THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !
Last Updated: October 30, 2004
[January 30, 2001]
WebmasterBase: Designing Content - Avoiding The Hamlet Effect - "...logos and design formats should remain consistent between pages so the customer stays oriented and on familiar terrain. Think of your page format in terms of branding by establishing a uniform and uniquely memorable template."
Interactive Week: Wireless Web Fails The Screen Test
[January 28, 2001]
BBC: Time for real intelligence? - "Making computers copy the way humans learn should not be as difficult as it sounds if scientists can uncover the underlying principles of mental development."
[January 27, 2001]
A List Apart: The Curse of Information Design - "At the company I work for, the architects are called 'experience architects.' It's a way of acknowledging the fact that the architect, in essence, determines the experience that the users have."
Architecting E-Business Solutions (1999)
Salaries and Benefits for Information Architects
[January 26, 2001]
Excite News: Where to put my bits - "After years of sending and receiving e-mail, not to mention creating all sorts of documents, it seems patently obvious to me that there is a vast opportunity for good archival tools. But no one seems to be working on any of them."
[January 24, 2001]
Gerry McGovern: The fundamentals of quality search (Part 2) - Standards for advanced search and for displaying search results.
Fast Company: She Reads Customers' Minds - "One of the most pressing strategic questions facing e-commerce sites in their struggle to become profitable is how to turn browsers into paying customers. Part of the answer is a robust search engine -- smart technology that makes it easy for customers to find what they're looking for. But an even bigger part of the answer involves human intervention -- smart people who can interpret customer inquiries and deduce what they really want."
User Interface Engineering: Why On-Site Searching Stinks - "Our tests showed that users didn't know what to type in a search edit box, or they didn’t know how to use the format the search engine expected."
Guides To Specialized Search Engines
[January 23, 2001]
BBC: Why Wap is not woeful - "Wap will not develop into a mini-Internet, but rather into a media in its own right that offers both mobility and portability."
Streaming Media World: Repent from Flash Sins (Flash Usability Design)
WebmasterBase: Lose the Wait! - "Ensuring your site loads as quickly as possible is part of being a good webmaster/site designer. A quality site from a surfer's point of view will turn more visitors into customers."
[January 22, 2001]
Generating Metaphors for Graphical User Interfaces (1992) - "The best approach for developing a metaphor is to collaborate with prospective users -- a metaphor, after all, is a tool to link your product to the user's mental model."
[January 21, 2001]
Jakob Nielsen: Usability Metrics - "Although measuring usability can cost four times as much as conducting qualitative studies (which often generate better insight), metrics are sometimes worth the expense. Among other things, metrics can help managers track design progress and support decisions about when to release a product."
Macromedia - Flash Usability: Design Test - Test Questions, Post-Test Survey and Feedback from Expert Users
PC World: Revamped Site Invites Access by Blind Surfers
[January 19, 2001]
Usability and the Web: An Overview (1999) - "The key to building a useful and usable Web site is to involve the user in the development process from the beginning. (...) The key to interpreting the results of user testing is to look for general trends and behaviour patterns that indicate problems with the usability of the site."
[January 18, 2001]
System Concepts: Tips for International usability testing
CNN: Biometrics scan the future of security
WebReference.com: Book Review: Designing Easy-to-use Websites
Accessible web design
Macworld: Designing For Other Impairments
Accessibility at Macromedia
[January 16, 2001]
Gerry McGovern: The fundamentals of quality search (Part 1) - "No matter how good your search engine is, if you don't structure and organize your content well, the results the reader gets will be poor, particularly if you have a lot of content on your website."
Bohmann Usability: Effective Search Results
View Source (1998): Usability Is Not Graphic Design - "The bottom line is that usability is the ability of a person to use something."
[January 15, 2001]
InformationWeek: Content Drives The Web - "Explosive growth in Web content will leave your company in the dust unless you have the right management tools. (...) Your site content must be updated instantly and constantly, and the site must be up all the time--with zero tolerance for errors and bad information, from any source."
