August 6th, 2010
I’ve had many conversations about people preferences to scrolling and everything has to be 3 clicks etc, These are myths and are no longer valid arguments.
From my experience of watching users testing:
- Users don’t mind scrolling – if you ask they will probably say that they do, but in practice if they have found what they want they do it without realising.
- Users are quite happy to click more that three times to get to a resource if the navigation path is simple and clear. They don’t like it if they are unsure if they’re on the right path 4 clicks in.
I just came across a website UXmyths. It is a gem and gives you all the comeback you need to counter these sorts of views.
Posted in Interface design, usability | No Comments »
July 14th, 2010
I found out about a most useful tool today that can be used if you want to list the files in a folder and put them in a spreadsheet or something, when auditing websites. I’ve just done this for a folder with over 30,000 files in and it was super quick.
Go to Start > run > cmd
In the command prompt type
dir/a/b c:\foldername > c:\temp.txt
This creates a txt file called temp the root of your c drive and lists all the files in the specifed file.
Posted in Information Architecture | 1 Comment »
March 15th, 2010
My thought for the day: A clear set of agreed business objectives is crucial to the success for any website. It is an essential part of the user centred design process not a separate activity.
Posted in Web strategy | No Comments »
November 17th, 2009
I came across this excellent article http://boagworld.com/design/combating-design-by-committee and thought it was worth sharing. I think ‘design by committee’ is every web manager/designers nightmare. I particularly agree with the bit about 1-2-1 interviews being more effective. Group sessions need to be very carefully managed and I have seen a few get out of control and way off the point.
Posted in Interface design, general | No Comments »
October 6th, 2009
Here are some quick thoughts on the positioning of common elements on a web page:
- Home button in or near menu on far left on all pages except the homepage
- Logo in the upper left corners of all pages
- Open search field in upper right of all pages
- Log in/out upper right of all pages
- Shopping basket icon upper right of all pages
The above highlights the most common areas of placement for particular elements on a website. As such users expect to see them there. Following these design trends helps users feel comfortable/familiar with how to use the website and allows them to get on with their desired task.
Tags: Interface design, usability
Posted in Interface design, usability | No Comments »
October 1st, 2009
- Use the label elements to associate form controls to text label
- Ensure that the labels are descriptive
- Position labels appropriately to maximize predictability of relationships to their controls
- Where necessary show examples of expected data input, for example date format
- Group related form elements by using the fieldset and legend elements
- Group related options by using the optgroup element in a dropdown menu for example
- Ensure there is a logical tab order through form controls
- Include text instructions at the beginning of the form or set of fields that describes the necessary input
- Ensure that the user activates changes by the use of a submit button, for example don’t use onchange events on dropdown menus
- If you have to use an onchange event ensure there is a clear explanation of what will happen when the control is changed prior to the controls activation
Posted in Accessibility | No Comments »
September 18th, 2009
A call to action within text is stronger than graphical ads, as people ignore anything they think looks like an advertisement.
A home button should be on all pages except the homepage somewhere on the top left of the screen. A link home from the logo should also exist but is not enough on its own.
If items are given an equal visual weight, their order isn’t that important. A good example is the role based IA on the http://www.hfea.gov.uk/ website.
Lastly… wireframes always make a page look far busier than it will be in a designed version.
Posted in usability | No Comments »
August 11th, 2009
It is widely acknowledged that accessibility complements usability and there are very few examples where they conflict. But I have found one…
The national lottery results checker available on their website used to work really well for me. It used to move focus to the next field once you had input your number for the current field automatically. I’d have my ticket in my left hand while inputting with my right – it was a real annoyance to move my right hand to the left side of keyboard to tab across or worse change focus by using the mouse. Due to accessibility guidelines this has now been changed so that there is no automatic change of focus – you have to activate the change by pressing tab or click. So I feel I have quite an awkward experience.
There must be a solution that works well for both. The WCAG 2 guidelines 3.2 says you have to make web pages appear and operate in predictable ways and I think the preference is for the user to activate any change, which is perfectly feasible for search controls or dropdown selection boxes. However, thinking about how many will use this control it may be appropriate to follow the alternative advice stated in the success criteria, if an onchange event occurs is there an explanation of what will happen when the control is changed available prior to the controls activation.
My solution therefore is to ensure that the user is informed that the control will change focus once they have entered a valid number for a field. This therefore meets the guidelines and works for me. Does this work well in practice for people using screen readers or alternative technologies? I would be glad to get any thoughts on this.
Posted in Accessibility, usability | No Comments »
July 20th, 2009
I thought I’d try and summarise the key benefits of good web accessibility here:
The financial benefits:
- A larger potential audience
- Potential for increased sales on eCommerce sites
- Reduced site maintenance / bandwidth costs
- Return on Investment: the money invested in accessibility can be made back and more.
- There are over 10 million people with disabilities in the UK with an estimated annual spending power of £80 billion.
- Legal and General claim a 95% increase in quotes and 90% increase in life insurance sales and 50% increase in natural search engine traffic
- http://www.shaw-trust.org.uk/experts_urge_it_teachers_to_make_accessibility_a_p
The technology benefits
- Natural search engine optimisation (SEO). “Google is a blind user who reads the entire website every month then reports what it finds to millions of people” Mark Pilgrim – 2004
- Improves interoperability of the site across devices, such as different browsers, mobile devices.
The user benefits
- Improved usability
- Improves readability, quality and confidence in site content
The legal benefits
- UK law: the 1995 Disability discrimination act
- October 1999: DDA section 21 came into effect. It is unlawful to discriminate against disabled people in the way in which you provide services.
- Websites are mentioned in one of the case studies in the supporting material.
Posted in Accessibility | No Comments »
June 1st, 2009
Hello, I’m currently developing my new website, that will be all be up and running very soon. In the meantime be sure to enjoy my blog section.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
