I put together a hasty beautiful and usable sites page for one of my talks at Seybold. And then I couldn't upload the little bugger. ah well. but I thought I'd share with you-all.

I had a great deal of fun at Seybold. I wanted to say to anyone who is visiting for the first time because of one of the two panels i was on, feel free to write me with any questions you might have that didn't get answered. If I don't know the answer i'll try to find someone who does, or post it to hte blog for my incredibly smart reader to help.

That's of course true for non-seybold visitors-- we're all trying to get smarter here, right?

Except how to hack. i continue to not know how, I don't know anyone who does know how to hack, and I don't answer mails that ask me to help with hacking.

It's the people, stupid

"Too many products, and many start-ups, fail because they don't focus on a simple reality: Humans will need to use and like the product or service. Too often, technologies and products are created because they can be, not because they should be."

How video games influenced the attack on America

is an interesting article on how video games shape certain thought patterns.

Seybold's site is worth visiting if only for the huge number of worst practices they managed to jam in. That said, it's still a very cool conference, and I've done to footwork and found you a comprehendable conference planner and a free pass for one day. Now come by and check out Beyond Bread Crumbs: Best Practices and Tactics In Information Architecture and Putting the 'Eye' in Interface: Effective and Beautiful Interface Design.

Many of us are still struggling to shake off the malaise induced by the WTC attack... many of us haven't been as productive as we've been in the past. Talking with friends this week, I've found many are apologetic and guilty: they haven't been able to get much done and since they didn't lose anyone they knew personally, they feel that their grief is somehow out of place, out of measure.

Our president told us to go back to work. He promised to get those guys (who ever "those guys" are). But he didn't tell us how to deal with our loss-- and we all had a loss. The loss of our precious ordinariness. A plane flying over head that was invisible to me last month fills me with sorrow for lost dreams. A large truck makes me nervous about chemical warfare. A young male friend suddenly seems vulnerable to draft and death. Our assumptions have been shaken, and an unfocused fear has taken its place.

So give yourself permission to mourn your everyday life, interrupted so brutally. Don't feel guilty for the past malaise. Then take stock in your pleasures: your favorite album, your favorite movie, your favorite book. Open the nice bottle of wine you've been saving, buy the hardback version of the novel from your favorite author, the rare import CD from your favorite band. Stop staring listlessly at the monitor and steal away from work to catch some sunshine. Admit we all lost something Tuesday-- not metaphorically, but truly. Only then we can do what we each need to return to our lives. Each in our own way, at our own pace.

As the New Yorker would say, Our correspondent in Japan writes:

"My job is predicated on the implicit assumption that information is stable, knowable, and not least, deployed in the service of a user. In Japan, as we shall see, this isn't always the case. I think the results are instructive, not only for IA's, but for anyone who moves information across cultural boundaries."

Metadata Harvesting and the Open Archives Initiative

'The Metadata Harvesting Protocol—a mechanism that enables data providers to expose their metadata—is seeing very rapid deployment, and enables a fascinating array of new services and system architectures for a diverse set of communities. "

Terrific post by Peter on faceted classification. It's something we all do and take for granted, and peter has managed to write it up in an intelligent and accessible manner. go birthday boy!

if you like infographics, this is a nice simple one used to make a point about the futile nature of revenge.

Sometimes it's good to remember ordinary user questions. Nice and funny column.

One of my favorite sites, flazoom has a great new article

"I am convinced that Flash designers have vision that is far superior to ordinary people. Vision so powerful that 8 pixel tall bitmap typefaces on a low contrast background do not present a problem for reading. "

I still can't help anyone hack. Yet I still get requests. the latest:

"see i think my gfs cheating on me.

pls i need her password desperately.

this is a matter of life and death.

pls i really need ur help.

pls.....i will be grateful if u help me.

pls."

and

"hi dude... i got some Ver of Spooky i dunno what exactly it is but i wanna have the Final version and stuff..if ya please mail me about this message ... tnx "

I need a new domain name.....

The New Yorker notes the passing of Alice Trillin. If you have never read The Tummy Trilogy this would be a great time to pick it up. Calvin Trillin is one of the great food writers of all time, and his books are funny and delightful. If you like Peter Mayle, or MFK Fisher, or if you just love food, read them. We all need as much joy as we can get into our lives right now.

