Attack of the killer conventions is just a breif muse on the emerging standards in webdesign, and the pattern movement. nothing revolutionary, but nicely said.
Reading Joel on Software - Rub a dub dub, it suddenly occured to me that this is also an excellent approach to curing a site.
Don't redesign the whole thing, throwing out all that's working!
What if instead you slowly gently fixed all the little bugs, one at a time. One week check and fix all the error messages, and rewrite them into human language. The next week gently redo the labels, making sure they make sense, addign sublabels as necessary. The next week add alt tags to everything that doesn't have it. And so on, until the site is more acessible and more usable.
My redesign has been haunting me-- I haven't gotten to finish it, I am disappointed with how some aspects work. But I've been feeling so overwhelmed. Now I wonder if I should just slowly polish it, rather then tear my hair out trying to figure out how to redo it again....
Structured Writing - An Outline is a lovely article on one of the most undervalued arts: writing.
I was particularly cheered to read "While spelling and grammar are grossly overrated as an indicator of personal worth or general intelligence, they are important when writing to teach or convey other important information. "
whew! So Im knot a lewser after all!
Telling the Truth is an article about the lies sites tell their users. It doesn't really matter if these are really technical glitches, or confusion in communication or editorial mistakes-- to the end user they are lies, and one never trusts a proven liar....
"Why Your eMail Newsletter Annoys Your Readers"
There is No Such Thing as Information Design by Jef Raskin
"As a curmudgeon, I am delighted to point out that the popular term, Information Design, is a misnomer. Information cannot be designed; what can be designed are the modes of transfer and the representations of information. This is inherent in the nature of information, and it is important for designers to keep the concepts of information and meaning distinct. "
and yet
"This is where we-graphic designers, computer-interface specialists, artists, musicians, sound technologists, lighting directors, cognitive psychologists, type designers, ergonomicists, and even mathematicians and physicists-come in. It is our job as designers to create effective representations of information for human consumption. "
An interesting article, but this seems more semantics than revolution to me...
Moving WebWord > Information Architecture for the Rest of Us is a nice article on wayfinding, but not on IA....
This isn't on the site yet (not that I can find) and it looks quite valuable so I'll broadcast here. I saw Jared at Macromedia world and was very impressed with his new findings. He's always an entertaining speaker, and it was pretty cool to get some insight on UIE's discoveries.
"BayCHI-East talk
Title: Designing for Revenue: Using Research to Fulfill Business Goals
Speaker: Jared Spool
Date & Time: Tuesday February 5th, 7.00 p.m.
Location: Sibley Auditorium, 230 Bechtel Engineering Center
University of California, Berkeley
Talk Abstract:
Web site designers tell us that they have thousands of ideas on how to
improve their web site. But how do these designers determine which
improvements will actually help the business achieve it's goals? New
research from User Interface Engineering shows that careful measurement and
observation can demonstrate exactly how this happens. In this presentation,
Jared will show you how an e-commerce site can change its design to
generate more impulse purchases. He'll demonstrate how designers can change
the way categories are displayed to dramatically increase the site's
revenues. Jared will also discuss how other types of sites can use these
same principles to better achieve their goals."
I admit it: I read the entire Sunday comics section. The ones that make me laugh (rhymes with orange), the ones that don't (the rest)-- I even do the kiddie puzzles. Don't ask me why, I'm not sure.
So I did see Sunday's Cathy Strip . And as soon as I saw it I knew: opportunity is everywhere. Please go read it, and come back. I'll wait here. It'll just take you a sec.
Each and every frame is an opportunity. Each frame of that comic is a place where a product has failed, and a competitor can sneak in. Each problem is a chance to steal market share. Each problem is a opportunity to innovate...
Usability News - UML is not ready for users, finds seminar
"The Usability and UML seminar in Scotland this month concluded that basic UML (User Modelling Language) is seriously restricted, and restricting, in modelling complex, collaborative human activities involving computer-based systems."
Finally 1.0 of Denim, the website sketching tool is available. Lots of sweet features, including a zoom tool to go from sitemap to wireframe.
