This is the 5th 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…
Category Archives: web design
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…
Design Challenge Part 2
A few weeks ago I asked my blog readers to help with design ideas for Martin Reed’s Ilovebluesea.com website. (See the earlier post for the design challenge instructions and to listen to a short interview with Martin). Many of you wrote in via comments to the blog and through email. (Thank you!) Martin wrote up…
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: #36 — People are Inherently Lazy
Ok, I’ll admit it, I am exaggerating a little bit when I say people are inherently lazy. What I really mean is that people will do the least amount of work possible to get a task done. Is lazy another word for efficient? – Over eons of evolution humans have learned that they will survive…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #33: Bite-Sized Chunks Of Info Are Best
I am about to head to Portugal for a week, and I was interested in exploring different possible destinations in Portugal. I may not have much time for touring (I’m going to speak at the UXLX conference there), but if I did have time, where should I go? I have to admit to pretty much…
5 Lessons From Theatre You Can Apply to Web Site Design
I just finished a run with my local theatre group (I played Golde in Fiddler on the Roof), and I couldn’t help but make comparisons between putting on a theatre production and designing products, web sites, or anything where a team needs to create something together. 1. It takes a team – In order to…
Web Site Bloopers
I’m amazed by the continual “bloopers” I find on websites. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I expect major companies and organizations to fix issues they have with their websites. Here are a few of my favorites: This blooper from Hertz has been going on for months – look at the calendar, it’s wrong……