PUBLIC MARKS from sbrothier with tags webdesign & usability

Humans, though cute and cuddly, are not without their flaws, which makes it a challenge to design for them. By understanding how the wet, mushy processor works in these hairy little devils, you can design interfaces and web experiences that will have them hopelessly devoted to your brand. Aarron will introduce you to the emotional usability principle—a design axiom that identifies a strong connection between human emotion and perceived usability.

UX (User Experience) is all those elements and factors related to the user’s interaction with a particular environment or device which generate a positive or negative perception of the product, brand or device. UX is subjective and focused on use. The standard definition of UX is “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”. These factors are related to design and usability, but also to the emotions and feelings generated in the user, accessibility, brand trust…

Almost sneakily, the New York Times rolled out an update of the trusty hyperlink on its website’s stories. New code embedded in the pages allows you to link to and highlight individual paragraphs and even sentences.

In January 2000, T-Online asked us what we’d do if we could design a browser from scratch. Our answer was “Tabs”. Eight years later Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla, asked me what I think a new tab should look like. The answer after days of mailing back and forth: “Forget tabs!”

collection snippets of good designb

A simple online usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces.

Baekdal.com now features a completely redesigned commenting system that tabs into the power of social networks. Instead of manually typing in your name, you simply press a button. How amazing is that...

Mega drop-down navigation at Basecamp and Rails Guides site Matt Mar 25 16 comments Latest by Jonathan Jakob Nielsen says mega drop-down navigation menus work well. Given that regular drop-down menus are rife with usability problems, it takes a lot for me to recommend a new form of drop-down. But, as our testing videos show, mega drop-downs overcome the downsides of regular drop-downs. Thus, I can recommend one while warning against the other. We’ll +1 that. A good, related example from our world: The project switcher in Basecamp. switcher Design Decisions: Basecamp Project Switcher [SvN] explains how we redesigned the project switcher from a normal drop-down to a mega drop-down.

We just rolled out a new comments system today at Digg. Redesigning one of the busiest and most vibrant comments areas on the web is pretty intimidating. Every day quite a few thousands of people participate in the comments and many more read the comments even if they're not participating. Despite its shortcomings, many people are familiar with the current system and forcing people to adapt to an altered version isn't something I took lightly.

Beginning today, we are rolling out a completely rewritten comment system. Some users may notice the changes immediately, and others may notice the new stuff several days later. In other words, this is a rolling release, and since it may contain some bugs, we'd rather only a subsection of the Newsvine population be exposed to it at this time.

These are just different ways of displaying what can be a rather long list of comments.

By far the most complex portion of the comments system was how dynamic it was going to be. Threads would be zipping in and out, we’d be creating 90% of the HTML dynamically in the DOM from JSON, posting and editing over AJAX, etc. It was during design that Micah and I also plotted to remove script.aculo.us and replace it with the smaller jQuery library. The entire comment system is, in fact, a series of jQuery plugins.

Digg has added a new comment system which, in an apparent effort to fight "comment abuse", hides replies automatically. Comments can be expanded either through clicking on 'View Replies' or using the 'Expand Tree' button in 'Comment Display Options'. The Digg Up and Digg Down buttons also have new icons.

Hola! We’re excited to launch the new Comments system – we’ve listened to your requests and feedback and have incorporated many of your suggestions. Some highlights include:

After months of work behind the scenes, vague promises up front, and half-assed hacks, today we are very excited to take the wraps off exciting new stuff for Lifehacker commenters. In order to make having conversations with your fellow readers here easier, we've just rolled out a major revamp to our site commenting system. Fresh out of the oven, our all-new "threaded comments" system organizes comment replies more logically and makes discussing the post at hand—and other users' reactions to it—easier to do and digest. Hit up any post with comments to start tinkering with the new system yourself, or read on to get the full rundown of what's changed and why.

I’ve made another improvement to the comments system, and this time I think it’s pretty innovative (well, I think the last one was as well, but I do like this one). This only works 100% correctly in Mozilla, and I’m not sure why. IE and Opera get 90% of the way there, and that’ll do until I figure out what the problem is. Anyway, on to the idea…

Drupal.org prototype development • Please note: These prototype files are to indicate and demonstrate functionality only. They are not indicative of the final design of the website.

How does SocialHistory.js know? By using a cute information leak introduced by CSS. The browser colors visited links differently than non-visited links. All you have to do is load up a whole bunch of URLs for the most popular social bookmarking sites in an iframe and see which of those links are purple and which are blue. It’s not perfect (which, from a privacy perspective, is at least a little comforting) but it does get you 80% of the way there. The best/worst part is that this information leak probably won’t be plugged because it’s a fundamental feature of the browser.

This blog is where I share what I’m passionate about and what’s currently got my attention in the realm of User Experience (UX), User Centred Design (UCD), Information Architecture (IA), Interaction Design (IxD), and Usability. I’m particularly interested in where these things intersect with Social Design and have a great interest in how social environments online shape us and how we shape them, and how we as designers should be getting involved in improving our social experience online. My name is Leisa Reichelt. I do freelance contextual research and user centred design. I’m based in London but have quite a bit of experience working remotely.

Dinosaurs designing websites

What strikes me most plainly about this design is how the effect of a big, lumbering organisation can impact on a redesign. A good few months ago, or maybe years, when this proposal was first taking shape, it was probably the time when curved gradients, reflections and like were at the forefront of the ‘web 2.0 aesthetic’. Thing is, it takes any large organisation ages to get their shit together. Which is why designing to visual trends such as this is so risky. If your organisation can’t react quickly enough to keep up, then go the classic design route every time. If you don’t, your design will look dated within months. Or, in this case, even before it’s launched.

Bill Scott, the former AJAX Evangelist for Yahoo, recently gave a talk about Rich media interaction - or more precisely the pros and cons of many the modern interaction methods that are being used in today's websites and web applications.

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. Our goal is to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently. This is a community effort to improve the email experience for both designers and readers alike.