Download it at Group for User Interface Research - Projects - DENIM and SILK - Download
Jesse takes on the big question: who are we as IA's. Are we the role, or the job? Are we our specialty, or all the fine stuff that goes into getting the job done.
Jesse and I have argued a lot on this topic-- he has always in the past championed the difference between information architecture (organization of information for retrieval) from information architects (who do that + interaction design, information design, and maybe some project management, code, business analysis and so on). I've always held that information architecture is architecture in the information space, and must embrace content architecture (a.k.a. little or narrow IA), interaction design and information/interface design, and the architects are those who practice and excel in those arts.
We do always agree that something must be done about the state of the web-- a lack of thoughtful premeditated architecture results in sites that are difficult to navigate, difficult to use, unprofitable, unrealized and generally stinky.
I look forward to part two....
note: link repaired
One of several gems from Dennis Boyle , senior designer at Ideo.
Boyle says speech recognition won't become ubiquitous: "It's possible, but it may not be socially acceptable or private enough. If you're in a meeting, for instance, you might not be able to say what you want freely. On a plane, your neighbor won't want you to be talking to your computer."
Can is not should... an often forgotten maxim.
Can Jobs "Think Outside the Pretty Box"? In which Raskin talks about how the new mac really is just another pretty face. When will the thinking differently commence?
Want to know one why I'm so busy? Workshop pics
Google is not an anomaly:
A blueprint for inventing and building innovative and successful user-centric products is a great talk I caught at Stanford a few weeks back, and forgot to post... the whole talk is online. Great stuff.
Michael B. Moore writes "A thin but very good primer on what makes good interfaces work. Even though they come from the Sun/X/Motif world their advice is platform neutral."
My two cents?
I have found too few good books on Interface Design that neatly combine theory and practice into a seemless learning and reference tool. Designing Visual Interfaces is special. It is often on my desk, the spine hopelessly cracked as it's been forced open to one page or another, post-its peering out along the edges. It belongs in the canon.
Sorry if the blog will be quiet for a few days, but I'm spent the weekend moving to palo alto, and I'm not done yet....
Finally, someone steps up to debunk The Myth of "Seven, Plus or Minus 2".
If there is one rule that has been consistently misunderstood and misapplied.....
A Day Late
is a magical site. It reminds me of the advent calenders my sister and I had growing up. Unlike the crappy cardboard ones you see in stores today, it was sewn of cloth, and each day we'd unbuton or unzip a actual pocket to get a tiny present... a hello kitty tape dispensor, or a plastic giraffe.
small joy on a daily basis is a precious thing.
Oh those delightful and decadent Swiss. Swiss Graphic Design is eye-candy on a high level. You become better at design just flipping through the pages, and I doubt you will flip through more than ten before you drop the book to pick up a pencil.
I bought this book at an amazingly large used bookstore down in Palo Alto called "Book Buyers" (next to Printer's Ink), and got to read it over my flight to and from Portland.
Design by People for People is a terrific little book full of useful gems for people faced with the questions that arise from regular usability testing: how many participants, when to intervene in a usability test, effective think-aloud methods. However this book is written in such a straightforward and engaging manner, it's far less painful than digging through academic screeds.
It also looks at consulting issues (not to be missed -- Rubin's essay on Authentic Consulting) and even experience design.
It's not a book for you if you have never done usability testing before.. Rubin’s Handbook is better for that. But if you want to refine your skills, definitely check it out.
An interview with Kent Beck, father of "extreme programming" and Alan Cooper, most vocal proponent of interaction design go at it in Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design.
Thanks, martha!
Samantha points out Tour The Wall Street Journal Online where they list they ways their redesign has improved the site. The first point of bragging: "Better Organized"
i.e. new and improved IA.
"Web users don't always have the same needs. So we've reorganized our navigation in a way that works better online. We've moved some sections and pages, and given some of them new names that more directly describe the subjects they cover. "
Rebecca sent an email to a list we're on revealing "the most evil spam I've ever received" it's out and out fraud, andI post it to warn others. (with her blessing, of course)
Dear eBay Customer, Your order has been completed and will be mailed within 24-48 hours.Your credit card has been charged $460.50 for the following
purchase...- Microsoft X Box ( $399.00 )
- NFL Fever ( $50.00 )Plus shipping and handling. If you feel that your credit card has been
billed wrongly, please visit http://cancelorder.n2v.net and fill out
all the needed information to cancel the following order.Again that site is <a href="Http://cancelorder.n2v.net"> eBay Services: Cancel Order
Thank you,
eBay Services.
