User experience category
Really interactive websites
Living web sites that grow, develop and evolve to suit the taste of the people that read them are now finding their way on to the internet.
Roger Highfield - Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'
According to the article scientists at Creative Synthesis are evolving a software that tracks the behavior of a visitor and what attracts him and what's not to improve the site experience for each visitor, by every refresh of a page features changed.
This is an awesome new technology that can enhance user experiences very much, can you imagine, tracking a visitor day by day, see what he uses the most what's not, and focus on what he needs the most, The more you use the site the more it gets to know you and adapt more to your needs.
Once the blog went live, control of the design was out of their hands.
Roger Highfield - Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'
That is really awesome, I didn't see real application of that yet but if it is applied nicely, it will be a revolution in user experience, I mean by applied nicely not to surprise the user by every refresh with different navigation position, links switched, headers or links colors changed, etc....
The transition should be done gradually so the user adapt to it smoothly, I guess people at Creative Synthesis are smart enough to already know what I'm saying, and I hope we see an application of this technology out in the wild, see how far will it get.
April 18, 2008, 11:25 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Integrated platform as I see it
Mayank proposed a question "Is Integrated Platform Web 3.0?", on his post he described integrated platform and how cool it is, here is part of it
I mean if I am using an application like latest news on my igoogle homepage, I shall be able to pull it out and place it on my desktop. I would surely like those apps that I use daily to be on my desktop working when I boot up my machine. Also, if I do some work on my computer and want it to be accessible from anywhere else, then I generally use email to save it over the wev. Now, what would be cool is that if I save that file on my desktop, then it automatically gets synched with a database on web and thus becomes accesible from anywhere. Thus, difference between storing one's file on desktop and storing it on web is blurred.
Mayank - Is Integrated Platform Web 3.0?
He also mentioned an approach towards it which is prism from Mozilla Labs, which is a great approach, it could convert your web apps like Facebook for example to a separate application with it's own shortcut on the desktop and no browser bordering it.
That's cute this really is the future of the web but I was thinking, why don't operating systems themselves integrate web apps in there systems just like desktop apps? why don't they show them just as desktop apps, just as you explore your hard disk to click on anything.exe or anything.app (for Apple users) we should explore the web just like our hard disks and click on anything.php (or maybe a new extension is created for this issue ".web" for example) and this application open just like any desktop application free of browser borders and has it's own icon, this truly maybe web 3.0
It's weird yesterday, we was impressed that web apps are replacing desktop apps in their functionalities, today we want web apps to really replace desktop apps in there place and get out of browsers borders.
Maybe Apple or Microsoft need to apply this quickly before OS's themselves become web apps.
October 28, 2007, 2:16 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Huge storage effect on the industry
Ofcourse by now most of you heard the news Hitachi Announces there World's First Terabyte Hard Drive Terabye = 1,000 gigabytes can you imagine I don't think we will need to archive and store our old data on outer storages again.
I think this new technology will have effect on many things as the new HD should be available on the first half of 2007 I think OS's IA's should begin working on more efficient finder's or explorer's like systems so it could handle all this information capacity without having the user searching for a file for hours.
And there is also an expected effect on the web as you may guess the need of really faster internet connection will increase as users now has the ability to download big files or videos without bothering with the space, and the good news for our community, the hosting prices will extremely decrease.
All those are expectations I don't know for real, what do you expect?
January 8, 2007, 11:48 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Using local language doesn't matter
On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care for websites content to be in your local language instead of English? Explain why, in your own language.
Actually I don’t care at all, I prefer to write in English because it’s the most widely used language letting more visitors to read my content especially technical or technology related subjects like mine.
The language used in a web site is an important issue that should be studied carefully before deciding which language to use for your business web site or personal blog etc… you should have expectations on the percentage of local and world wide visitors, and does the subject of the blog or business worth being in it’s local language like for example if it’s for fun or personal thoughts etc… or is it for IT or professional services which obviously English will be more suitable for, all these elements counts.
