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Usability 2.0
: Usability BlogNew GMail System Helps Prevent Email Embarrassment
Have you ever sent an email to the wrong recipient? Craig looks at a new GMail add-in which could help you.
10 Fantastic Spam Filtering Solutions
Unless it is Monty Python singing about spam, none of us want it. These solutions will help you clean it out of your inbox.
11 Virtual Machine Solutions To Ease Your Cross-Platform Checks
Who needs two computers when you have virtual machines? Sean lays out 11 solutions to help you run as many operating systems as you desire on a limited amount of hardware.
Do You Need Cake if the Icing is Amazing?
It’s great to be able to break outside the standard user experience to make people sit up and take notice. But what do you do after you get their attention? Sometimes nothing.
12 Tools To Check Your Site’s Accessibility
You want to make sure that everyone can access your web site, but have you run it through an accessibility tool yet? This list of twelve tools will help you check everything from your coding to how prepared you are for visually impaired visitors.
Play Your Cards Right: Run Your First Card Sort
Let’s say you’re building a new intranet for a company. You could have a go at rearranging and categorizing it yourself, but that may be tricky — especially if you’re unfamiliar with the subject matter. Card sorting to the rescue!
Google’s New CAPTCHA: The Only Way Is Up!
CAPTCHA has always been a controversial subject. Last week Google offered their latest thinking on the issue — Socially Adjusted CAPTCHA. Is this a step forward or just fiddling at the margins?
DRM: Cutting Off Your Prose to Spite Your Face
How far should you go to protect your copyright? Yesterday I stumbled across a site willing to scramble their content for Google for the sake of preventing copy and pasting. Is it worthwhile inconveniencing 99.99% of your everyday readers to stop the .01% of your visitors that are copyright infringers?
11 Expert Tips For Enhancing The User Login Process
It seems simple, but a lot can go wrong when you ask your users to log in to your site! In this post, Gary lists eleven tips that he’s compiled over the years for ensuring that the users of your web app enjoy a seamless experience.
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 …