I’m kind of conflicted about Open Source, but at least for fonts The League Of Movable Type has a cool website. Maybe for true typography on the web, they can advance the cause.
Their manifesto:
We are Caroline and Micah, the founders of The League. As designers on the web, we have a calling to raise the standards of the web-design world. We’re not the only ones who value good design, and it’s time for the web world to catch up with it. We understand the challenges that comes with the internet, but with our recent discovery of @font-face, we started getting excited. For those who aren’t up to speed, @font-face is a fairly new addition to web styling, letting a designer specify the location of their own font files. Instead of having to design with just a handful of web-friendly fonts, we’ll be able to use any typeface we desire. Well, that’s our vision, anyway.
Helvetica: “Arial, I haven’t seen you since you cloned me and stole my identity!” Classic.
This came across, and I just had to laugh. Joz is a friend of mine, and is an Information Architect based out of Los Angeles. She bought this camera for her mom, and there’s something humorous and offensive at the same time about this. I mean, geez, I squint when I have a camera pointed at me!
It’s great they’re putting predictive technology to help usability, but there are unintended consequences. I still can’t use voice recognition myself because a) I have a deep voice that sometimes disappears, and b) I have a slight lisp from a speech impediment. What’s ironic is the camera is made by an Asian company (Nikon), and you get the picture.
Sort of.
Welcome to a podcast with Paul Hodgetts, an Agile coach based out of Orange County, California. His site is Agile Logic. Today, we talk about how Paul fit the User Experience process of a large corporation in an Agile culture.
[podcast]/_podcast/usabilitycounts.com-008.mp3[/podcast]
I’m working on a few projects with different developers, and whenever a new feature or item has to be added to the feature set, there’s always the, “well, we should be doing it this way because I think this site is cool.” That’s wonderful, because it exposes some great work that’s going on out there, but…
…after one of those sessions, I had dinner with friends, and they started talking about was an online shopping experience. The exact feature set the developer wanted to add, my friends basically said it over complicated the process, and made it hard to complete the purchase (I’m going to hide the name to protect the innocent, but it spelled close to Mike, and they sell, uh, shoes).
Note that my friends use technology all the time, but aren’t experts. They are, however, are consumers and are am important part of the new economy. They are typical users that make user experience experts a need. The one site example is cited a lot (well, Amazon does it), but in very few instances does one site make a competitive analysis across sites in the target audience.
So what do users really want?
User experience and development professionals aren’t the ones that should be suggesting all the bells and whistles, so here’s a list I’ve compiled in my head of what I thought users wanted.
So many websites try to be clever and cute with the tagline, mission statement and other information that they are never clear why the website is up. The best approach is to have a name that is clear and concise, or to create your own brand (Amazon, Google) so you’re name can show up in a dictionary.
For the rest of us struggling to find a website URL that fits our business model, the other approach is to make it clear on the home page what the website is about. Put plenty of hints (like better copy that the outsource website designer can write) so your users have no question about your service or site goals.
Is it an ecommerce site?
Do you provide services?
Are you trying to get people to sign up for something, so you can contact them?
Then state it! Make no bones about what the site is about.
Once the user gets to the site and reads the message, they’ll get a better idea if the site or service is for them. Do you patronize a doctor when you have an eye problem? No. So those customers lost are a good thing, because that means that your resources won’t be tied up answering their questions.
How users evaluate a website after making sense of it:
That’s it. If you provide them with enough context to make those two decisions, you’re golden. In the end, users are a pretty simple bunch.
One of the general rules about user interface design is that a consistently bad interface is better than an inconsistently good interface, because at least users know what to expect. That’s the theory of user interface patterns: use generally accepted methods of navigation (except when you know when to break them), and users will implicly recognize what you’re doing without knowing the science behind it.
That said, users don’t care about user interface patterns. They aren’t going to scream about your use of radio buttons versus tabs, they’re aren’t going to leave the site because you used a checkbox wrong. They will leave the site if the navigation moves around and appears in different places on the page, or get frustrated because they can’t find something.