"ME: Anybody who served a milkshake like this in Kansas City would be put in jail.

ALICE: You promised not to indulge in any of that hometown nostalgia while I'm eating. You know it gives me indigestion.

ME: What nostalgia? Facts are facts. The kind of milkshake that I personally consumed six hundred gallons of at the Country Club Daily is an historical fact in three flavors. Your indigestion is not from listening to my fair-minded remarks on the food of a particular American city. It's from drinking that gray skim milk this bandit is trying to pass off as a milkshake. "

Alice was Calvin's muse, his cohort in crime, a funny and amazing lady if the books don't lie, and I think their adventures in cuisine will be a model for my own marriage.

Good bye Alice, and thanks for all the meals.

excerpt from "Travels with Alice"

Salon Interview with Calvin Trillin

John of webword has gotten some rough treatment around here lately, what with all the feminism and browserism.... but he is a great guy and is known to wear pants in public. Webword continues to be a great resource, and that's why he got called out. Please read his responses to the relevent posts; good answers. We love ya John!

I wish you 29 krispy cremes....

Wish him a happy one on his blog, then stick around to read his great post on faceted classification.

Good example of persuading business to improve user experience at Flow Interactive

Digital Web Magazine interviews Carbon IQ. It's a great issue, full of user experience goodies.

If you've been a long time resident of a mailing list, you see some arguments crop up over and over again. A classic on usability lists is people trying to apply Jakob's top ten rules to some poor schmuck's homepage.

A classic unique to web development lists is "Why can't I force the user to upgade their setup." It's usually in reaction to a burning desire to use CSS2, or some cool javascript, or they've got a moron breathing down their neck wanting the design to be "just how it is in photoshop" or maybe the developer is just sick if figuring out out how write degradable code. One developer pointed at a recent article on scottandrew.com which further pushes that agenda: if you want people to upgrade, force them! I responded on the list thusly (and it applies to the usability nazis too).

"This is art

http://www.subakt.fr/ortografi/

when you make art, you can do as you please. A gallery can ask the patrons to come in through a vent rather than a door, if they think it improves the artistic experience. An art site can take over your browser: they need you to PAY ATTENTION.

This is a personal site

http://www.glassdog.com

If you have a personal site, you can do as you please, as long as you please yourself. It's the equivalent of wearing no pants while you watch TV with the window open. If you are okay with it, why not. Your neighbors may be dismayed, but they know how to draw the shades.

This is a personal/professional site

http://www.webword.com

Now we get into a gray area: it's rather like putting on a blue suit for a job interview. John Rhodes is representing himself as a usability expert, and he may love mauve, but he suppresses an urge to make all his links mauve in order to show he is about savvy about usability practices. He keeps his pants on.

This is also a personal/professional site

http://www.nathan.com

Nathan is a designer first, a user-centered advocate second. He's also fairly established in the field. He can break a few of "the rules" as he is also expressing his artistic flare. He may need to be a flashy to stand out in the crowd. He may have to wear a tie with a hula dancer on it with his blue suit to let people know he may do something unexpected.

This is a site that wants your money.

http://www.amazon.com

they get out of the way of the product. They do not express themselves. They do not force you to upgrade or buy a better monitor. They know people do not upgrade when you ask them to, people type in barnesandnoble.com in their search engine. Their site works on netscape 2.0; the doors are always open. They are not arrogant, but they are rightfully proud of giving everyone who comes to their site a solid experience.

This is a site that wants your business.

http://www.sapient.com/

They know businessmen have big pipes. they also know businessmen aren't always sure how to resize their browser (looks good on 800x600 as it does at 1024. Heck, you can use it at 640...)

Know your audience.

Know your business.

Know your technology.

Build."

User-centered design does not stop at information architecture. it doesn't stop at interaction design. it doesn't stop at graphic design. User-centered design is code-deep.

The Fresh Styles for Web Designers Book Review has links to many of the sites for those designers in need of inspriation. Not a second too soon, I see. Who invented this style? Why is it everywhere?