November 17, 2006, 3:45 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Where am I
It's important for your site visitor to know where exactly he is right now so he could found his way among your site and know where he is and where can he go, in more than one level structured sites it maybe represented like this (Home > products > Laptops) for example, but in 1 level structured sites like this one for example there is other ways.
You also have to take care not to link to the same page you're on so the page you're on should not be linked to in the same page, as it's extremely confusing.
The most well known technique is adding a class to the list item and style it differently through the CSS if we took the navigation on the left side here as an example it will be like this
<ul>
<li class="here">home</li>
<li><a href="about.htm" title="accesskey: 2" accesskey="2">about</a></li>
...</ul>
Now you could style it let's say like this
.here { font-style: italic; }
This is a way but it's not the best, as you should never link to the same page you are on in the navigation we could take that chance and use the opportunity that the page your on lack the <a> around it's name in the navigation, so we got that example
<ul>
<li>home</li>
<li><a href="about.htm" title="accesskey: 2" accesskey="2">about</a></li>
...</ul>
And style it like that
#nav { font-style: italic; }
#nav a { font-style: normal; }
By that you specified that the non linked item in this undefined list will be italic, without the need of specifying a class name in each page it will just style it as italic if it's not a link.
You may need to add <span> instead of <a> around your non linked item for giving the desired style as I needed it here in this site. I wrapped the non linked item with <span> because I needed to add some padding to it, here is what's in point CSS
#header ul li a, #header ul li span {
display: block;
padding: 5px 0;
}
That's all for today, good luck with your usable, semantic & beautifully styled navigations.
November 14, 2006, 8:49 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Other "no paging" suggestions
I had posted a post titled No paging = happier users suggesting leaving all content for example search results in one page other than separating it in pages.
Yesterday Molly the lead of the WaSP and one of the well know experts, has posted a post titled No More Next Page: Embracing the Non-Linear Web talking about the same subject and linking to an article she wrote since July, 2001 titled freedom in structure she also pointed to a post titled Endless Pageless: No More Next Page by Pete Forde he suggests great techniques that could be applied using AJAX that loads some of the remaining content once you get near with your scroll bar to the bottom of the page that you might not notice unless you scrolled to the bottom quickly you will see the message more posts are being loaded...
humanized reader is an example similar to what Pete Forde suggested.
But I still don't know why the need of that why don't you let it all load while the user is checking the first lines?
November 4, 2006, 1:00 PM Comments 2 TrackBack 0
Hello, I'm a human!
I'm a new client I was headed to this company office and at the gate I found this person with this smile on his face, he welcomed me warmly and escorted me through the sections of the company telling me briefly what every section do and how could I benefit from it.
I'm also a new client visiting this other company but this time I didn't find any smiley person waiting, I walked to the reception to find this very serious person wearing this business looking suite with that tie that couldn't be tied tighter than that, he asked me what I wanted without even looking to me I said well what is this all about
, he answered We are Complex Systems Inc.
he kept talking for a long time but I couldn't remember any of his talking I just remember some complex words like Fractal
, ionic
, rocket
, complexity
I was standing in front of him with my mouth open, he though he did his job perfectly and I now really think that this company is very professional and I will definitely deal with it, but actually I will not as I just realized that this whole thing is a lot bigger than I though and that they will take a lot of money beside I didn't understand what really will I benefit from there services.
Well I mentioned those two examples because I believe that this reception person is your web site home page, some time it's welcoming, friendly & nice and others it's exactly the opposite that you feel that it's dealing with you as if you are some kind of a machine that only need to get input of some data and that's all, so I'd like to mention some tips to make your site more humanized.
Brand
Starting from the brand which is the first thing that your client eye will fall on, using smart untraditional brands that delivers an understandable message through fresh colors. That's what Etisalat made with there brand, you can guess which of them is the new.
Content
About the content it's nice to feel that some body is talking to me while I'm reading a website, replacing words like "About" & "Services" with "Who we are?" & "What we do?" and using more friendly non-technical words may let the reader feel more at home more comfortable and encourage him to continue reading.
Design
Also replacing dull colors and sharp corners with fresh colors and soft rounded corners that let the reader feel as if it's natural interface than a machinery, big headers also help, here are some humanized web sites to understand what I mean.