Don't click.
Someone was kind enough to scan a 1971 Sears Catalog. Now that's fashion!
If you ever thought the project manager was just the guy who kept coming up to you to say "Are ya done yet", read Role of project management in design . Good stuff. and reminds us that usability and IA is often practiced by non-specialists, and that is not neccessarily a bad thing. Quite the opposite.... as long as *somebody* is doing it products will keep getting better.
lately i've noticed a trend-- many of my "innie" friends are adding usability testing to their job descriptions, and calling me up for tips. "Usability - Out-sourced or In-house?" is a pretty good article on the pluses and perils of this, though I smell a wiff of fear for their jobs in the essay...
Last night while my friend Tracy and I were walking to the local brewery, she asked me what I thought the difference between intuition and instinct was. I blurted out a half-baked idea, we went back and forth and came up with:
Instinctive: built into the body, from our animal brain
Intuitive: understood by the brain's subconscious, informed by past experience.
They look the same when you see them in play: a sudden and swift apparently thought-free action. Yet intuitive action is not thought free, it is based on experience.
I bring this up because "Intuitive" is a an objective of many pieces of software and websites. And it's important to realize the best way to achieve intuitable interfaces is to pull from design principles and previous design standards. Because these are what your users have in their experience.
Something I've done in the past is replacing a competitive review with a best-practices review, in which one looks at other bits of software/websites the projected userbase is familiar with to harvest patterns and best solutions.
So let's say I was designing a bookstore for accountants. I might look at Amazon, but I might also look at excel and quicken.
And because the universe is every obliging, I found this article, INTUITIVE EQUALS FAMILIAR, in my inbox this a.m. from a list I'm on.
So this brings me to another cool thing we talked about-- the unlearnable interface. Have you ever used a program where you kept making the same damn mistake over and over again? Take a closer look. You'll probably discover that the designer of the program has gone contrary to principles or standards...
So I started a conversation with the clever and oh-so helpful Mike Steckel from International SEMATECH about thesauri and their kinfolk. It seems he learned a ton from the argus seminar, and was kind enough to share some of that learning with me.
It proved to be trendously helpful. You wouldn't not believe how little about organization tools is in english for ordinary people. Kudos to Mike and the former argonauts!
I reproduce it below in hopes it helps some other poor lost fool
MORE...it doesn't have to look the samepromotes simpler design to compensate for more complex platforms.
For people who supposedly "passionate about language", Ask Oxford sure did a poor job of labeling their sections. I came here having been promised a thesaurus by yahoo. Where am I supposed to click?
The rest of the page gives no better hint
askoxford.com screenshot
I suppose I'm lucky, getting such a fine example of the perils of not using subtitles on the same day I blog about them....
hell is recognizable by its bad signage.
scottmccloud.com - The Morning Improv #7
Doing a whole bunch o' reasearch on the librarian's art for le book, and was recommended WWW -- Wealth, Weariness or Waste
"This article offers some thoughts on the problems of access to information in a machine-sensible environment, and the potential of modern library techniques to help in solving them. It explains how authors and publishers can make information more accessible by providing indexing information that uses controlled vocabulary, terms from a thesaurus, or other linguistic assistance to searchers and readers."
I want more!
I want to better understand how all these organizational systems work, what their relationship to each other is, how they can can be combined to build dynamic architectures.
c'mon, marion, educate me!
I was reminded of this book the other day at lunch, when a peer spoke of ways to manipulate charts to make a point. It's a playful book, full of cartoons and wink-wink you-would-never-do-this moments teaching you how to lie or spot lies built of data.
I'm speaking here CHIFOO and I promise a good show. George and I have sworn a battle royal! even if we agree, we swear to disagree! If you are a Portlandian, and have some time the next day for coffee or lunch, I'd like to arrange some get together. i fly out around 3.