My site may be craptacular, but it's original. that is until I launch the new version!

thanks to the n-gen for the design!

I just was forwarded this old post: DaveNet : Gender balance in high tech featuring this sterling quote: "Men are the artists of our species, women are the infrastructure."

I was sent it because I was complaining to some pals that web word's interviews were reaching a new level of gender imbalance this year with 0 women interviewed. Some people would look at that and assume, as Dave seems to, that women just aren't any good at these things. Not true: women are culturally trained to assume positions of deference. Self promotion tends to be our worst skill-- it's unladylike. I'm lucky to have been raised by cantankerous feminist parents; few can rival me for boisterousness.

So what do we do? How do we tip the scales? Raise consciousness? I know in the wake of the WTC this may seem to many a small issues, but honestly I want to believe I have a country worth fighting for. The taliban forbid their women education, property, to leave the house: don't we want to claim we are better than that?

I'm thinking of a kind of "surf the chicks" day... maybe we can create a list of great sites run/designed by women, and come up with female alternative web icons to zeldman and glassdog -- both of who are sweet guys and chick-friendly. I'm not slamming those guys. just looking for heroines...

thoughts?

Completely unusable, and I don't care. ORTHOGRAPHIE is art. Go when you have time to not multitask, but wander through a strange vector gallery. My fave: on/off.

erin points out that the proceedings and artifacts are up from the AIGA Experience Design Conference, and I'm sure i'd tell you all about how interesting or simulating they are if i weren't about to go fall asleep on the couch with design agent on my chest. (I always feel like i'm napping productively if i'm under a book.)

Whenever I'm blue, I like to send a Taste-E Chop Postcard! Gosh that little porkchop sure gets around....

While seeking a screen shot of the old cnet yellow left nav, I came across this very nice guide to website navigation design/IA principles. W. Eugene Tiller, Phillip Green -- Web Navigation:How to make your Web site fast and usable

I just received a nice little note from Amazon reminding me that my birthday is coming, and perhaps I'd like to update my wishlist? Things they thought I might like to add included the book I just raved about below, and also a Linksys BEFSR41 Etherfast 4-Port Cable/DSL Router, which I have been shopping for, but offline, not online. They are getting a little too prescient. What's next? "Christina, we've made reservation for you at La Folie for your birthday, and after tickets to Dave Brubeck. click here to cancel, click here to confirm?" (shudder)

And that resource led me to The Lycos 50 with Aaron Schatz, which provided insightful interpretation of why people search for the things they do.

"After September 11, the Lycos 50, like everything else in America, has been fundamentally changed.

Tuesday's terrorist attacks led to a massive search for information never before seen in the history of the Internet. Half of the subjects on this week's Lycos 50 are new this week, and of those subjects all except one are related to the attack on America.

Shocking, then, that the #1 subject is not the World Trade Center (#2) or terror suspect Osama Bin Laden (#3). No, the top subject is 16th century seer Nostradamus, thanks to an email hoax which attributed to him a prophesy foretelling this week's horrors."

What People Search For - Most Popular Keywords

The myth of optimal web design

"Perfection in design is not possible. No matter how much is known about a given business, user group or technology, you can not simultaneously satisfy all possible objectives."

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for September 16

"New mobile devices and services are more realistic and useful than last year's models, and will likely expand mobile device adoption. Design usability and simplicity are key, particularly for the automotive market where complexity can be dangerous."

"Just two years ago, the definition of a well-designed, complete Web site was one that offered deep discounts on merchandise, shipped items for free, and threw in some animation just for kicks. A quaint notion called usability, which software designers and consumer electronics engineers had been struggling with for a long time, was not even a blip on the radar screen for most of the Web. Unless you were working at Staples.com"

How should design be effected by recent events? (yes THOSE events)

via giantant.com

If you haven't seen the Adobe.com piece on Jimmy Chen, don't you want to?? Follow up with the Digital Web interview...