The 2 or so million Facebook users that complained about the new user interface were a vocal bunch, but they probably aren’t the most important group. When most people are unhappy about a service, they don’t join groups and send messages like that, because most people have don’t have that much free time. Sometimes the squeaky wheel is the wrong wheel.
They do the obvious thing — they leave the site. (Note MySpace’s leveling off of traffic — that’s the best example I’ve seen in a long time of a site not working for its users).
Happy users return. Sad users leave. Get it?
That e-commerce website I was talking about used a heavy amount of Javascript, Flash and other Web 2.0 technologies that translate into a richer experience. However, even on my megafast download of a pipe (I think I’m geting 20 down on a regular, sustained basis), the site is slow. Very slow.
Slow translates into lost sales.
Shiny is great, especially if it’s in context — YouTube and some of the music sites are great examples — but they are also barriers for users. They might not have the right plug in installed. They might be on a slow connection. They might have a computer that belongs in the Smithsonian Institution. More often than not, there’s a reason not to use heavy Javascript, Flash and SilverLight than to use it. The shiny is cool, but only when it makes sense.
One of the general rules about website usability tests is that you almost never listen to what users say, it’s always what they do. That said, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been through a test where the user absolutely felt stupid using the service or product, mainly because the site wasn’t intuitive enough
Help text generally doesn’t work. Big long Flash introductions don’t work. Dancing flash people don’t work.
What does work are sites are are intuitive enough and forward thinking enough to provide a path for the user to go. The elements of user experience should be defined enough so the site acts the way the user thinks it should act i.e. the user shouldn’t have to learn it, especially for consumer facing sites. It’s about predictive user experience.
I’m honestly sick of wireframes (No offense, Omnigraffle and Visio, but Web 2.0 doesn’t work with with wireframes), so I’ve been looking for other avenues to get my ideas across. Some I’m working with are using HTML Mockups, but the next smaller client I get, I’m thinking of using FlairBuilder, a nifty new prototyping tool by Cristian Pascu.
It’s always wonderful when you can call out the author by name.
The price point is good ($99 for the first release, $199 later on), it has a free viewer, it’s cross platform (Adobe Air), and it’s really easy to use. I’d like to see a 5 pixel grid for it, but beggars can’t be choosers. Expect a longer review sooner than later.
It’s been a while (sorry, it’s been a busy month).
Here’s an article that I spotted over at Freelance Switch about landing more gigs. The concise list is:
I can personally vouch for 4 — I had a chance at an interview for a good agency, and the indication I got was I hadn’t included a formal cover letter (a previous email to them had come up with blank content, and I didn’t resend with that note). In times of more applicants with greater experience, clients and companies look for reasons not to look at candidates who aren’t the best fits, and good communication skills are required of any employee or contractor.
You've seen ads like it before. There's an attention-grabbing headline, beautifully designed graphics, and well-written text that clearly communicates the benefits of the product or service offered. All that's missing is a suggestion as to what you should do next. They forgot to ask for the sale!
A call to action is a phrase or paragraph that asks for the sale or requests that the reader do something. It's the part of the marketing piece that tells the reader what to do next – call now to place an order, click here to get a free report, email for more information, enter a survey to win a prize, subscribe to an online newsletter, etc.
Never assume that your potential customers will know why they should act, what they should do, or when they should do it!
Each of your marketing pieces should include a call to action (which may be mentioned multiple times, not just at the end) that ties in with the piece's overall goals. If your goal is to sell, don't ask readers to call for more information – ask them to purchase your product today. And always keep your instructions simple and clear to make it easy for the reader to respond. Should they call, fax, or email? Do they need to click through to something, fill out a short form, or take some other action? What exactly should the reader do?
Of course, it's not enough to tell the reader what they should do – you also need to tell them why they should do it, and why they should do it now. But the bottom line is, if you're not asking for the sale, don't expect to get it!
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
