Posts Tagged ‘usability’

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 will be presenting about “discount usability” next week at the Columbus Digital Adobe User Group. Come for food and networking opportunities and stay for 2 presentations about usability and accessibility.

The gist of my presentation: With a little elbow grease, you can figure out where the biggest usability pitfalls are on your website. This type of analysis helps you identify areas where your site’s design is not performing as well as it could be.

Learn how to do it yourself. No need to hire an expensive usability lab to do this high ROI activity!

Place

6500 Emerald Parkway
4th Floor
Dublin, Ohio 43016

Schedule

6:10-7:00 pm: My usability presentation
7:10-8:00 pm: Accessibility presentation by Andrea Hill, Senior Developer at Resource Interactive
8:00 pm: Raffle for $2,100 worth of Adobe software

Hope to see you there!

Technorati Tags: accessibility, adobe, andrea hill, chris peters, columbus, columbus digital, dublin, meeting, networking, ohio, presentation, usability, user group, web usability

I submitted a support ticket on behalf of a client today in their e-commerce system. After filling in the fields and submitting the form, I got this message:

At first, I thought I had made a mistake. An exclamation point icon? Bold red text? All of these visual cues tell a completely different story than what the message says.

What do your messages really say in context with visuals? And do you really want for your message to make someone feel undeserved panic, even if it’s just for a couple seconds?

Technorati Tags: design, marketing, Technology, usability, web usability

Aaron Wall made a great point about the difference between articles and blog posts. Also some interesting discussion in the comments. (Especially the link to an article about the same subject by Jakob Nielsen, which I read at the time and then promptly did not apply to my situation.)

I’m sure that there are some industries that still need new blogs. But I currently sit in an industry with too many. Internet Marketing is probably one of the wortst industries to be a blogger in because there is so much noise and so many echoes about the same topics.

I don’t fancy myself as a top blogger, but I do enjoy it. I also feel that I have important stuff to say, so I’m going to treat that stuff differently than a blog post. This blog should be for bite-sized ideas, not lengthy articles.

For those of you who have been following along, that means that my mini-series about running an AdWords campaign is not going to be a series of blog entries, but rather a series of articles. Something didn’t feel right about the idea of the mini-series. I’m glad that I could figure it out.

Technorati Tags: aaron wall, alertbox, Blogging, internet, internet marketing, jakob nielsen, marketing, seo book, usability, Writing

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