Everybody loves free fonts. Except foundries, I suppose.

http://www.fontpool.com

http://www.freewarefonts.com/index.html

http://www.51fonts.com/index1.htm

http://www.geocities.com/fishdicks_2000/index.html

http://www.freepcfonts.com/index.html

http://www.free-graphics.com/

Christopher Locke seems to be using writing as therapy these days-- I've been getting a lot of newsletters form him. And, while often loopy, they are interesting, enlightening and strangely comforting reads.

Anyhow, he's got the first two chapters of his book up here

Gonzo Marketing: Winning through Worst Practices

Also check out his site and his blog (though I prefer the newsletter. warmer and less promotional voice)

Gomez Advisors: Online banking increasingly popular in US

"There are 13.6 million US Internet users that actively use online

banking services, according to Gomez."

These days we could all use a laugh. "how to watch TV" provided it for me.

Two things are making me feel well these days. Poetry and art-- especially photographs.

The poem of the day on the infamamous day is "Two Variations on a Theme" by Stevens, which opens with

"First there is the thing and then there is

the account of the thing, bent into new

alphabets."

worth remembering as teevee and politicians rewrite the inexplicable into the understandable.

I've removed all my political stuff except for the day of the 11th, which i view as a unique day.

I'm too emotionally distraught to bring diatribe here-- the results are more tears and I think I'm nearly out.

If you hate me or love me or whatever, go over to metafilter and curse me out there. I can ignore that site when I need a break; because I need to watch for hackers and flamers I can't ignore my own.

The Mirror Project | See The Horrible Monster

Infographics of the disaster

"In many cases, more effective than just words and photos, infographics can quickly help us grasp information and timelines in a visual and easy-to-follow manner. "

Come beat me for the crime of the Trail of Tears, for I have settler blood.

Come scream epithets at me for the crimes of slavery, for I have Dutch blood.

Come, tell me I deserve to die for crime of imperialism, for I have French blood.

Come throw rocks at me for the crime of the holocaust, for I have German blood.

Come spit on me for putting innocent Japanese-Americans in interment camps, for I am American.

Come defile my church, as my people did to black churches in Georgia, for I am American.

Come throw a Molotov cocktail at me for killing innocents children at Kent State, for I am American.

Come throw garbage at me for killing 35,000 women, children and older people in Dresden, for I am American.

Come traumatize my children for acts of terrorism, for I am native born American, just like Timothy McVeigh.

But do not, please do not, hurt Middle-Easterners and Muslims who have committed no crime beyond the one you have:

being born with the same blood as killers.

"In Brisbane, a schoolbus packed with Islamic children was damaged by stones and bottles and there had been abusive calls to mosques, said Queensland Islamic Council chairman Sultan Deen."

"At the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, Tamara Alfson spent Wednesday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students attending schools across the United States. One student was told, ``You should all die,'' Alfson said. "

Matt sent me OTIVO's automated test tools review a few days ago, but what with one thing and another....

an opening thang from gleanings, sept. 13th 2001
Good morning all of you dear readers. This has been a horrific few days. Yesterday I tried to go to work yesterday and realized I couldn't be that far from my husband. I ended up going home so that I could get up from the computer every hour and hug him. I feel deeply for those who have been stranded far from their loved ones, the source of comfort. Lane is one such individual. If anyone can offer Lane a ride back to Austin from San Francisco to be reunited with his love Courtney, let me know and I'll pass on that info to them.

Philippe and I turned off all the media for a couple of hours yesterday at midday to cook and consume a big lunch. I think a lesson for me is that we must take the time to value our ordinary life activities. The TV only circles around, rarely offering new news and mostly offering scenes to terrible for us to comprehend, repeated endlessly. I was treated to watching the plane slice through the WTC tower like a knife through butter forwards, backwards and in slow-mo as Peter Jennings tried to think of something to say "The same technology that allows us to watch sports plays in a multiple ways allows us to... see...this..."

When the media went off, and the only sounds in the house was the wind at the windows and the frying pan sizzling, I felt a bit more human, a bit more able to process this impossible event. Take a walk, cook an egg, ride a bike, see a movie-- give yourself permission to rest.

Please consider giving blood, but wait a couple more days. The blood banks are flooded with people caught up in emotion and willing to give. But I fear in a few days we'll be back to our shortages. Write yourself a note on your calendar, or put it in your pilot-- unless you have O-, wait a bit, but do give.

