Doing some research on what is hot and what is not, I was inspired to add a new section to the home page for this site: Usability in the News.
The section will have links to two leading stories or articles that are about web usability or design. Content will be semi-periodic, at least once a week.
Doing some testing on a news feed that automatically scrolls, results point to…let it scroll. A large client of mine has a scrolling news feed on their portal, and there were a few that thought the scrolling should just go. Here is what I found.
Watching users use it, there appeared to be no problems at all, as long as the had the option to control the scroll. A looping feed with no control resulted in frustration for the user, and actually, frustration for the guy watching them, me. Without the control the feed took nearly a minute to reload. Continue reading »
Are you suffering from Giant Image Syndrome? The common symptoms are: squished content, wrapped content, horizontal scrolling, super long lines of text, and basic site destruction.
Right now I am working for a Fortune 100 company that has a ton of intranet sites. The IT department was nice enough to create a default template so that anyone can build a site. They even allow them to use their own creativity, by not specifying a style guide. Oops. Continue reading »
My writing stinks you say. Eh…you may be right. I check my spelling, and try to make sure everything is correct. Still though, I know I need help.
Good news for me? It looks like I just found some help, and have even put this post to the test. It’s the Document Readability Test. The test reveals the number of characters, sentences, and reading comprehension level. The results also show ways to improve readability of text, and lists the most offending sentences. Continue reading »
Taking my first and last typing lessons back in 1980, I learned that we put two spaces after a period before starting a new sentence. Well, 1980 was a long time ago.
You could argue either way, one space or two, but it really doesn’t matter as long as your consistent. AP style indicates that you should just use one space after a sentence. I believe Chicago style says to use two. When writing online you should use just one space, and I have a very good reason for it. Continue reading »
Ever fill out a form, hit submit, and say what the heck? Did the form fail to process the data correctly? Did the database fail? Did you type the captcha letters wrong? It was none of the above. It was the design, or should I say usability.
Your secret to building a successful form for your website? Watch a few NEW users fill it out for the first time.
Not all things are intuitive, especially to new visitor. Look at this example below. Continue reading »
Hopefully, many of you with a website have at least a few primary goals set for it. You may be trying to sell a product, get subscribers, educate, and the list goes on. Do you have goals set for those goals though? If you want to improve your website, having performance goals for your primary goals is a required step. Continue reading »
A fairly important usability tip for web design is to make sure you include all the important details to support your content. A couple examples would be to make sure table columns have labeled headings, and all graph data is labeled.This may seem to be an incredibly obvious tip, but even the big boys make these kind of mistakes.
Here is an example of Yahoo not labeling the comic on the page specifically designed to show it. Additionally, though it is not seen in the screenshot, the title of the page does not reflect the comic name either. Not one clue to the name of this comic. Continue reading »
Online content often refers to other online content, especially in a blog like this. Linking to other sites, videos, or photos is how we share our interests. In my case, I often refer to other content as an example on what to do or not do. However, two things need to be considered when we do this: user action and reader comprehension. Continue reading »
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