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Graphics, layout and usability tips for web designers
: Design BlogLearn Design From The Masters—First Up: Mark Boulton
Today we published the first in our series of SitePoint Community Interviews with renowned designers, entitled Mark Boulton’s Freelance Design Secrets.
In the interview, Andy Kowalik, one of our mentors on the SitePoint Forums talks to UK-based designer Mark Boulton about how he got started in design, how he made the leap from salaried employee to business owner, and picks Mark’s brains on grid theory, typography, and other peculiarities of design on the Web.
Go read it now!
Is there a web designer you’d like to see us interview? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll track them down and put them in the spotlight.
Why The 10 Commandments Of Web Design Are Complete Baloney
I read this morning in the SitePoint Industry News forum that BusinessWeek had compiled what is being referred to as The 10 Commandments of Web Design.
The experts who contributed to this list include widely read authors and speakers like Dan Cederholm, Dave Shea, Khoi Vinh and Jeffrey Zeldman. Here it is:
1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.
8. Thou shalt be social.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king.
On the surface, this advice seems reasonably innocuous. However, dig deeper and you’ll see that it all falls apart. Allow me to explain …
Before I launch into why I think this list is baloney, allow me a couple of minutes to don my flame suit. It’s a little dusty since I used it last. Oh, and don’t forget to grab a pinch of salt from the kitchen on your way through — you might need it.
OK, here we go. Deep breath … I’m going …
Reddit’s Flawed CAPTCHA: Adding Insult To Injury
Usability is an inexact science, but I’m pretty sure there is at least one golden rule that is non-negotiable, and that’s this:
Never, ever, insult your users.
Unless your web site revolves around insults, and every error message consists of a purposefully engineered insult for humorous reasons, treating your users with disdain or disrespect is a huge no-no.
Earlier today I decided to sign up for reddit, the popular social bookmarking service. My experience has turned me right off the service. Here’s my rant:
1. The CAPTCHA
First, I clicked Submit Link, and was presented with an option to register.
I’m personally not a huge fan of CAPTCHAs, for many reasons (there are alternatives, but there’s no panacea), but I do empathise with why people put them in place. Unlike someone who has poor eyesight, I can usually read the letters, and it’s usually only once that I need to type them in, so we’ll let that slide for now. And at least the letters in reddit’s CAPTCHA are relatively easy to decipher compared with others that I’ve seen in use … right?
Wrong.
2. The Insult
Here’s what I was presented with after clicking the Create Account button:
Apparently those letters weren’t as easy to decipher …
Four Days Left To Win A MacBook From 99designs!
Our friends over at 99designs are running a competition to win a MacBook, and there are only 4 days left:
Just a final reminder that we are giving away a free MacBook to one lucky designer who submits a winning design to 99designs.com before June 20th. Any design that is selected as a winner before that date is in the running. The more winners you have, the more chances you’ve got, so get designing quickly!
If you fancy yourself as a hot-shot designer, check out some of the current contests, and get your submission in.
Good luck all!
Google Changes Favicon, Challenges You To Do Better
Last week Google tweaked their favicon (that little 16×16 pixel icon in your browser’s tab), changing it from an uppercase G to a lowercase g.
Now, a change like this is normally something that shouldn’t matter — it’s not like they changed their actual logo to begin with a lowercase g, or made any changes to their home page. They just tweaked the 256 pixels in the browser’s tab. But this is one of the strongest brands in the world, and tabbed browsing has become a standard feature in all browsers.
Favicons are no longer an optional “nice-to-have” — users come to rely on them as a usability aid, so those 256 pixels are an extension of a company’s brand. Add to that the fact that people generally don’t like change, and the result is hundreds of blogs complaining about how ugly the new icon was.
Personally, I don’t mind it. The new icon threw me at first — the big G was instantly recognizable, and being able to jump to a tab based on that visual aid is a crucial part of how I navigate. However, after a few days of getting used to it, I realized that change …
Adobe Fireworks CS4 beta released
Adobe have made the new Fireworks CS4 beta download available, and the good news is anyone with Fireworks CS3 — either standalone or as part of the web suites — can take it for a spin.
- You’ll need to have an account at Adobe and login.
- You’ll then be directed to the download page. The downloads are 336 MB for the Win version and 633 MB for the Mac.
