Jakob Nielsen has noted that it’s now twenty years since he started what he calls the ‘discount usability movement’. This might be egging it a wee bit, I’m not sure there is such a ‘movement’ apart from that which Nielsen promotes. It’s true that major companies use discount usability tactics – I noted before howRead… Read more »
Following the almost universally badly received launch of the new Birmingham City Council website local developer Mark Steadman posted a challenge on his blog: Why don’t those who are busy complaining and building independent fixes to problems that only concern people who know or care what hashtags are*, get together and build an alternative CouncilRead… Read more »
As part of Google UK’s increasing local engagement it is running the first in a series of Webinar‘s next week. This one is about ‘conversions’, getting users through a process on your website and sucessfully out the other end. This process may start from them clicking on an ad or being directed from the homepageRead… Read more »
The fallout from the relaunch of Birmingham City council’s website (#bccwebsite) has continued, not just online but in the local press as well thanks to the strong interest of Birmingham Post Editor Marc Reeves. It’s not a coincidence that the Post has a ‘web 2.0’ site and in its reporting about #bccwebsite has even includedRead… Read more »
Image via Wikipedia My guru Jakob Nielsen has published on research Nielsen Norman Group has just completed on Tweet usability. To my knowledge, no one else has done this sort of research although many of the recommendations have been picked up elsewhere and some are plain common sense (not that that often stops people ignoringRead… Read more »
Crossposted from The Design State When I get involved in a new project, whether it is a completely new site or a redesign, the first thing I do is analyze the content & content expectations of the client and try to figure out the best way to organize things so that the correct information isRead… Read more »
Socitm held its annual ‘Building perfect council websites’ event this week at Olympia, London. Must have been over 200 people there and a very interesting line-up of contributors. I took my Flip camera along and managed to grab a couple of people for short interviews. Kingston upon Thames councillor (and former Mayor) Mary Reid isRead… Read more »
Over the past day or so, Twitter has suffered some backlash to what was deemed a small configuration change and completely disrupted the feature of serendipitous discover. There were a couple of things that happened here: Twitter made decisions based on feedback without going out to do full validation that the issue with @replies wasRead… Read more »
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is looking to hire a talented Web Project Manager (Management Analyst). The position is located in Washington, DC, in the Web Services Staff. The Web Services Staff supports the agency’s Internet, intranet, and emerging Web 2.0 strategy. The positionRead… Read more »
Usability studies are not nearly as difficult to perform as rocket surgery or brain science 😉 Traditionally, usability studies were outsourced at exorbitant cost, but we’ve seen that the same results can be had using a little imagination and a cornucopia of software tools we have readily available. Your first step should be This NIHRead… Read more »