Posts Tagged ‘hci’

Technology has come a long way in the past decade, and the 21st century has created a massive paradigm shift.

Think about the process of buying a computer in the 90s. We worried about things like megahertz, RAM, and hard drive size.

Now look at the iPhone, which has been wildly successful. But can you tell me how many megahertz or gigahertz it is? Do you know how much memory it has? Apple simply doesn’t market these facts.

The game has changed. Ben Schneiderman coined this era as “the new computing.” Our expectations of technology are not based on what’s under the hood. They’re now based on what the technology can do for us. Instead of trying to replace us with robots, we’re now using technology to help us do our jobs better.

But with this shift, we have a new set of expectations, and I think the iPhone is a great example of this. We want for our technology to be intuitive, easy to use. We want for it to be beautiful. And we want for it to get out of our way.

This is how your website and web services need to act. They need to get out of the way. They need to help people get to the information that they’re looking for so that they can get on with their lives.

Technorati Tags: apple, ben schneiderman, chris peters, clear crystal media, glass case, hci, iPhone, leonardo's laptop, marketing, Technology, usability, usability engineering, user experience, ux, ux design

I’ve been focusing a lot on optimization lately.

If you think about it, there are 2 ways that you can increase business results on your website. You can pay more to throw more traffic and more eyeballs at it. Or you can optimize its content so that visitors are more likely to become customers.

One of the key benefits of web content optimization is that it has long-term results. When you pay for an advertising campaign, that only lasts for so long. Optimization efforts produce results long after you’re done.

Here are a few tips in getting started in optimizing your website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Design, hci, human factors, internet marketing, optimization, usability, web marketing

Web registration forms are important. These forms are often an early part of your visitors’ experience on your website. If these forms are too cumbersome, your visitors will remain just visitors, instead of going to the next level in the relationship.

I’ve noticed some cool innovations in registration forms, so I thought I’d be nice and share.

First, I’ll be talking about a pleasant experience that FreshBooks provides during their online registration process. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: freshbooks, hci, human factors, learnability, marketing, registration, usability, web marketing, web usability