March 27th, 2008, 11 Comments »
Two weeks ago I stayed at the Sheraton Wall Centre for a few days. I made liberal use of their Internet access (priced at about CAN $12 a day, which is a deal at a four-star hotel). As usual, to sign up for their service, you had to complete an online form that popped up when you opened your browser. Here’s what it looked like (as always, click for a larger version):
Hilariously, the bottom half of the form is labeled “Ignore the Following Fields and Click Submit”. Then there are three fields, each labeled ‘Ignore This Field’.
Obviously this is a UI disaster. I’m sure there’s some peculiar explanation why the developer could edit field labels but not actually the form itself, but that’s not really satisfactory, is it?
There are actually two separate design disasters here. The less obvious one is the use of the software design term ‘field’. I don’t think the average hotel internet user understands that those blank areas are called ‘fields’. Most people just call them ‘boxes’.
11 Comments »
January 15th, 2008, 4 Comments »
Over at my day job, we’re running a little web design and development survey for Nitobi. I know some designer and developer types read my blog, so I’m hoping a few of you will take five minutes to complete the survey. It’s only 14 questions, and most of them are multiple choice.
As an enticement, we’re giving away an iPod Nano to one luck participant.
4 Comments »
December 11th, 2007, 3 Comments »
I’ll stop pimping ebook-related stuff soon, I promise. However, I did want to point to our first substantive blog post from the ebook blog. It’s an excerpt from the book, and discusses ways in which you can make your site more friendly for social media creators:
Ensure that social media creators can link to any and every page on your website. This goes double for websites with online product catalogs. Make it easy for bloggers to write, “I really love this!” and send visitors to your website. Too many sites rely on Flash or arcane organization to display their products. As a result, the URL in the address bar doesn’t reference the particular product you’re viewing.
Both these companies make great products, so we’re reluctant to pick on them, but Matt & Nat and Crumpler both have disappointing websites in this regard. Bloggers are left writing, “click ‘Products’, then scroll to the fourth bag from the right, then pick the blue one…”
I’m totally cheating by calling it “12 Ways”, but hey, the Internet loves a list. If you like the post, please consider Digging, Del.iciu.using (oy) or Stumbling it.
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October 9th, 2007, 10 Comments »
I’ve been doing some reading about ebooks recently, and enjoyed a Copyblogger post about creating ebooks that sell. Brian references an ebook site featuring a book on, uh, writing ebooks.
When I visited the site, I was reminded of a phenomenon I’ve observed in recent years around ebooks and similar digital offerings. You can also see it on GoogleAdSecrets.com and the prolix URL SearchEngineOptimizationStrategies.com.
It’s a particular (and peculiar) kind of website. Really just one very long page, it features a single, centered column, few images, and many bold offers, claims and testimonials. It pretty much defies every major web design trend of this millennium. To the sophisticated web surfer, it looks profoundly tacky.
Clearly it must sell ebooks, though, or people wouldn’t use it. Did one person prove this was the optimal selling strategy, and everybody emulated them? I’d imagine so. The pages certainly don’t inspire confidence in me, but I guess they’re not selling to me.
10 Comments »
July 18th, 2007, 7 Comments »
I’m running our little Bar Camp Malta survey on Zoomerang. This is the first time I’ve used that service. The setup was a little clunky, but the price–free like the wind and the sea–was right.
Every time I log in to Zoomerang, to tweak the survey or check the results, I’m presented with this message:
There are so many things wrong with that error message. First, it shouldn’t exist at all. How come every other Web app I use can either auto-magically save my work, or prevent me from logging out without saving?
Second, the language is incredibly waffly. “It does not appear” that I logged out? This implies that the developers can’t really tell for sure if I logged out or not. And then the real problem–I “could” have lost changes? Even if I don’t, surely Zoomerang ought to know whether I lost changes.
Finally, I’m given no recourse but to not log in (’Cancel’) or proceed in shame (’Ok’). They don’t even bother to say “to avoid losing your work in the future, be sure to log out”.
It’s classic old-school UI design thinking. Instead of building better software, they just uselessly berate the user.