Amazon is showing real class but setting up a place to donate money to the Red Cross. One click makes it very easy to help out.

A surprise class-act comes from X10, the inventers/utilizers of the pop-under, who have replaced those with direction on how to help in this time of disaster

All the newsletters I receive, and all the mailing lists have changed in the last few days. I'm on lists for writers, usability specialists, web developers, IA's and suddenly they all look the same. Stories form New Yorkers expressing relief for their lives and anguish for those who weren't lucky. Prayers and love sent to all. Whispers of fear for the future.

Robert Scoble said it best, I think "Today, we're human again."

Anyhow, I wanted to reach out to you all. I've written a ton on the blog, and there are even links to ordinary web stuff there.

and if anyone has heard from Andi Lewis, please tell me. I'm sure she's fine, but I'd like to know for certain.

After donating to the Red Cross through Amazon, I noticed this in the corner of the confirmaiton page. My reaction was "No duh." But then it reminded me of one of the cardinal rules of page design-- never assume that the customer knows what you do. I don't know how many home pages I've visited where I'm looking around trying to figure out if I'm at a useful place. New people visit your site everyday. And much as it may bore you to say "Gromits Inc, We sell grommits online" on the homepage month after month, it may just the thing to turn a visitor into a buyer.

Another best practice from Amazon.

InContext Enterprises - Contextual Design: How We Design is an excellent well illustrated explantion of the contextual design process and how it applies to IA.

Cam posted his talk "A Guide to Open Source Technologies for Project Mangers " which is a nice --if a bit biased-- introduction to open source technology.

from the wonderful Web Page Design for Designers - Symbolism

"One of the most important aspects of navigation, and interface design generally, lies in an understanding of graphic symbolism.

If you have had a good art college training, you will probably have been introduced to the theoretical concepts behind symbols and logotype design.

Capturing the literal or abstract essence of a company identity and making a visual representation of it in the form of a symbol or trade mark is something a graphic designer has to do all the time.

Designing icons and navigational devices for computer programs requires exactly the same skills and, for those readers who have not had the advantage of such a background, I will give a brief introduction."

Italics mine. I had not made this connection before, but it rings very true and provides a clue to why so many icons fail....

Stages in the Design Process is not a bad outline of approaching a technology problem. However it would have been nice if they included why each stage was necessary and what advantage it gave.

Just found the Design for ... Home Page while researching a project.

"To gain the competitive advantage we must

Design for Value (choice).

From the perspective that each person must design so that those to follow in the process can do their best, we must also:

Design for Conceptualizability

Design for Evaluability

Design for Marketability

Design for Designability

Design for Prototypeability

Design for Testability

Design for Producibility

Design for Deployability

Design for Operability

Design for Supportability

Design for Evolvability

Design for Retireability

Design for Manageability "

Salon.com explains Why did the buildings collapse?

"According to Gregory Fenves, a professor of Civil Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, the planes weakened the buildings' structures at key points. Fenves, working on information gleaned from preliminary TV reports, stressed that he was speculating. He said that if the planes had hit the structures higher, they could have merely damaged their tops; if they had hit lower, they would have been up against the enormous weight and resistance of the base of the buildings. "

Yahoo! News - Top Stories Photos

I'm done. i'm tired, and I don't really know what to think much anymore. I know I have no way to process something like this. I hoped my blogging might clear my head, but it's about the same. Maybe I'll sit in the backyard and feel the sun, maybe I'll watch a movie, maybe I'll read a book or try to concentrate on the work I need to be doing but can't seem to ramp up to. Or maybe I'll crawl onto philippe's lap one more time.

Charles says

"This is the start of a new era in civilization. God (if you exist) help us.

The coordination and scale of this attack is unbelievable. It's important for us to realize that the creatures who do this evil will never stop. Their intent is to bring the entire world into a religiously dominated Dark Age.

I'm very afraid of what happens next."

what's in rebecca's pocket?

"Who did this? To what end? I can anticipate the draconian measures our government will now take in the name of safety and democracy; and this terrorism will rally the country around the most extreme measures. And the people in those planes and in those buildings, the firefighters.... I'm heartsick in so many ways...."

kottke says

"i'm so scared right now. I don't want to hear any reports of Americans grabbing the nearest Arab and beating the crap out of him or her. Don't do it. Please."

