Archive for the ‘Usability’ Category
Aug
14
2011
at 12:54pm
In my last post I offered a critique of the (not-so) new University of Waterloo home page. The next question is, how do these things happen?
Before I get started, I’d like to be clear that the points offered up in this post are gross generalizations, and certainly wouldn’t apply to all universities. These are just some of the issues I experienced at Waterloo—there are others that I won’t go into. I’m sure people who work at UW or other universities can think of additional factors to add. These points are also referencing the home page, although most of the factors listed apply to the rest of the web space as well.
Those of you who are familiar with web design in higher ed have surely seen the infamous venn diagram cartoon from xkcd:
When this was originally posted I remember seeing some talk about “web managers” not understanding usability. At least in my experience (as a former university web manager), that’s not the case at all. There are several problems at the root of this: Read more…
Posted in Design, Usability, Web Culture | 2 Comments »
Jul
27
2011
at 11:07pm
I’ve recently come across blog posts from earlier this year about redesigning on spec, and redesign and problem solving. This is timely, because I’ve been working on this post about the uWaterloo web redesign for some time now. I think this is a case where there was a lot of “design” done for the sake of impact without actually solving problems. Now that I don’t work there anymore, I’m free to make some honest comments it. How refreshing!
Until recently I was the “web manager” for the central Communications department. I was on maternity leave for most of the redesign process, but I did make some plans for it before I left (that weren’t used, to my knowledge), and worked intimately with the delivered designs after I got back. There are some things I really like about it, and some things I really don’t. I’m going to focus on the home page here, since I think that’s what where a lot of problems are. The other areas are okay, particularly some of the content and information architecture.
I’m going to refer to Jared Spool’s wisdom throughout this article. I attended his workshop on “Designing for Content-Rich Sites” at DrupalCon in March, I think his work is very relevant here. Read more…
Posted in Design, Usability | 12 Comments »
Jun
17
2010
at 9:58am
If you’re like me, you may find the default content, comment, and admin pages in Drupal to be somewhat inadequate. For example, the default content admin page (for nodes) does not allow you to filter by author name, keywords in the title, taxonomy, or publish date. The comments page does not have filtering options at all. The users page does not allow you to search for a user name or join date (you can search for users using Drupal search, but this does not allow you to perform bulk operations on them).
I have created some views to replicate these pages with more filtering options. View Bulk Operations does come with a sample view for content, but I found that this view didn’t contain the options I wanted. Each view comes with two pages: one to replace the default admin pages (admin/content/node, admin/content/comment, and admin/user/user) and one for a tabbed interface of all three views. It would be nice if these could be the same page but you can’t have more than one URL for a page. Read more…
Posted in Drupal, Usability | No Comments »
Jan
06
2010
at 9:00am
This website seems to proclaim that in web design, there is no “fold”. Okay, I do get the point. People do scroll and you don’t need to fuss about exactly how much a visitor sees at first glance, or try to cram all your links into that space. However, I do think there are some things you need to consider about what people first see when a page loads. At first glance a user needs to answer a few key questions. As Steve Krug advises in Don’t Make me Think:
- What is this?
- What do they have here?
- What can I do here?
- Why should I be here – and not somewhere else?
The user needs to have some clue as to whether this page or website will give them what they want (have the information they need, the products they want to buy etc.). In that sense, what appears in the fold – whatever size that is for them – is crucially important.
You also need to make sure that it’s evident that there is more content further down to scroll to. I recently visited this page on the Exercise TV site (screenshot). On my screen the fold ends around Jillian’s mid-thigh. With the blue background, the text ending where it does, and the visual focus on the photo, it wasn’t apparent to me that there is more content further down. I actually didn’t realize it until I clicked on the link to browse videos and realized that it pointed further down on the same page. With widescreen monitors the scrollbar may be out of direct view, so conscious design is needed to tell the viewer that they should scroll to see more.
Via For a Beautiful Web, where Stephen Frein has a useful comment.
Posted in Design, Usability | 2 Comments »
Dec
30
2009
at 8:22pm
The Huffington Post has an article on the “Most Innovative Web Site Designs Of All Time” which is kind of a joke. Hello, mystery meat!
There is a reason why most websites have similar basic elements. It’s called usability. When users are trying to accomplish a task (find information, buy something etc.) they don’t need to figure out an entirely new navigation structure and page layout. They need sites to behave in relatively similar ways so they know what to expect and how to accomplish their tasks.
The Web can be a repetitive and boring place. Many Web sites look the same or are created based on the same basic principles.
That’s actually a good thing 
There is a time and a place for trying something new, and that’s valid, it’s just not something that’s appropriate for most websites.
So, the question is, what are the most innovative web designs of all time? I’ll have to give that some thought.
Posted in Design, Usability | No Comments »
Jan
10
2009
at 12:52pm
I meant to post this at the time but never did. Why do I never finish my drafts???
On Wednesday, October 8th our websites suddenly disappeared. Our VPS (virtual private server), hosted by VPSville, was completely unavailable. There was no explanation on their website. Our only information came from a thread at Web Hosting Talk.
The VPSville site was still live, but their forum was no longer active. Supposedly they did post something on their forums early on, but quickly took the forums completely offline. Over 24 hours passed before VPSville let their customers know what was going on.
The original announcement was vague. In light of later news that some of their servers had been hacked and all the data erased, this announcement was outright misleading. Needless to say, this was completely unacceptable. Not just that they lost the data. No, the worst part was that they didn’t tell their customers what was happening.
What do do when things go wrong (revised)
- Find out what actually happened.
- Fess up. Admit that your systems weren’t able to handle the traffic (or whatever the problem was). Do not blame the users.
- Make sure this information is published and availble to clients.
- Ensure that communication channels are open. Make every attempt to respond to customer questions.
- Do not attempt to cover up the problem.
- If you don’t know all the details, that’s okay. Tell people what you do know.
- Promise to get things working ASAP.
- Do get things working ASAP.
- Give paying customers a refund for services lost.
- In the future, make sure your servers can handle the traffic, or plan other ways to avoid the problem.
Posted in Usability | 4 Comments »
