I just listened to UIE’s most recent usability tools podcast on mouseovers in navigation in which Jared Spool railed against flyouts and reminded us that users prefer link rich home pages.
Read MoreWeb Design
Nielsen Norman Group Report on Accessibility Available for Free
Get your accessibility holiday gift now — Jacob Nielsen’s 148 page PDF report Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities is now being offered for free. [via GUUUI]
How to Objectively Measure Emotional Response to Your Web Site’s Design
UXMatters recently posted an excellent article about using a more structured method for soliciting user feedback than the traditional user interview.
The goal of this technique is to avoid the dangers of bias that can creep into regular interviews and also to help you to ensure you are asking the right types of questions – i.e. ones that are relevant to the interviewee.
Unfortunately, the article is titled “The Repertory Grid: Eliciting User Experience Comparisons in the Customer’s Voice” which doesn’t exactly scream ‘must read.’
Hacking Netflix’s Navigation
I’m a huge Netflix fan. I love their site and have spent many hours rating and finding movies and fiddling with my queue. Read More
Future-Proof Your Web Site Design by Planning Your CSS In Advance
A web site is like a building. Over time it gets lived in. And, regardless of the initial intentions of the designer for how everything within it should be arranged, things get moved around, stuff gets added, some things get taken away, more stuff gets added, the occasional renovation takes place, and yet more stuff gets added. Read More
Book on User-Centered Web Design Available Online for Free
I just discovered that Sarah Horton, one of the writers of the “Web Style Guide”:www.webstyleguide.com/ has published a book on designing usable web sites — Access by Design.
Even better, the “book is available online for free”:universalusability.com/access_by_design/ in the form of a very usable web site.
10 Reasons Why Your Web Site Sucks
E-consultancy has an amusing list/rant of top 10 web site annoyances.
Although many of these items have been brought up before, it’s never a bad thing to be reminded of what not to do.
Designers: Beware the Lure of Stylized Text
I happened to be browsing GE’s web site recently and was very taken with its clean, almost minimalist design. However, I was interested to note that the use of sIFR for their overview pages seemed to have an unintended negative consequence.
Read MoreHeadings and Hierarchy: is More Than One H1 a Crowd?
A recent commenter mentioned that they didn’t ever use more than one H1 tag per page. This is something that I’ve typically done as well, but as I thought about why that was I realized that I didn’t have a good answer.
How to Design an Effective Sales Page
I recently reviewed the link checking tool Inspyder InSite. As I was checking my facts I was struck by how well designed the product page was from the standpoint of effectively selling a product online. Read More