off to gamble–er–study user experience
OPENING THANG
Gleanings will be on hiatus for the rest of the week, as my partners and I are going on a retreat to Vegas. I promise to tell tales of highly designed user experiences when I return! (it’s my first trip. suggestions of must-sees welcome: write vegas@eleganthack.com but do it right now! I leave at noon)
In other news, I’m about ready to just resubscribe y’all to xblog. Lots of good stuff from them lately. And I’ve had many a fun email exchanged with Jeff Lash about their DNS woes, and my inability to get their URL right. Anyhow, if you start to jones for gleanings-style news while I’m away, definitely visit http://www.xplane.com/xblog
And in regards to yesterday’s opening diatribe– I mean, thang– peterme shot me a note asking I look at the first 99% bad post
I also want to point to Don Norman great post on “Nielsen Norman Group’s Compelling Reasons to Use Flash”
don’t blame the tool, baby.
IA MATTERS
hey, a nice little “how to IA”
Implementing Information Across Your Site
http://www.webreview.com/2001/01_19/strategists/index04.shtml
“Having trouble organizing your site information effectively? Well, first you need to know how to match your site’s goals with the user. ”
USABILITY MATTERS
Web Site Identity: The logo tells where you are
–> http://www.humanfactors.com/library/aug99.asp
“What should Web site designers do to help users know when they are still in the same Web site or have moved to a different site after clicking on a link? This question was studied by Omanson, et.al., 1998. Their research attempted to determine which dimensions were most important when establishing a Web site identity. They had observed that many Web users are often unaware when they have moved to a different site.” [To Web
design]
Measuring User Experience
–> http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/ellis/
“We’ve all seen the stats. Almost half of a site’s visitors go elsewhere due to poor navigability, slow download times, or confusing content. If users have problems on your site, they jump to competitors en masse.
Fortunately, there are several useful ways to evaluate user experience.”
from xplane.com/xblog
Internet World: The Seven Sins of Copy Protection Tools.
Jakob Nielsen and Susan Farrell. Anything that makes computers harder to use should be rejected on the drawing board, because if it ever goes to market, it will be rejected by the users, who already have more complexity than they can deal with on their desktops now.
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/01232001d.jsp
from tomalak.org
STORYTELLING MATTERS
The Problem With Presentations
–> http://www.searls.com/present.html
“Nothing is more interesting than a story. In fact, just about everything interesting is a story of some kind. Stories are what make news. They are also what make war, sports, love and money. You have a story to tell. If you don’t tell it, you’ll lose your audience. Fortunately, all stories come with exactly three parts: character, problem and movement toward a resolution. Characters are identities the audience can care about…” also found on xplane.com/xblog
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Atom films is merging with shockwave, and they are selling all their logo gear, film compilations and other stuff cheap.