Also showing... User-Centered Design Strategies here in lovely SF.
January is yack month, when you add in Carbon IQ's discount usability workshops... perhaps 2002 wil be the year of the yac?
A short piece on Describing links more clearly describes a phenomena we've seen at IQHQ several times in testing: links with modifiers are far more effective than stand-alone.
Despite Janice's apparent inability to count, Groundwork for Project Success is a terrific article. Damn, that girl writes real good.
"Why Projects Go Awry
If you've been working on the Web for any length of time, you've either experienced or witnessed some real train wrecks. Here are the top ten ways that projects fail:
any proposals for number ten?
I have insomnia, and am reading the latest alertbox Site Map Usability. You read it too, and let me know what you think.
My reaction was basically that he has got the core issue wrong: yes a site map might be useful, but does it have to be in the traditional form of a dedicated page that lists every single page in the site? and how well does the user have to be able to picture the IA to use the site?
What is the nature of a site map? A display of the contents of the site, displaying breadth and range. I remember Peter telling me that the only reason epinions had a yahoo-style directory on the front page was to demonstrate the range of content they had. it wasn't a particularly useful navigation scheme otherwise.
So maybe we just need to rethink our concept of a site map... maybe it's like xplane's global bottom-of-the-page map. or maybe it's simply an index page, or a yahoo-directory.
When we make maps, we don't always map every stone in the path-- why should a site map be different? Perhaps a useful map that is accessible and grokable by users is more like the wall maps of the world on my homeroom walls as I grew up in Iowa-- not one showed my home town.
(Actually I was happy if they showed Iowa. You are somewhere!)
He does say a site map should be two-and-a-half screen, but gives no advice on how to accomplish it. Perhaps suggesting something like "only two levels of hierarchy" might stop some clever folks from using 6 point type to keep their site within jakobian limits.
So what is the appropriate level of detail. That should be decided site-by-site basis, in a collaborative effort between designer and human-factors specialist.
All in all, the man is quotable: "If you wait long enough, you might become King of Sweden, but we can't wait for Microsoft as our only hope for improved website navigation."
Okay, off to bed.
I'm thinking about the nature of standards a lot lately. So this is a full-on blather about them...
A couple weeks back, my biz partner, Gabe, was sitting at his desk, surrounded by books: Microsoft Windows User Experience , a similar guide to OS X (which I can't seem to locate on Amazon), the sun interface standards one, and Elements of Style.
Gabe said "They are all essentially the same book--- they all explain the standards, and how to adhere to them to be more effective."
Today, browsing Digital Web Archives, I came across The Destination Matters More Than the Journey, in which Dean Allen points out that Elements of Style -- not just Elements of Typographic Style -- is very useful to typographers. Which caused me to re-open Strunk & White's masterpiece.
The Elements of Style is still the best seven bucks you'll spend if you want to be better at pretty much any creative act. Not just writing (though it is the book to read if you want to be a better writer. And everyone needs to be a better writer.)
The book does more than give rules of proper English; it provides principles of the art/craft of writing. And these principles are so succinct, so well crafted in themselves, so universal that they apply beyond the art/craft of writing to the act of creativity, no matter what the medium.
There is a big difference between a rule -- say, "use blue underlined text for links" -- and a principle -- "group like items together to provide context and relevance." The rules are hard and fast and unquestionable-- you either live with them or break them. Principles are subtle, hard to learn and hard to unlearn. Rules lend an air of efficient professionalism to your work, a veneer of unassailable propriety. Principles improve your work immeasurably, and move the judgment of your work from "correct" or "incorrect" to "true, real, meaningful, dismaying, disturbing" ;i.e. following a principle can take your work away from being judged for its execution and get it judged for its intention.
Part of the power of the Strunk and White book is the relationship of the Strunk to the White. The first half is written by a English teacher, and has succinct excellent clear cut rules for writing proper English. The second half was written by his pupil, E.B. White, a writer of fiction, and pays attention to the more subtle act of creating compelling writing. Thus the first half is strict rules, the second principles.
From the first section "Place a comma before a conjunction introducing an independent clause" which is followed by an explanation and examples.
