventions for a particular process or visual pattern based on research and proven best practices. They provide a basis for commonality across many diverse things. They allow us to learn something once, and employ it in multiple places. An example of a well know interface standard are the simple button icons used in rich text editing toolbars for bold, italic and underlined text. The B is Bold, the I is italic and the U is underlined. (more…)

Design Review: Lotus Notes 8 versus Outlook 2007

Recently our office started upgrading some employees to Lotus 8 and I decided to give it a try. Before I get started, let me give you a little information on my email experience. I started using email in the mid 90’s with Hotmail, moving at somepoint after 2000 to Outlook which I have used religously since. Sure, I still have my Hotmail account, as well as Yahoo Mail, and Gmail. But rather than fanagle with multiple interfaces and logins everthing conveniently is pushed to my home computer and appears nicely integrated into a single inbox in my Outlook.

So you can imagine I was less than excited when I found out I was going to be forced to use an email application aside from my beloved Outlook. I admit that at first with Notes 7, I resisted and cheated. I used a connector at work that would allow me to continue receiving my email via the outlook interface eventhough the company used Lotus Notes. (For those interested here is a link to the connector, you must have domino 7 and outlook 2003).

So how is it I’m writing an article about Lotus 8 you may ask? I have to say it is sheer curiousity as a person who designs applications for a living. I attended CHI 2009 and went to a presentation by IBM explaning all of the user experience research methods they employeed when updating there system from version 7 to 8, and the presentation impressed me enough to make me decide it’s worth a test drive.

So here are my initial thoughts when comparing Lotus Notes 8 against my beloved Outlook 2007. (more…)

What does it take to make your website global? I mean technically people can already access it from anywhere if it’s a public site, so all you need is a little bit of translation from babblefish right? Wrong.

Translation
Believe it or not, there is much more to a global site than the language it is written in. Even with language there are many considerations aside from rough translation. For example think about when you talk to a new English speaker. Notice how they seem to mix up certain verbs or tense and even meaning. That’s because language is unique to its culture and does not always directly translate to an equivalent word in other languages and cultures. This is why you should use not just a method of translation, but also back translation. (more…)

Never underestimate the value of an intuitive interface especially when designing for the general public. Nothing can be made too easy, but it can definitly be too hard. Below is a picture that was sent to me of a pay to park meter in Hollywood, Florida. Take a few seconds and really look at the instructions. What do you think you have to do first? What about second and Third? (more…)

As the name “User Experience” professional implies, many of us would say we design for “users”, “potential users”, or “user groups”. However there are currently many trends in place trying to get us to permanently move away from this term of reference and for good reason.

What is a user anyway? If someone walked up to you on the street and said “I’m a user” you probably wouldn’t be thinking of computer user. In fact the second definition of user according to dictionary.com is “one who uses drugs, esp. as an abuser or addict.” 

So who is it we are really designing for?

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(Download the PDF)

Change is good, and it’s important to keep your site up to date. However change can also be hard to handle, especially when you feel as if you’ve had the rug pulled out from under you. Which is how many users feel when they go to a familiar site and suddenly everything is completely different.

This is something to keep in mind when making changes on your website, specifically in account based websites.  When someone creates an account and has “private” pages they form a sense of ownership with these pages. “They have my stuff on them, therefore they belong to me now”. This can be good in some sense as it indicates loyalty, but what happens when it’s time to update the site? (more…)

(Download the PDF)

First impressions are worth a lot on the web when competition is only a click away. So what first impression are you giving people when they come to your website? Does your site seem confusing, overwhelming, without focus? One of the most common mistakes people make when creating their homepages is forgetting about their users and first impressions. Many homepages are bogged down with useless text, a mess of links and images and no clear statement of what they do, or what their users can do on their site. It’s important that you’re clear and obvious on what you have to offer and the value you can provide.

The Test

Take the 5 second test to find out how you’re doing:

Take a screen shot of your website and print it in black and white. Show it to family and friends who may not be familiar with the site, but only let them look at it for 5 seconds. Can they tell you the company the website was for? What does the company do? What would they do next on the site? If they can’t figure this out, without your prompting, then your homepage could use some work. Keep in mind, people will give your site a lot less than 5 seconds time on the web.

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(Download the PDF)

I’ve posted about Agile previously, but each time it has been generalized reviews of the practice. So I decided it was time to really get into the nitty-gritty of what it means to practice user experience in an Agile environment. There are some great resources out there on the subject, some of which I have listed below in my references which I recommend.

So we have a good idea what agile is, where it came from and definitely why developers like it. So how do we fit UX into the mix? I started by listing out some of the great benefits of UX that I needed to make sure weren’t left out. Some of these items were:

• Getting in front of projects and designing before production
• User research, feedback and usability tests on the product
• Time for iterations in design, based on changing requirements and research
• A means to support multiple projects with limited resources
• Time to gather all the necessary details and look at the project as a whole

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