This is the 7th post in a 7-part series on how to get a team to implement your recommendations. Tip #1 was: Hide Your Top 3 Recommendations Tip #2 was Say “You”, “They”, “Customers”, “Users”, or “Research”. Don’t say “I” Tip #3 was Give Them A Presentation, Don’t Send Them A Report Tip #4 was Use The Word “Because”…
Category Archives: usability
Do people have relationships with forms?: Podcast with author Caroline Jarrett
I met Caroline Jarrett in 2010 in Lisbon Portugal, where we were both speaking at a conference. Caroline is a usability consultant in the UK, and she specializes in designing forms. She has a great book, Forms That Work. In this podcast Caroline and I have a fun conversation about designing usable forms. You can listen…
7 Tips To Get A Team To Implement Your Recommendations: Tip #3
This is the 3nd in a series on how to get a team to implement your recommendations. Tip #1 was: Hide Your Top 3 Recommendations. And Tip #2 was Say “You”, “They”, “Customers”, “Users”, or “Research”. Don’t say “I”. Now for Tip #3. The context is that you want to see your recommendations implemented. How…
The Only Two Things You Really Need To Know About Web Design
In his (great) book, Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug has a chapter called “Billboard Design 101: Designing pages for scanning not reading.” The idea is that people don’t read all the text at a website, they scan it. So you should think “billboard” when you are deciding what to put on the page, instead of…
Losing Sleep Over Poor Design
I’m writing this from the CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver, BC. I’d like to enjoy Vancouver, but I’m having a hard time doing so because I have a Sony clock radio in my hotel that keeps waking me up. The alarm goes off at 5:50 am every day. I can’t figure out how to…
There Is No One Right Way To Categorize Information
My favorite conference of my career so far, either for attending or speaking, was the UXLX conference (for user experience designers). I spoke at the May 2010 event (a year ago). It was my first ever time in Europe (I don’t count changing planes in Amsterdam). I was ok when I left the States, but…
Design Challenge: Help Ilovebluesea.com and the fish
Martin Reed is a tall, young entrepeneur with a passion for fish. I met up with him in San Francisco recently, and we sat down at an outside table at Hog Island Oyster Bar in the Ferry Building. I tried raw oysters for the first time, and Martin told me about sustainable fish, and…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #96 — Past Experience And Expectations Determine Where People Look
Where do people look first on a computer screen? Where do they look next? It depends partially on what they are doing and expecting. Left to right? — If people read in languages that move from left to right, then they tend to look at the screen from left to right. If they read from…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #93 — Titles Provide Context
Read this paragraph: First you sort the items into like categories. Using color for sorting is common, but you can also use other characteristics, such as texture or type of handling needed. Once you have sorted the items, you are ready to use the equipment. You want to process each category from the sorting separately….
100 Things You Should Know About People: # 91 — Size Matters When It Comes To Fonts
When it comes to fonts, size matters a lot. The font size needs to be big enough so that people can read it without strain. Not just old folks – For older people this is critical. Starting in their 40′s, most people have increasing difficulty reading small fonts. But it’s not just older people that…