"Two-part sentences of which the second member is introduced by as (in the sense of 'because') for, or, nor, or while (in the sense of "and at the same time") likewise require a comma before the conjunction."
From the second section "Do not affect a breezy manner" Which is followed by
"The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. 'Spontaneous me.' sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribbers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius."
The division is not always perfectly neat-- Struck gives fine principles such as "Omit needless words" and White lays down the rules-- "Do not dress words up by adding ly to them, as though putting a hat on a horse." But overall it is Strunk's job to make the rules, White's to teach you the principles.
Rereading Strunk & White reminds me that while learning the rules is useful, internalizing the principals is vital. Yesterday Gabe and I were talking again, this time about an interface for a project, a weblication. He was stuck with a problem of displaying hierarchal toolsets. He was digging through the Window's book for a standard to adopt, and was dissatisfied with all the current conventions. The solutions the book presented were ones we'd seen fail in user testing.
I suggested he figure out a way to visually associate each toolset with the item it was modifying. It seemed more sensible to me to simply stick to the more ancient standards of design principles, if recent software standards were lacking. We brainstormed back and forth, and came up with a satisfying design.
So standards, rules, principles... was our solution breaking conventions? true to principals? What are rules, if they don't make for better designs? useful? hindrances? Even as I write this I begin to think about the power of rules, and all the gradations between rule and principle... when is a rule a rule? a principal a principal? How do standards fit in? What about style?
It's a lot for a Sunday...
Half-bakery showcases many half-baked ideas, from half-baked (a panic-PIN -- a secret code you use to alert authorities you are begin forced to withdraw against your will) to nearly raw (an anti-cat -- who eats cat feces and excretes cat food, to live in harmony with a traditional cat)
much big fun.
I discovered it was J. R. R. Tolkien's birthday today.
I read his books in seventh grade. At that time I was living in Iowa, and they seemed a fantastic and impossible alternative to the grey misery I felt. I dreamed of walking in lothlorien, and of living in rivendell. Little did I know that san francisco existed....
I started rereading them recently, prompted by a movie trailer that made me think "This time they might have got it right." Me and thousands of others-- LOTR holds half of amazon's top ten list.
I'm now disturbed by the classism and luddite tendancies of the author's work, but yet... elves. drwarves. darkest evil, and brave painful choices.... It's still a great story. One of the great ones.
Happy birthday, JRR.
Zeitgeist 2001 shows what we searched for, month by month.
Homepage Improvement - wring more results from your website
lists 10 good resolutions for improving your site in the new year. reading through, I was amazed how many classic usability issues there were-- almost all would be revealed in testing. Then I noticed they were gleaned from Jakob's new Homepage Usability book.
Has anyone read it? worth getting?
Design Your Own O'Reilly Book Cover!
Erin's insightful take on the somewhat unfortunate Information Architecture versus Graphic Design is worth looking at, if you missed it-- as I did-- in the holiday shuffle.
Again, designers are mistaken for stylists ( Adam Greenfield's quickly catching on term for style-above-substance designers).
When the us and them is replaced with the us and us, life will be quite better.
How else can you explain alphabet 26?
from Technology Review - A Smarter Web
"The idea is to weave a Web that not only links documents to each other but also recognizes the meaning of the information in those documents%u2014a task that people can ordinarily do quite well but is a tall order for computers, which can't tell if "head" means the leader of an organization or the thing on top of a body."
when I grow up, I want to be a crazed visionary.
more on semantic webs on semanticweb.org
Always late to the party, it seems, I've only now discovered the fascinating site, The End of Free. What we are seeing folks, is a moment in web evolution marked by a site. I'd say this website is much like fuckedcompany.com was, chronicling a radical change in the growth of the web.
Any guesses to what will evolve? micropayments, at last? subscription models, like the gretings card sites? contribution begging, like the blogger server fund? shareware websites?
In other news, no idea why my spellcheck still works. but trying not to ask too many questions....
MSN Astrology Daily Horoscopes offers anti-resolutions. Since this will be gone tomorrow (daily link)
I've copied it over (I assume the lawyers will be knocking on my door shortly, but a day without a cease and desist is like a day without bacon, I always say)