If you ever need an example of the ROI of usability then this is a great case study:
http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button
Good Goodnights
Getting 2 young boys to bed most nights is like trying to sweep up on a windy day, you feel like you’re chasing about trying to make something happen against the will of higher beings.
And then you have nights like last night that make up for all those others: following instructions without threats; only having to ask 4 or 5 times; interesting conversation and some unprompted affection.
Oh fatherhood, how amazing a ride it is.
The problem with requirement documents
This is a good video illustrating the problem with requirements documents:
Another problem with the process outlined in the video would be the lack of design involvement! :)
Jeff Croft on “new layers of web standards”
Jeff Croft recently wrote an article on what he calls the new layers of web development in which he makes the following key point:
“In short, I’m suggesting that the (X)HTML templates used for a website in today’s modern world are much more closely related to presentation than they are to content.”
This point is in reference to the 3 layers commonly used to describe web standards:
- structure or content
- presentation
- behavior
It’s a thought provoking read. In short though I’m not convinced that structure and content are the same. Content has structure and an interface has structure and (X)HTML code crosses both these areas. Jeff is suggesting that if (X)HTML is structure, that this structure is more for presentation than content. I agree that would be the case for a lot of web applications but not necessarily content sites. Even web applications have content that has structure (think headings, sub-headings, bullets etc).
The Age website
These comments from Sophie Black on Crikey, in reference to an advertisement for The Age website, echo my thoughts and feelings about the site. Is it that Australian journalism still has a way to go (with the exception of John Pilger), or is it that the majority of Australian audiences have a way to go (with the exception of Crikey readers) ;)?
Clicktale & screen folds
Clicktale is a nice product that creates a video type screencast of actual users on your website. I’ve used it for a client’s website before and think it’s a great tool. It gives you a good sense of how users interactive with a site and a reasonable understanding of their intent (better than log files would do yet not as good as user sessions would).
Anyway, having access to a wide variety of their customer sites has allowed them to do an interesting study into website scrolling behaviors and what they term scroll reach and visitor attention. It’s makes interesting reading.
Working towards web standards
For large sites, and even small ones, having a fully standards compliant website may seem a Utopian dream, especially in Agile development environments where elements of an overall interface are approached piecemeal. So it’s fair to think why bother trying at all? Well you don’t have to be fully compliant to enjoy the benefits that web standards offers. Getting close to full compliance will still mean you enjoy the majority of business benefits they offer. So I’ve put together an overview of how the design, development and testing disciplines can incrementally work towards web standards.