Please check in here.

In musings

"the thought of the people in the plane seeing this building coming toward them as their flight gets rammed into it, the thought of office workers just like me going into the Pentagon as if nothing unusual might happen only to have the floor buckle under them then the roof collapse on them, the thought of terrified workers running down stairs to get out of a burning building only to find it crumble around them...my stomach churns and my throat chokes up."

anil dash says "I've been sitting here this whole morning, choking back tears... this is just too much, too big. I can see the smoke and ash from the street here."

Last night I was puking-- mild food poisoning, flu, something I don't know. I had decided to stay home the next day, and I got up this morning just to drive my husband to caltrain. We aren't much for tv or even the radio, but the traffic was a bit congested on the way to the station to I turned on kqed.

This is how I found out. Taking the third street exit onto bayshore to the caltrain station, learning the pentagon had a "notch" in it, and smoke and something about the world trade centers... a bomb? what had happened? planes? An accident like that?

Philippe and I sat listening at the station in horror as we learned about the two planes that crashed into the world trade center, how they collapsed, how the pentagon also suffered from a plane crash-attack. Philippe turned to me and said, "Let's go home."

We've spent the last few hours on the couch, trying to call Andi, receiving calls from friends and family. Nobody has much to say. These are phone calls that you make just to say, "Are you still there? is this happening? Do you feel it too?" We sent out emails well, little pings to other friends and coworkers, and discovered Gabe is staying home, wondering about a friend in Manhattan, and Noel is also gone home to hunker down with his loved one, and Carbon IQ is empty today. As you can see, I've been surfing the blogs looking for reassurance.

Philippe called his mother to let her know he's okay (mothers worry, no matter what coast you are on), and found out there was an earthquake in Holland. Sometimes it seems the world is going insane.

I think they said forty-thousand people were in the world trade center. Mayor Giuliani said he saw people jumping out of the top floor windows. I could imagine those people choosing their death-- they could not live, so all they could do was choose their death. I cried for about the fourth time this morning.

I guess this is one of those events... people will ask you where you were when you found out. I'll see the third street exit, when they ask me about the beginning of world war three, or about the event that ended civil liberty in America, or the event that caused us to bomb Libya/Iraq/Iran, or led to the relocation of Palestine... or maybe it will be merely the worst tragedy in my lifetime. I hope that this is all I remember when I take that exit again, that this was an isolated incident, that this will be the worst tragedy in my lifetime and none will ever overshadow it.

I'm going back to sit with my husband now. I wish I could stop watching, but I can't. The only thing scarier than what has happened is what will happen next.

Noise between stations interrupts your regularly schedualed blog to give info on how to help in New York. As the new stations all seem to be slowly but steadily whispering the word "war" more often, I'm heartened by his quote

'An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind'

- Mahatma Gandhi

but doubtful it will make much difference.

from CamWorld

"9:50 AM: I was supposed to be in Manhattan this morning for a doctor's appointment at 9:30 AM, but skipped it. I have no answer to why I skipped it (a feeling?). I've never been so glad I listened to my intuition."

Rob's pictures of NYC

andi moved to new york last month, and the phonelines are jammed, so I don't know. She's probably fine, but I'm scared.

I found Designing for the elderly a thought-provoking article. Rather than tossing it aside-- oh, that isn't our audience-- you might ask yourself if some of the changes you make to your site might help other user bases beyond the elderly. The rolling suitcases you see in every airpost pulled along by everybody were originally invented to meet the unique needs of flight attendents. Yet they seem to have managed to be useful to everyone. larger fonts, simple designs may also help the impaired and the impatient...

I had a great chat with Mark at Web2001 about using his skinning css work to provide an easy "large-text edition" to websites. very exciting. I think I need to take two days to recode (and apply the redesign) to my site.

oh, p.s. a few horrid pictures from that event I've posted here. Feel the excitment! Panels of speakers! Hugging geeks! Giant numbers!