- Once installed and launched, you’ll be asked for a serial number. Warning: This is NOT your current CS3 serial (which is what I tried originally). You’ll have to go to this page, enter your CS3 serial, and then you’ll be issued with a new Fireworks CS4 serial to enter into the app.
Maybe it’s just me, but when you’re told you’ll need your old serial number, and soon after an ‘Enter your serial here’ screen pops up, it seems perfectly logical to enter your old serial there — which, of course, failed and left me feeling silly.
I backtracked and figured it out, but I bet others are making similar mistakes — and flooding Adobe support. Perhaps issuing the new serial THEN offering the download would be a …
Are You User Experienced?
Last Friday I was lucky enough to spent an entire day at a web conference without seeing one line of HTML or single CSS declaration. In fact, I can’t even remember hearing the word “Ajax” once.
I learned a lot though!
There’s no argument that the Web is a relatively technical medium, so it’s with good reason that we all spend a lot of time thinking about, discussing and practicing the technical skills of the Web.
Nevertheless, when you boil it all down, the Web is really just one big, overly-complicated pipe that humans use to shout information back and forward to each other.
A cursory look at the millions of pages written on code, standards and other technical matters suggests we may be spending a little too much time thinking about how our shouting gets through, and not nearly enough time thinking about how we’re shouting.
The theories behind what makes good shouting are broadly referred to as the soft skills of the web — areas such as user experience design, information architecture, usability testing and research design — and that is exactly what Web Directions: User Experience was all about.
Web Directions UX Wrap-up: Andy Budd and Steve Baty
I’ve just published the transcript of an interview I did with Andy Budd at Web Directions UX last week. It’s quite long, but well worth the read — we cover all sorts of topics such as careers in web design, the future of CSS, IE8, HTML 5, the role of usability testing in the design process, CSS frameworks, CSS gallery sites and more!
Sifting through the notes I took last Friday, here are some snippets that I jotted down from another speaker whose talk I got a lot out of — Steve Baty, who spoke about Analysing User Research Data.
Steve managed to introduce a number of quite scary and complex looking statistical formulae, without having his audience drift off to sleep or turn and run for the exit. Being passionate about his chosen field and a charismatic presenter certainly helped matters. Perhaps it’s just because, with his glasses off, he looks like Charlie (David Krumholtz) from Numb3rs, which probably reinforced his credibility in my mind.
The takeaway that I got from Steve’s talk is that user research data is useless unless you do something with it, and that “something” needs to be well-defined before you collect it. He …
Web Directions Gov: Making eGovernment Reality
Nathanael Boehm is reporting for SitePoint from Web Directions Government 2008, in Canberra Australia.
It was a chilly start to the day with the temperature hovering just above zero degrees as we waited in the dining area of Old Parliament House, cups of coffee in hand, listening to people who’d attended the breakfast session tell us how good Jason Ryan’s presentation had been. Jason is currently Communications Manager at the State Services Commission in New Zealand and presented on “Government 2.0: The public management challenge”. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to meet Jason however I did talk with one of his colleagues at the State Services Commission Rowan Smith who is involved with the New Zealand Government Web Standards project.
At 9:00am John Allsopp opened the conference and talked about how the focus of these conferences has expanded and is no longer about accessibility and other technical low-level issues. Although these are still as relevant and important now as 5 years ago the adoption and integration of best practice in those areas has reached a point where can move onto the next big thing, which for this conference was eGovernment: how …
Web Directions UX: Making Your Users Feel Special
Andy Budd kicked off the Web Directions User Experience conference this morning with some terrific insight into what makes a site that really works so memorable for the site’s users.
The core message of Andy’s presentation was that other industries have long understood the importance of a positive user experience, and the Web can learn a lot from this.
His presentation gave lots of tips, with plenty of rich examples:
- First impressions count: Hoteliers understand this, hence good hotels offer smiling greeters in the lobby, chocolates and written notes on your pillow.
- Attention to detail gets noticed: Apple are a company that realize the difference that attention to detail can make — consider the effort that has been put into the packaging of their products, which results in customers actually photographing the unboxing of their iPod. From the sound of the door closing on a new BMW to the rubbish bins at Disney theme parks being themed, people notice this stuff.
- Personalisation and customisation matters: Starbucks allows its customers to customise their coffees, and the Nintendo Wii and other games let users create their own characters. Second life takes this to a new level to accommodate people’s needs to assert their individuality. …
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