Douglas’ blog post yesterday contained lots of interesting points about how computers communicate with users. It’s true that applications ought to speak in human language, not computer-speak; as Donald has also pointed out, it’s crazy to ask a user to “Attach Resource” when what she really wants to do is put an image on a Web page. In all our work, especially our work on LiveWhale, we try really hard to keep a focus on making things transparent (even fun) for our users, and we talk (and email and IM and videochat) constantly about the best ways to achieve that goal.
But that’s not what I’m here to write about today.
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Tags: don't make me think, usability, whitewhale
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At this point, we’ve all been barraged by Krug’s “don’t make me think” mantra a nearly infinite amount of times. I remember the first time I heard this phrase: sitting in Web 1 class, learning how to code html the “right” way. Our instructor was raging on about standard web design conventions, how one should be careful not to stray too far outside of the box, but rather tiptoe around its perimeter so as to not confuse the average internet user. “Don’t make me think,” he said. Now, don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with the fact that the user interface and information architecture shouldn’t get in the way of what you are trying to do on any given web site, but sorry, I rather like thinking. Read more »
Tags: don't make me think, usability, whitewhale
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I’ve called this post “Introducing LiveWhale News” because I’ll leave “Introducing LiveWhale” to Jason. It’s that big behind-the-scenes project we’ve been hinting about for a bit, and there’s quite a lot to say.
But at the risk of stealing some thunder from that announcement, I’d like to show off something that we’ve been spending a lot of time on:
This is the add-a-news-story page of LiveWhale, the CMS we’ve developed as an answer to problems posed in our infamous (among our clients, anyway) content management manifesto. In later posts I’ll go into some detail about specific interface choices we’ve made (a personal favorite is the flowchart behind attaching images to news stories), but for now I’ll talk about what we didn’t do. Read more »
Tags: cms, interface, livewhale, lwblog, usability
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We’ve recently prepared a protocol for user testing as part of our Kenyon College site redesign, and I’m posting it here to share with the world. We have some general concerns about user testing— in particular, we fear that too much focus grouping can water down design decisions, and accordingly we prefer to user-test architecture and functionality than design itself— but this document is intended to strike a balance between research and intuition, with a healthy dose of White Whale-brand personalization.
Here’s the document. We’d welcome any comments.
Kenyon College Usability Testing Protocol
Tags: Documents, kenyon, usability
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