Have a nice day ;)
September 30, 2006, 8:48 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
No paging = happier users
What I mean by paging is the separation of content on more than 1 page after it exceeds a specific amount, as in Google search for example search for anything to find for example 1000 results actually they are over 1000000000 but to simplify our calculations let's say 1000, those results will be separated on 100 pages 10 results per page arranged from the most relevant to the least.
It's also used in other types of content for example in del.icio.us for bookmarks, Wired News for separating long stories also maybe it's made to show more ads during a story & flickr for separating photos.
What I've been thinking about for a while and wanted to discuss with you is weather or not paging is the best experience for a user, and if not what other possibilities could be applied.
less mouse clicks + less waiting time + less finding a link time & effort ( I mean the next link or the numbers ) = better user experience so I got another possibility that has none of the above the other possibility simply is not using paging and just leave all the content as it is in one page, some body just asked what are you crazy what if I got 1000000000 items like the search results of anything, yes but remember that those items will load from up to down that means that the showed part of the page which is the most upper part will be filled first immediately then the scroll bar will begin to get smaller indicating that the web page is vertically getting longer, if you are going to examine the items one by one I'm sure your examination time to every item will be a lot less than it's loading time even if you just roll your eyes on them.
Another one just asked "But now I will have to read the page before it's completely loaded" and why not what prevent you of reading a page while it's still loading in fact most of the users do that and maybe even click on a link before the page is fully loaded, another question "But it might download unnecessary content if I left the web page opened" the most probability is that the user will click on a link or just enter in a new URL or close the browser, but if he didn't and leave it opened yes sure that might be a problem because it will affect the net speed that might be needed in other browsers windows or any open downloads and if the net is used by a network of computers not only single PC it will decrease the net speed of the whole network it will not really affect if the content is text but if it's a list of photos like in flickr it will definitely affect, and this is not a problem for the user only it's a bigger problem for the page owner as it will cost him a lot of extra unnecessary bandwidth.
So what to do now ? I suggest adding the option No paging beside the options that we often see Show 10, 25, 50, 100 in a page let it be show 10, 25, 50, 100, all in a page, let the option all be the default if the content is text and let the option be 25 or 50 if the content is images according to the size of images if they are high resolution let it be 25 or 10 if low let it be 50 etc...
If you choose not to page you just have to take care not to put the side bar and the navigation etc... below the main content in the Markup the main content have to be the last thing because if you put the side bar and navigation etc... after the content they will not load until all the content is loaded.
Here is a 1MB HTML file that contains this post 245 times, to imagine how easy life will be without paging.
August 15, 2006, 12:40 AM Comments 2 TrackBack 0
User Experience Week 2006
adaptive path the leaders of user experience has arranged the user experience week from August 14 to 17, I hope there will be any podcasts to hear, as there are very interesting topics that will be discussed with very interesting speakers including Jesse James Garrett from adaptive path & Jeffrey Veen a co-founder of adaptive path currently working with google.
July 7, 2006, 3:27 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
black on white or white on black ?!
I was thinking why most of web pages uses black text on white background, maybe because this is the default colors of any web page, and why is it the default colors maybe because who first put this standard wanted to imitate papers and ink.
Why is it the default to light all screen pixels and only put off some pixels resembling the text, isn't this illogical ? I personally think it is.
White on black is better for accessibility check my zoom layout, it's also easier on the eyes, open a black on white page in a tab and a white on black page on another tab and switch between them you will feel the difference and wonder why is black on white is the default, I have made Freestyler and another web site under construction white on black other than this site zoom layout, another examples of white on black or more accurately light on dark web sites is Veerle's blog & Dustin Diaz, I see it more logical that white on black be the default.
Well ofcourse it's difficult to change this now but what do you think if you go back to the very beginning and you have the choice to put this standard what would you choose?
May 11, 2006, 2:12 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Getting Real
37signals reveals the secrets about how they get real in a relatively short period of time in there new book Getting Real, I advice entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives & marketers to read it.