Site Design as Business Decision looks at the user-centered nature of a nonprofit, and the lessons that can be learned by for-profits. Well written interesting article -- be sure to read to the end.

"The insidious and damaging obstacle to quality Web sites is a lack of respect for users and a presumptiveness with regard to what they want and need. Indeed, the majority of the companies we spoke with either were involved in or had recently completed major redesigns of their sites, yet most had not invested in any type of usability testing before launch. Formal user surveys were not conducted. Even more disturbing, nearly everyone expressed surprise that we would ask such a question."

"It may sound arrogant," says Geric Johnson, vice president of marketing services at shoe manufacturer Skechers, "but we really believe that we are the best judge of what our customers want."

However, there is hope that the economy may be changing people's attitudes:

"Savvy businesses are beginning to take the advice of The Usability Group's Rubin by tying clear and measurable business objectives to site design. Such objectives can be as straightforward as deciding that customer service calls should decrease by 20 percent or that sales leads generated by the site need to increase by 20 percent."

I don't know how many times I've seen redesigns that have made a site worse. Sometimes they are better looking sometimes they are not but too often they are way harder to use. Conversely "evolutionary" site redesigns where the site slowly changes to meet new needs and features tend to be much more effective (though not always 100%... remember Amazon's "tab cancer" before they revamped the tab scheme?)

Thorough and thoughtful requirements gathering is a way to protect a redesign's success.

I had fun at Web '01 last week, and I promise insights or at least photos this week. But for now-- one of the discussions that sprang up several times was generalists vs. specialists. There is a great article on the benefits of geeneralists in WebTchniques. Check it out.

Heather's photos from the show are here

Vanderwal is running a travel blog on his observations

I'm extremely bummed I missed Stewart Brand, but you can check out a highlight of his thoughts here.

Evaluation Methods in Usability Testing

Or, how to tell that you have a usability problem before it gets to the field.

Interesting article on user experience from Vertebrae, who has quite a few interesting articles

A gay character in the comic "For Better and Worse" caused some hubbub, so the creator has been providing alternative text for those of delicate sensibilities (nobody say Iowa!)

examp 1

examp 2

Making use of user research

"Take the time to choose and plan user-testing techniques. Match the appropriate technique to your development cycle and needs -- your product will benefit, and you'll avoid wasting time and resources. Simply putting a product "to the test" in a lab to see whether it passes or fails may provide a lot of data, but not necessarily a lot of value. " Click through for a great looking diagram....

here you go jesse, more puppy pictures.

Guerrilla usability mary Deaton tells it like it is:

"Before we look at when and how to test, let's list some guiding principals:

• Test early and test often.

• Test the right people--only those who fit your user profile. If you do not have a user profile, create one.

• Avoid biasing the results in any way. The purpose of the test is not to win an argument but to find out how people actually use a Web site.

• Test only the things that are not strong conventions or standards. Don't waste your time or the company's money on problems that other people have solved."

"The Golden Gate Tunnel is the first tunnel in the world to provide a true transportainment experience."

Thinking a lot lately about the creative process and problem-solving mindsets. It occurred to me yesterday while contemplating my toes that we IA's are a terribly rational lot, and often forget to trust our instincts. Graphic designers often work from the gut first, then explore or "reverse engineer" a rational later. IA's study all the available data, digging for more and more until we are quite saturated it, then every aspect of our design is carefully calculated based on our information and analysis of it. I think that ability to justify sometimes makes a little-- unsure? fearful? unwilling to leap after a gut feeling. I think we need to trust those instincts; our unconscious mind is a powerful processor and those strange moments of "a ha!" are often simply our gut processing the data faster than our conscious brain.

Three a ha's I trust.

1. Dumb Questions. Often at the beginning of a project I'll get a completely wild idea, something that just can't be feasible. I am then faced with the prospect of asking a dumb question "what if," "is there..." or "why not...?" I usually know I'm about to be slapped down. But out of the answer I often get a hint of the solution. Brainstorming can be done out of a brainstorming session; we should always trust ridiculous flights of fancy-- how else are we ever going to do impossible things?

