The other day, @KathySierra tweeted about this website. All I can say is ‘Wow!” What a terrific use of a graphic to explain the differences in size between small, common objects (e.g. grain of rice) and things such as human eggs, viruses, etc. Use the slider on this web page from the Genetic Science Learning Center at the Univeristy of Utah (http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/) to get the full effect.
There are plenty of tools out there that can help you test your website. But perhaps you’re overwhelmed for choice. If so, then start with this short list of tools: http://www.testing-web-sites.co.uk/testing-tools/
This site lists testing tools in these categories:
[Links last checked September 2009; thanks to @sue_sd for tweeting this resource]
Usability expert, Dana Chisnell, has written a great article on how some companies create happy users who then become ‘champions’ for that product/service/company, while others put all sorts of barriers in your way when you’re trying to do something simple like book a flight.
Her article is here: http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/2009/08/beyond-frustration-3-levels-of-happy.html
My creative and inspirational moments typically happen when I’m falling asleep or when I’m in the shower.
But wherever, whenever and however your inspiration comes, you need to capture those little ‘Aha!’ moments. Pen and notepaper work very well; you might just be able to keep those thoughts going if you can decipher your midnight scribblings done in the dark first thing next morning! But pen and paper don’t work so well in the shower… Or do they?
Jonathan Follett, in his A Practical Guide to Capturing Creativity for UX published by UX Matters covers various low-tech methods of capturing your inspirational moments, such as pen and paper, note books, sketch books, and even waterproof paper for the shower! Then he moves into the more high-tech stuff like converting paper scribblings to digital, recording your voice, creating an electronic scrapbook of ideas, taking digital photos and videos.
[Links last checked October 2009]
Brad Colbow, creator of great cartoon-style illustrations and comic strips to explain tech, web and design stuff, has added a new one — The power of personas — to the Think Vitamin blog post: How to understand your users with personas.
It’s a nice explanation about personas, what they are, and how they help in the design process.
[Links last checked October 2009]
Here’s a small collection of user interface (UI) wireframing and prototyping resources I’ve come across over the past few months. I haven’t needed to use any of them, so I can’t vouch for their ease of use, but they all look interesting and could save a LOT of the time typically associated with paper prototyping.
[Links last checked October 2009]
In addition to testing web designs, web applications etc. on various browsers, mobile devices are now part of the mix. And of course, like browsers and screens, none are the same size or apply standards the same way. Which means that testing on them just adds further complexity to an already complex task. You can’t possibly purchase all possible devices out there, so you need to use tools to emulate them. But where to find them?
Jennifer Farley has written an article for SitePoint where she does brief reviews of six tools, including:
Her full article is here: Six Tools for Testing Designs on Mobile Devices. Some of the comments offer further suggestions, so don’t forget to check them out too.
[Links last checked July 2009]
All Gerry Gaffney’s user experience podcasts and interviews are now available from his website: http://www.infodesign.com.au/uxpod
As at August 2009 when I wrote this post, there were close to 50 available, ranging from 3 to 30 or so minutes in length.
[Link last checked August 2009]
There’s plenty of stuff out on the internet about UI (user interaction) design whether for software or web applications — more than you could probably read in a lifetime.
Here are a some that are worth spending time on:
See also:
Joshua Porter, over at bokardo social web design (http://bokardo.com), says in his Writing Microcopy article:
The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing.
The examples he gives and the advice he offers are great. But the term he uses for these small pieces of user assistance on the interface — ‘microcopy’ — is not one familiar to me as a technical writer. It’s a term that sounds like it comes from marketing writing.
I wonder if he is familiar with the term that technical communicators use — ‘user assistance’?
Perhaps we should get together and agree on terms so that we can offer a united front on making sure these pieces of information are as useful to our users/readers/customers/clients as possible.
[Links last checked July 2009]
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