These few tips on designing the sign up experience on your website are also the basic outline for Joshua Porter’s book designing for the social web. He has a lot of other very important info but I think these few really help the process of specifically thinking about the sign up experience: Describe WHAT it [...]

The best use for real time communications on the web is not to simply bring in the most recent information on a topic, but rather to make clear that others are experiencing or interacting with the same content at the same time. How would sites or web apps be different if you could see who [...]

Check out this awesome job of explaining user personas through a fun comic created by Brad Colbow. Some topics are more easily understood when presented this way. (at least for me). The comic style brings what is essentially a “slightly” dry subject to life. A list of more resources about user personas and mental models [...]

Yesterday I came across this interesting web accessibility article at CNN.com, talking about how big internet companies such as Yahoo and Google are embracing it. We should all start an accessibility push in our organizations, here’s why: There are about 60 million people in the U.S. who can’t use a computer to get on the [...]

There is a world of differences to consider when designing for web or designing for desktop applications: From fundamental interactions to keyboard driven navigational paradigms to accessibility issues to screen layout to basic behavior and reaction of buttons, links, etc…we have to consider that a product with a rich client and a web client are [...]

Build every feature any customer would ever want: Apparently, by having all the features anyone can ever imagine, “eliminate any possible reason that customers might buy a competitors’ product”. That’s a wrong conclusion and a really bad idea. Software that tries to be everything to everyone generally sucks. It becomes bloated, hard to use, and [...]

As the dynamics of the Web 2.0 continue to evolve, we will see more and more consumers not only expecting, but demanding, to interact with companies and products. Corporate websites can sometimes be less than compelling… Perhaps a shift will come where corporate websites will become the forum for interaction rather than outside social networking [...]

Making your interface smaller, hiding advanced functionality and taking out the obvious is the path to a simpler interface. Along this path you’ll face many obstacles. For every feature you hide or take away, there will be people who complain and demand that you bring it back. But every one of your users has different [...]

Checkout the story of redesign of the ubiquitous prescription bottle led by Deborah Adler I really enjoyed the article’s approach to guiding the reader through the process, and the result is stunning…Just far enough out of the box to be a real improvement, but not so unfamiliar as to make it un-marketable. I don’t see [...]

According to Bill Buxton on the article On Engineering and Design: An Open Letter, it might be useful to think of design in terms of four layers, each demanding a progressively larger investment. Design awareness can and ideally should be something that every employee of a company makes their best effort to acquire. I would [...]