2. Inexplicable lines. Sometimes in my schematics I have an urge to put down a line, or sometimes a box. I don't know why. I always do. Then, later before presenting I go through and justify them all-- if the weird appearing line has no purpose I remove it. Schematics are not design, after all. But often it is standing for something... perhaps I'll make a note to the designer: be sure to create a visual divider here" or sometimes my unconscious brain is coaxing me to add a search box just where I might want to use it. By allowing those early schematics to be loose and sketchlike, I allow myself to play and thus gain a better understanding of the problem and its potential solutions.

3. The single user test. I suppose I could call this the "Doh!" moment as easily as an "A Ha" moment.... Sometimes during usability tests I see a user having a problem and I'll instinctively know that this problem will be had by a large section of the populace. As semi-scientific types, of course, we don't like to get data from just one user. But after seeing hundreds of users interact with websites, I'm pretty good at separating the idiosyncrasies of one person versus the archetypical behavior of a user. If I will listen to my gut when it says "Doh! Why didn't I see that before?" A good example would be a single fifty-five-year-old not reading one-point-font instructions modifying a form field. My gut will say "Doh! Of course people won't see that! It looks like legal text!" Later my rational brain will come in and point out that over 50's often have failing eyesight, and instructional text probably should be more easily readable.

Our gut is a fine tool in the IA toolbox, and illumination is sufficiently precious we shouldn't throw it away. Follow your gut, use your brain to sort it out after. But do trust that strange gut feeling, the uneasiness about a project, the weird idea for a solution, that oddball dream about the product... all those signals that your unconscious is about to deliver up a true "A HA!" moment.

Ben Henick, driven into a frenzy by the shoddy whitheouse.gov, catalogs its failings with virulent accurancy.

ALL LOOK SAME is an amazing site where you are asked to guess is an individual is chinese, japanese or korean simply from a head shot. While this is a great site from the point of view of art (forcing one to look at one's preconcieved notions of race) it also could be a powerful data collector for understanding race&place-based views toward asians. It leads me to wonder what how academic research could be made more engaging... and what would be the repercusions?

I always thougth Route by George Oppen was the ultimate IA poem, but Edward Houseman's writte a little gem.

The Nature of Information

Can Navigational Assistance Improve Search Experience?

"From the September issue of First Monday. Compares the search experience of three different interfaces, including one they've designed that looks fairly similar to the one at MSDN. They found out (big suprise) that theirs works best. Might be an example of where using frames is actually a good idea."

via brightly colored chad

don't forget-- tonight!

the jeff and drue show

Why Technology Companies Need Branding

"Slow to catch on to the benefits of branding have been those companies that are steeped in technology. Even if they have been producing goods for public as opposed to business consumption, they have showed some reticence in embarking on brand investment. Where it is commonplace to spend large amounts of money on plant and capital equipment in technology-based industries, investing in brands has been relatively ignored. As a result, there are few powerful technology brands, and yet they would seem to be in desperate need of branding as a major tool in order to differentiate themselves from all their competitors."

webword points me at another useful tool for our toolbox, the Fly on the Wall observation method.

Websense: Personal Web use costing businesses

"Personal use of the Internet by workers in the office is costing UK businesses billions of pounds every year, according to Websense.

Reuters:Consumers not paying for online music

"A new report from GartnerG2 says that most consumers are not yet ready to purchase and download music from the Internet."

Another fine source for gleaning: write the web

some of their headlines:

A new direction for weblogs: pornography

Watch those radical librarians

Making micropayments micro enough

we are robots

(via littlegreenfootballs.com)

we got some kottke brand love, and I'm all warm and tingly...

"Last Friday, the folks at Carbon IQ had a brown bag lunch discussion about their AtomFilms/Shockwave.com project. An hour and a half, eat some lunch, learn a bit, get some discussion going, meet some smart folks (although I skipped that part because I had to leave at the conclusion due to some pressing afternoon errands), &c. I'd like to see more companies doing this sort of thing, getting people together, sharing their knowledge and experience freely. Nice going."

and I'd like to see more companies doing it. or more people. if you want to speak at the next brownbag, drop a line...

Ben Henick, driven into a frenzy by the shoddy whitheouse.gov, catalogs its failings with virulent accurancy.