Blog

iPhone Wireframe Templates for Sketching

baron lane — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:32:43 +0000

More ion a UI theme. Evan K. Stone over at the Interactive Logic blog shared some iPhone templates for paper prototyping and sketch/brainstorming (PDF and Visio formates.)

iPhone Photoshop Elements

baron lane — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:58:35 +0000

I am currently working on an iPhone app, and while developing high fidelity mock-ups to detail the product's vision I came across Teehan and Lax's excellent Photoshop file of iPhone components for just such a project. Developing the sweet looking app you create mock-ups for is still up to you. [On Edit] - For Mac users Graffletopia has a lower fidelity iPhone component set for Omnigraffle.

For Information Design guru Edward Tufte fans, Tufte out together an interesting video with some thoughts on designing interfaces for the iPhone.

Abusive Employment Sites

baron lane — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:02:26 +0000

After evaluating dozens of employment sites I'm amazed at the garden-variety usability SNAFUs exhibited when working through the process of entering information and uploading covers letters and resumes. Some of the I issues I experienced were:

No pre-population of fields with content previously submitted.If I signed up for an account using my name and email then populated those fields with that information. If I want to use a different email address I'll edit it then
No examples or guidance given for password formatting leading to an error. If I have to have a capital letter and a non-alphanumeric character then tell me that BEFORE I choose a password, not as an error after the fact.
Not keeping the position I'm applying for in session as I sign up for an account. If I come to your site from a job board, aggregator or search engine then result back to that job after I've taken the time to sign up for an account.
I'm forced to upload my resume AND fill out a long, tedious form reflecting the same information found on the resume (contact info, work history, etc.) Really? You need both?

If these sites were reflected in an representative of an employment agency I would walk out due to the level of inattention and rudeness I had experienced.

I understand that in the current dismal employment environment it's a bumper crop for job seekers, but it won't always be that way. Employment sites might do well to take care of how they're treating their customers now so that they stick around when the economy improves later.

Ubuntu Linux Usability Focus

baron lane — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:59:52 +0000

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution has an extenisve project underway to address 100 minor bugs that negatively impact the Ubuntu user experience before the release of the next major version in October. The project, named One Hundred Paper Cuts, is a collaboration with the company's design and user experience team and the Ubuntu community. So usability makes major inroads into the geek-heavy terrain of Linux. Cool.

Web Usability: Are Men Hunters & Women Browsers?

baron lane — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:58:18 +0000

A study by Southern Illinois University on how men and women use the web shows that both men’s and women’s top priority is ease of use, with web speed men’s second choice, and easy navigation women’s.

If this is true then does this mean that in general, men are “hunters” and women are “browsers” online and parallel gender shopping studies in the offline world? How might use this information to design a better site? The old rules of logical assembly, navigation and speed still holds but the study might be more applicable if the site you build is more gender specific. (Get Elastic)

Best Careers 2009: Usability Experience Specialist

baron lane — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:52:40 +0000

U.S. News & World Report has designated a "Usability Experience Specialist" as one of its Best Careers 2009. Of all the titles I've run across in this field this is the most like a mash-up that I've heard. It's worth checking out just for the comments.

Usability ROI Declining, But Still Strong

baron lane — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:36:21 +0000

It's been a while since I checked on one of the elders of usability, Jakob Nielson. Checking his man's web site (Alert Box) I came across an interesting post on the ROI of usability and how it's still a great deal for $ spent vs $ earned/saved (spend 10%, gain 83% by Jakob's calculations.) The article also shows that the big gains of the last 6 years have been achieved and now it's a matter of incremental upkeep or initial design. Math was not my best subject, but the argument that increasing conversion rates (somewhat the domain of experince design) is more desirable (and less expensive ) than increasing unique visitors (the domain of advertising.)

Usability, The Mind and Competitive Advantage

baron lane — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:11:16 +0000

Kim Krause Berg posts an interesting piece over at Search Engine Land how Google (and thieir competitors) are crafting a solid competitive strategy that entrenches products and features into every crevice of our user's lives by grounded design and developemtn in current philosophical and psychological concepts of computers as extensions of our mind.

20 cool interaction design concepts

baron lane — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:46:53 +0000

The Interaction Design blog has posted 20 Cool Interaction Design Concepts, with a focus on 2D, 3D. motion monitored and interactive goldfish, the emphasis is certainly on "concept." Cool, idea though and the shape of things to come.

Userfly

baron lane — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:44:59 +0000

ReadWriteWeb.com posts a review of Userfly, a "a simple way to test your site's usability for free - with one line of code. The deal is you add the Userfly JavaScript code to your site and all visitor interactions with your site are then recorded for later playback.

A pretty powerful tool for answering the question "What are users doing on my site?", though there still needs more traditional testing to answer the "Why are they doing that?" questions.

userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.