The Future of Blogging
“The ‘danger’ is that corporations might not ‘understand the culture of blogging’ and produce content that contains carefully vetted material instead of spontaneous writings that appeal to blog fans.” (CNet News)
Web Application Solutions: A Designer’s Guide
“Web Application Solutions is a guide that helps designers, product managers, and business owners evaluate some of the most popular Web application presentation layer solutions available today. We compare each solution through consistent criteria (deployment & reach, user interactions, processing, interface components and customization, back-end integration, future proofing, staffing and cost, unique features) and provide an overview, set of examples, and references for each.” (Luke Wroblewski – Functioning Form)
Medical Usability: How to Kill Patients Through Bad Design
“A field study identified twenty-two ways that automated hospital systems can result in the wrong medication being dispensed to patients. Most of these flaws are classic usability problems that have been understood for decades.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
The Annoyance, Irritation, and Frustration of The Mobile Phone: A Design Challenge
“We are in real danger of a consumer backlash against annoying technologies. We already have seen the growth of mobile-phone free zones, of prohibition against phone use, camera use, camera phones, in all sort of public and private places. The mobile phone has been shown to be a dangerous distraction to the driver of an automobile, whether hands-free or not. If we do nothing to overcome these problems, then the benefits these technologies bring may very well be denied us because the social costs are simply too great. There are many sources of frustration or potential liability.” (Donald A. Norman) – courtesy of usabilityviews
11 search engine optimization tips
“The title tag is critical. It’s important not to overcomplicate your design and technical approach with things such as Flash, Java, frames and dynamically built websites.” (Gerry McGovern)
Changing the Way People Search for Information, Through Algorithms and User Interfaces
“(…) in 10 years, we will look back on todays search interfaces and recognize them as a simple and limited way to interact with information. After all, she explains, a 5-inch-long rectangle with a long list of text results beneath it doesnt do much to help people make sense of the billions upon billions of unorganized bits of data in the world.” (Susan Dumais – Microsoft Research) – courtesy of usability in the news
Mobile and Open: A Manifesto
“Only a cockeyed optimist would forecast an open, user-driven, entrepreneurial future for the mobile Internet. This should not prevent us from trying, however. Sometimes, envisioning the way things ought to be can inspire people to work at making it that way. That’s what manifestos are for.” (Howard Rheingold – TheFeature)
Advanced Handsets Need Advanced UIs
“As mobile phones become more capable, people are using them to store an increasingly wider variety and greater quantity of data. This raises a new problem for designers of handset user interfaces: how do you let owners find what they’re looking for in a coherent and friendly manner?” (Tom Hume – TheFeature) – courtesy of lucdesk
The Content Inventory: Roadmap to a Succesful CMS Implementation
“This article focuses on the nuts and bolts of identifying content and coralling it in such a way that you have what you need when it comes time to populate your CMS. The key to achieving this goal is a process called the Content Inventory.” (Kassia Krozser – alt tags) – courtesy of columntwo
In Defense of Cheating
“In this essay, I focus upon changes to curriculum and instruction that would change the emphasis in school systems from that of competition to cooperation, from arbitrary grading on the curve to mastery assessment of a student’s accomplishments. But these changes are only part of the restructuring required of our educational systems. Many more changes are needed.” (Donald A. Norman – ACM Ubiquity)
Designing Intersection Flows
“Avoiding problems with forms where users have to choose between alternative ways to proceed. When forms give users the option to continue in two or more alternative directions, such as registering as a new customer or signing in as a returning one, unfortunate users will take the wrong turn if it isn’t unmistakably obvious which way they should go. In this article, we’ll take a look at a few intersection flows that have caused users problems.” (Henrik Olsen – GUUUI) – courtesy of webword
It’s the content, stupid: search engine optimization
“In deciding to rank your website, search engines pay a lot of attention to the actual content they find on your webpages.” (Gerry McGovern)
The world is ready for usability. Is usability ready for the world?
“Today we know that consumers evaluate and select both products and services based on the user-friendliness of an interface.” (Kath Straub – Human Factors International Newsletter) – courtesy of usabilityviews
The Feynman-Tufte Principle
A visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van – “(…) information displays should be documentary, comparative, causal and explanatory, quantified, multivariate, exploratory, and skeptical.” (Michael Shermer – Scientific American) – courtesy of kottke
The importance of seduction and curiosity
“The brain is tuned to mirror the behavior of others, so if your passionate curiosity is stronger than the other person’s passive disinterest, you have a chance to ‘infect’ the other person. It’s not just that you know what’s exciting, wonderful, fascinating about a topic — it’s that you genuinely feel it, and this is reflected in the way you talk about it, not just the actual content of your words. Passion breaks through.” (Kathy Sierra – Creating Passionate Users)
Interaction Design Encyclopedia
“If you feel something is missing, please suggest a term or contribute to the encyclopedia. You can get notified when additions are made to the encyclopedia! You may also track changes in the Encyclopedia using the RSS News Feed Service. There are currently 30 entries in the encyclopedia (86 under preparation).” (Mads Soegaard) – courtesy of guuui
John Jantsch on Corporate Blogging and Referral Marketing
“I interviewed John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing to get the ‘how-to’ on corporate blogging and referral marketing.” (Rok Hrastnik – Marketing Studies Net) – courtesy of theotherblog
What is Information Architecture?
Search results on Information Architecture from Brainboost: Question everything. (Brainboost Answer Engine) – courtesy of iaslash
Community Blogging
“Basically I have four sections. I’ll talk a wee bit about what constitutes a community. I’m going to rant and rave against the concept of the long tail. I’m going to explore Wittgensteinian theories of meaning. I’m going to talk about distributed network semantics. Now this may sound like it has nothing to do with community, but my intent here is to try to reframe your thoughts on what community is, what community on the web is, and what a community of bloggers is.” (Stephen Downes) – courtesy of petervandijck
Evangelizing Usability: Change Your Strategy at the Halfway Point
“The evangelism strategies that help a usability group get established in a company are different from the ones needed to create a full-fledged usability culture.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)