7 Comments »
July 15th, 2007, 11 Comments »
Here’s a little thought experiment for you. What if, in the early days of the Web, it became a uniform, standard practice for websites to include metadata about their designers? Here’s one way it might have looked:
The designer’s name wouldn’t be visible on the site, but would be accessible to anybody who knew how to click ‘View Source’ in their browser. The most natural analogy that I can think of is tags on clothing. You can always ‘view source’ by flipping up someone’s tag to see if their shirt came from Mexx or Tommy Hilfiger.
I still occasionally see a design credit in the footer of a site, or in the CSS file, but it’s the exception, not the rule.
How would the world of web design be different? Here are my initial thoughts:
- It would be incredibly useful for web designers for word of mouth promotion. If I see a site I like, I can find out who built it, and contact them to build my site.
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- There would be a greater general awareness of boutique designers, much the way there are boutique ad agencies today. There would be a certain cache for a company to be able to publicly advertise that their site was by, I don’t know, Jeffrey Zeldman. In short, more people might know who Jeffrey Zeldman is.
- It might change the business of web design a little. Companies might hire more designers in-house, because they’re reluctant to admit that they outsourced the work. Or it might have made outsourcing the work all the more common.
- The average web design would be a little better, and less cookie-cutter. If a designer puts their name on every site, they might be reluctant to use the same wire frames over and over again.
- People could build cool tools and browser plug-ins to, for example, generate an ad hoc portfolio of all the sites by a particular designer.
I’m a mere hack of a web designer, and I only built my first site back in 1999. I wonder if this practice was more common in the early days of the web, and went the way of all time?
How do you think designer labels would impact the world of web design?
11 Comments »
June 13th, 2007, 9 Comments »
Via Neil, here’s an instant messager interview between the mysterious CBC blogger Ouimet and Andrew Lundy, senior producer at the newly-revamped CBCSports.ca. There’s some interesting discussion about the re-emergence of portals (no, duh) and the direction of the CBC’s online sports coverage:
The goal was to bring the whole CBC Sports experience online. Since our new agreements with sports bodies like the NHL, FIFA and MLS include video, we want to offer people that. And we want to be more interactive, so we’re beefing up user-generated content and forums, as well as adding contests and pools and games to the mix. The end result should be a complete sports experience, beyond the stories and stats.
The interview is too long. Why is there such an aversion to editing amongst bloggers and podcasters? I think it’s taking the whole transparency and authenticity thing too seriously if the reader (or listener or viewer) has to troll through the piece for the good bits. I blame Robert.
9 Comments »
March 27th, 2007, No Comments »
Here’s an amusing little parable about responsible web design, from the folks at Common Craft:
John McCain’s campaign recently created a MySpace page and made a few mistakes along the way. They used Mike Davidson’s (the co-founder of Newsvine) design template (without credit) and even images from Mike’s server. When Mike discovered this, he switched out an image as a prank. Hilarious.
That reminded me a little of a post I wrote on Capulet a while ago, called The Wrath of a Junior Designer.
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March 27th, 2007, 7 Comments »
Kate links to a very worthwhile local project called ChicTech:
ChicTech pairs a three or four person team of young women with a university mentor to create a website for a non-profit organization. The websites are then judged, the teams are rewarded and hopefully these girls are encouraged to stay in a technical field. Or at least see the potential a career in IT has.
ChicTech is currently for Vancouver-area girls, in Grades 9 or 10. This year’s competition is underway. The organizing team is still looking for sponsors and contributions to the final prizes.
Sounds like a great idea, and Capulet’s going to donate a little money to the cause. I’m also going to enquire (assuming the other organizers don’t mind) if they’re interested in some of our leftover Bloggable shirts from Northern Voice.
The cynic in me did leave this comment on Kate’s site:
I’ve gotta say, there’s no shortage of female web designers out there. In fact, the majority of web designers I meet are women. I can’t help but think that a contest for boys would have been around building a program, as opposed to designing a website.
I’m certainly not calling web design a ghetto, but it’s not really IT or ‘computer science’ per se. I know web designers (of both genders) who don’t code at all–they build mockups and subcontract to somebody else for the coding bits.
Regardless, I’m just nitpicking–it sounds like a great project. I’m sure that for some participants web design can function as a sort of gateway drug to web or software development and related, more technical fields.
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