March 8, 2006, 4:02 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
New era of publishing
How many times have you read a thousand pages book just to know some information that could be written in only 100 pages or even 10, and how many times you forced to buy a hard copy of a book while you wish you could download it, how many times you wanted to actually contribute and help improving books and suggesting ideas.
It looks like publishing strategies need to be updated to cope the new era of innovated bright readers, and I think Rosenfeld Media is this bright new publisher, publishing right to the point books that could be read on a short plane ride.
Unfortunately they are publishing user experience design books only, I understand that maybe for a new era of publishing most of regular readers will not be familiar with it, but user experience designers will be familiar with it as this new way actually is innovated from user experience but it maybe called reader experience, but I hope it will be more familiar to more readers by time especially in the technology related subjects, they didn't published any books yet but I'm expecting really nice books from them.
By the way the magnificent design is Dave Shea's design.
January 13, 2006, 9:53 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
About user experience
I'm facing a problem these days, whenever I meet a client and he ask me So what do you do?
I said I'm a user experience consultant
he said What ??? What does that mean ?
well the answer of this question is not so easy, not every one understand the answer, so I hope I could explain more what is user experience in this post.
The short answer is. It is the ability to let a web site or a web app a pleasure for users to use.
The long answer is. User experience consists of many factors.
Usability
The easiness of using a site or app, how to make it very clear and easy for users to use your site or app. Users will hate it when they enter a site and then don't know how to perform a specific function.
Speed
Users don't want to wait minutes for your page to load or for specific action to be done. that's also a reason for a user to go and swear never to come back to your site or app.
Accessibility
A fair percentage of disable persons use the internet, how to let them able to use your site or app, even old persons with old eyes may find difficulties using your site if it's not prepared for that.
Findability
How to let a site or app organized enough so that any person can find a piece of information he want's to find it easily and quickly. Letting a website be highly ranked on search engines is considered part of findability too.
At the end
The main way for achieving better user experiences is complying web standards, but it's not alone.
Does that mean that I'm not a web designer? No, but a design has to have a cause has to be user centered & easy on the eyes and a lot of other things that let design has a cause not just graphics.
User experience design is important for web sites but a lot more important for web apps, as web apps had more complexity than web sites. To understand me more see The elements of user experience by Jesse James Garrett.
January 4, 2006, 4:10 PM Comments 2 TrackBack 0
DON'T LET ME WAIT, USE AJAX
By the transition of web sites to web applications, user experience becomes more complicated, and caring for user experience becomes more important. While thinking about user experience you have to put yourself in the user shoes and see what he likes and what he hates, if you ask me one of the first things I hate after miss-usability Which is the DON'T LET ME THINK
part, is slow speed this problem is becoming more in web apps than in web sites.
The problem
The problem is waiting for every user request to go to the server and back with a different page. In web apps it isn't about hyperlinks any more it's about relatively complicated functionalities, let's take Flickr as an example, you got this photo you can rename, add description & add tags to it. What if every single request of those want you to wait for it to go ask the server what do you think should we do this request to the user and the server reply oh well maybe after I take a nap and they keep chatting while you are shouting Hey request I'm waiting here, will I wait every time like this?
.
A bad user experience is an anti-marketing for your project first of all a user will never come back to you, then he will never recommend you and he may even warn others from you.
The solution
Yes this is it, by placing an Ajax engine between the user and the server, and boom it's solved no more waiting, read more about how it works.
Ofcourse it is not yet supported by all browsers and there have to be alternatives for browsers that blocks javascript, but it's still a big jump towards better user experience.
Check out some Ajaxed web apps.
Is it part of Web 2.0?
I believe it's not part of Web 2.0 concepts, but many web 2.0 apps couldn't exist without it, How is that?
Let's take Ta-da List as a simple example, Ta-da List is a simple app for online to-do lists imagine if it was not based on Ajax how slow would it be, a user should have to wait every time he check a box or add an item or reorder or rename, that users will prefer to do it offline rather than waiting. But Ajax is the reason this app exists.
So Ajax is not a part of Web 2.0 but it delivers the better experience that's required for Web 2.0 to exist.
November 29, 2005, 6:12 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0