404 Research Lab - "Our research has shown that up to 70% of the 404s you encounter on the web can be corrected."
Jakob Nielsen (1998): Improving the Dreaded 404 Error Message
WebReference.com: Why You Need to Test Your Web Site with Real Users - "Consultants, marketing and Web development people have their own biased views of what users want or need. But only users can really tell you whether your site meets their requirements."
Color Symbolism
[January 12, 2001]
Accesibility of Online Materials - Myths
siteusability.com - What is web site usability, The benefits of usable web sites, Why you should care about usability, Common usability mistakes
Nua Knowledge Base: Writing shorter (better) for the Web - "The more significant barrier web writers must overcome is behavioral, and improving technology may never break it down."
[January 11, 2001]
Web Techniques: Building Web Sites With Depth - "One of the oldest guidelines for usable interaction design is to increase the user's sense of control and freedom. (...) Web sites that provide better user experiences empower their consumers to reap the benefits of the Web, but don't let them lose the power and flexibility they'd have in a physical store."
Web Techniques: When Nielsen Speaks . . . - "The Web reverses the user experience and transaction process. On the Internet, ease of use comes first and transfer of money comes second. Revenues on the Web are determined almost completely by usability."
WebTechniques: Invasion of the Usability Experts
U.S.News: Blogging burgeons as a form of Web expression
LucDesk wishes you, your family, and associates a very happy holiday season and prosperous 2001!
[January 10, 2001]
Interview with Jeffrey Veen (author of "The Art & Science of Web Design") - "Speed is the absolute most critical factor in the usability of a site. Even the most elegant interface will fail if a user doesn't wait around for it to load. Not only that, but if your site is doing a fair amount of traffic, each byte on your pages is costing your company money in bandwidth."
[January 7, 2001]
eetimes: Barrett, Gates describe a PC-centric future - "Both Barrett and Gates pointed to three of the most significant enablers of their vision: the move to all things digital; broadband connections to the home; and wireless networking."
[January 6, 2001]
AskTog: The Butterfly Ballot: Anatomy of a Disaster - "If you hire an outside firm to do your website, ask for their user-testing plan. If they don't have one, run, do not walk, to another firm."
Information Architecture Tutorial
Court Approves Internet Visitation
[January 5, 2001]
Wired News: Dot-Com Begs for Bucks - "Since the dot-com crash is closing the door to many traditional investors, a popular Net startup is turning to its users for donations to keep its service running."
E-Commerce Guide: Collecting Feedback About Your Website's Search Interface - "Even the best sites on the Web are far from having perfect search, but it is still remarkable to note the difference in search quality between sites that sell well and sites that sell poorly."
EContent: Online Reading as a Nonlinear Activity
[January 4, 2001]
IBM Ease of Use Team (via InfoDesign): The user experience, Part 3 - Using controls in forms - "While a variety of control sets are available for various platforms, there are some common aspects that can lead to a set of good practices in their usage. Many of the common controls have been in use for more than a decade, providing us with a wealth of experience from real users in real day-to-day use."
Improving Web Site Usability and Appeal (1997) - "By using design and written languages smartly, you can give your audience a set of goals that will lead them directly to your best content or help them experience your site in the way you'd like it to be experienced."
[January 3, 2001]
Nua Knowledge Base: Bad web righting - "Since writing wasn't originally perceived as a central activity in creating a website, many companies and organizations that put out large quantities of content—organizations that are, in effect, publishers—have never bothered to create the kind of editorial infrastructure that a publisher must have."
[January 2, 2001]
Nua Internet Surveys: Web users poorly served by financial services firms - "Of the 200 financial services websites surveyed, only 7 offered advanced customer service capabilities."
[January 1, 2001]
Excite: E-Greetings Outpace e-Commerce - "More people clearly prefer the social dimensions of online life, where they have greater control over what's going on."
philosophe.com: Common Sense Rules for Interaction Design - "Users should not have to spend much time learning a new system, a new lexicon, a new set of patterns and rules and iconographies, just to buy something on the web."
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