Category: usability

UXMatters

Peter J. Bogaards, the one man show behind the amazing Infodesign newsletters, has just launched a new and interesting project: UXMatters.

Our Mission

  • Produce a volunteer-driven, nonprofit Web magazine that delivers compelling content about
  • Create the premiere source of information and inspiration for UX professionals.
  • Provide a forum for the discussion of progressive ideas about important issues relating to user experience.
  • Educate both the broader product development community and consumers about the value of designed user experiences.

    • Worth checking out.

    Soigner ses (re)visiteurs

    Jakob Nielsen, la référence mondiale de l’ergonomie des sites web, parle du fait que beaucoup d’utilisateurs deviennent des acheteurs longtemps après leur visite initiale. Baptisé slow tail, le concept est très intéressant à analyser.

    Les conséquences pour le design des sites:
    • Users often return to a site multiple times before making their final decision. Your design must therefore support revisitation behavior
    • Don’t make premature demands on users who aren’t ready to buy. For example, don’t require registration to read whitepapers or see a demo.
    • et beaucoup d’autres points dans l’article

    The slow tail

    Jakob Nielsen has come up with this concept of slow tail, describing how users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. The observations are limited to people coming to a site via advertising (so it does not cover people coming through word to mouth for example) but the findings are interesting:

    Design Implications
    • Users often return to a site multiple times before making their final decision. Your design must therefore support revisitation behavior
    • Don’t make premature demands on users who aren’t ready to buy. For example, don’t require registration to read whitepapers or see a demo.
    • and much more in the article

    Ajax Mistakes

    After all the hype around Ajax, here are the first warning signs.

    Ajax is an awesome technology that is driving a new generation of web apps, from maps.google.com to colr.org to backpackit.com. But Ajax is also a dangerous technology for web developers, its power introduces a huge amount of UI problems as well as server side state problems and server load problems.

    Link

    Actually not the newest article on the subject, but a nice list of what you should avoid when designing under this new paradigm. I especially liked the following points. You shall not:

  • Break the back button
  • Send sensitive information in the clear
  • Change the state with links (use buttons)
  • Make site “un-bookmarkable”
  • Block spidering

    • Nice try, but…

    For some reason absolutely unknown to science I am, living in Geneva Switzerland, a huge NFL fan. Don’t ask why the story’s too long ;-)
    Anyway I spend a lot of time on sports web sites like ESPN or CNNSi. These guys are usually doing a fine job, regularly introducing hot new features (this year: in your face video everywhere), but I hate ESPN’s latest try: the obscuring tooltip. Check this out:

    When you mouse over you get more about what you are about to read. Nice, except it prevents you from reading the titles of the other links so you end up moving out of the list to see what in it. Nice idea, just not doable this way.

    Oh btw: game streaming has arrived.

    Bien (hyper)lier ?

    Ça fait un moment que je me demande quelle est la meilleure façon de faire mes liens sur ce blog. Je vois 3 alternatives:

    • liens à la boingboing
    Je ne sais pas si c’est eux qui ont inventé ce système mais les liens sont toujours après le texte de l’article, bien à l’écart de l’endroit où l’on lit. Exemple

    • Liens courts
    Comme sur memepool par exemple, les liens font rarement plus d’un mot.

    • Liens longs
    Comme sur Signal vs Noise ou les liens sont en général une phrase entière. Exemple ici.

    Je trouve que chaque solution a du bon, et du moins bon:

    • bb: on ne peut lier qu’un seul endroit à la fois et le lien est hors contexte. Mais ce système a le mérite d’être clair, propre et simple.

    • Liens courts : bien pour les gens qui scannent plus qu’ils ne lisent.

    • Liens longs : plus facile d’anticiper ce qu’il y a au bout du clic mais frustrant pour ceux qui veulent survoler l’article.

    Sur ce blog, je fais un peu des trois sans être consistant et j’aimerais bien trouver une bonne règle et m’y tenir. Qu’en pensez-vous ? Un petit tour sur la littérature disponible ne m’a pas été très utile pour trouver une solution claire.

    Hyperlinks best practices

    I have been wondering for a while what would be the best way of hyperlinking on this blog. I see 3 alternatives:

    • boingboing links
    I don’t know if these guys invented it but this is where I noticed it first: Put your text, then a Link at the end after a blank space. Flagrant example

    • as short as possible links
    Links à la memepool, rarely more than one word.

    • longer, descriptive links
    The way Jason and the people of 37 signals do on Signal vs Noise. Flagrant example

    I think that each solution has a good and a down side:

    • bb: you can only link to one unique place, links are somehow out of the post context but users know where to find the link and the system is really simple and clean

    • short: can mistake users, but better for people quickly scanning a post.

    • long: people reading the post can easily open links and leave the story when they wish. People scanning the article will need more time to understand where links go and will probably get frustrated.

    I am currently doing a bit of all, and I don’t like it. If only blogs were interactive, and people would use the comments below to voice their opinion on the matter ;-) A quick tour on the currently available literature did not really help me with that dilemma.

    Ne plus copier Amazon

    La dernière chronique de Jakob Nielsen est en ligne et parle du fait qu’il est temps d’arrêter de copier Amazon quand on créé un site de commerce en ligne.

    Pendant beaucoup d’années la meilleure façon de concevoir un site de ecommerce était de “faire comme Amazon”. Plus maintenant.
    [...]
    Paradoxalement, la conception d’Amazon fonctionne bien pour Amazon lui-même mais la société est devenue si différente que ce qui est bon pour elle ne l’est plus forcément pour tous les sites

    J’aime vraiment beaucoup lire Jakob Nielsen car il a cette vision unique des choses, mélange habilement la théorie et les exemples réels et finit toujours par parler de sujets inattendus.

    Normal sites should not copy Amazon’s design.

    Jakob Nielsen’s latest alert box is available and speaks of how people should stop copying amazon’s interface blindly when making ecommerce sites. .

    For many years, that one thing in e-commerce design was “Do like Amazon.” No more.
    [...]
    Paradoxically, Amazon’s design may work well for Amazon itself. The company is simply so different from other e-commerce sites that what’s good for Amazon is not good for normal sites.

    I really love reading Jakob Nielsen because he has this unique angle on things, masterfully mixes theory and real world observations and always comes up with articles that you would never have expected.