Pemaquid Communications

Pemaquid’s adventures on Facebook are the subject of a story in today’s Portland Press Herald (Just my luck, I got a haircut the day after they took the photo, and no, you won’t see it here).

Thanks to my Facebook buddies Wendy Clark (Portland Diner logo) and Jennifer Ecker (Web design) for their help in creating Pemaquid’s Facebook apps. Thanks also to Facebook friend Justin Ellis (PPH reporter who wrote the story), who gave us a very “honorable mention”.

Our apps mentioned in the story:

• Portland Diner
• Lost on Liftoff

More are on the way. Stay tuned…

From today’s Dilbert:

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Au contraire, mon ami! Usability is the most important piece of your Web strategy. Without it, the money spent on design, programming and especially search engine optimization will be wasted.

I’d like to thank Shirley Helfrich, Thomas Bennett and the folks at the Prince Memorial Library and everyone at the Southern Maine Library District for inviting me to speak the other day about Web site usability at their annual conference. Thanks for the opportunity, the thoughtful questions – and for not throwing tomatoes!

Here are some of the tips I mentioned (and some I did not), as well as some links to resources you might find useful.

Usability

• people don’t read Web pages, they scan them support that scanning activity by “chunkifying” the content on your pages (use headings, subheadings, lists, meaningful link text)
• don’t use “click here” in your link text. It’s wastes space. Use either an action word (“shop”, “review”) or a descriptive word (“apples”, “oranges”) that describes what the person will see when clicking
• if you want someone to click on something, make it look like a button
• if you want someone to read something, make it a text link (not a graphic; see banner blindness
• if it’s a link, underline it; if it’s not, don’t underline
• when linking to PDFs, spreadsheets and other files, put the filetype and the size of the file in the link text (big pdf file (PDF – 1.7MB)
• avoid uploading/linking files that are more than, say, 4MB in size (see Attack of the Giant PDF)
• don’t use “What’s New” (it gets old fast)
• review your traffic stats to see what how people are moving through your site and which sections of your site are generating the most traffic

Accessibility

• provide “alt text” for all images on your Web pages
• use relative sizing for fonts (%, rather than pixels)
• ideally, use CSS to layout your site (less code, easier for assistive devices to interpret properly)
• in forms – remember to use labels and associate labels with the proper form field – learn more
• don’t use color as the only way to represent information (as in: red = “bad”; red=”required”)

Resources

• Watchfire’s Webexact accessibility checker – great for spot-checking your work
• Web developer Toolbar for Firefox – a ton of useful tools for accessibility/usability built right into the browser
• World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative – the standards for accessible Web site design, from the folks who brought you HTML
• Section 508 – federal standards for software accessibility
• Sim Daltonism – tool for viewing Web pages as a colorblind person might see them
• W3C Markup validation service – essential tool for making sure your Web pages are coded properly
• Dreamweaver – easy to use Web editor; the latest version has excellent support for CSS
• Coda – great little Web editor; helps you work faster. For advanced users comfortable hand-coding (Mac only)
• Accessible Photo Gallery – this gallery meets the criteria for accessible display of photos, uses progressive enhancement to meet needs of viewers
• CSS1 reference guide and CSS2 reference guide – from CSS guru Eric Meyer

Books

• Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug) – easy read; reveals how people really interact w/Web pages, and how you can take advantage in your design
• Bulletproof Web Design (Dan Cederholm) – shows how you can use CSS to tackle common design challenges
• Designing with Web Standards (Jeffrey Zeldman) – Zeldman explains why Web standard design techniques are the way to go

Walt Mossberg reviews Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s OS X, in today’s Wall Street Journal. he says it’s easier to use than Microsoft’s Vista. His review illustrates once again that in the digital world, designing for usability will lead to success in the long run. As many as 20% of non-corporate computer sales go to Apple now, up from low single digits recently.

Why? Here’s what Mossberg says of OS X:

…It has proved to be as powerful and versatile for mainstream consumers as Windows, yet easier to use(emphasis mine) and more secure…

It works the same way for Web sites. In the long run, if your site is easier to use than a competitor’s – think Facebook (easy) vs. MySpace (cluttered and clunky) – you’ll win in the long run, even if your competitor has the #1 spot on Google.

If you’re a Web designer, 2007 is the year that Internet Explorer 6 became “the new Netscape 4″. Actually, no, things could never be that bad again, but when you’re designing Web sites using CSS and Web standards, IE6 is the one that now throws up the most humdingers.

A question I often hear from other designers is why, with IE7 and Firefox offering better support for Web standards, aren’t more people upgrading from IE6? (The latest browser statistics show IE6 use falling from about 42% to 36% during the past 8 months.)

The reason has to do with usability and cost-benefit analysis.

While most Web designers wouldn’t dream of using IE6 as their primary browser these days, especially with add-ons like the Web developer toolbar and Firebug available for Firefox, it works just fine for what most people want to do online. Checking email, reading up on sports scores and stock prices, buying shirts from LL Bean and using social network sites like LinkedIn, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace all can be done just fine w/IE6. There’s no compelling reason to switch.

Kevin Hale of Particle Tree has written an interesting article on the subject.

The upshot for Web designers? Remember to focus on usability when working with Clients to design features for an interactive Web site. Think about how customers, employees and other groups will do on your site before investing a lot of development time in creating a cool Web site feature that won’t get used all that much.

And it looks like IE6 will be with us for some time to come.

I saw a real “whopper” the other day (pun intended). I called up a Web page, and after a momentary lag as a Flash file loaded, a giant bass jumped onto my screen.

Boy, talk about a “splash page”.

An audio soundtrack of a babbling brook lingered in the background as I browsed the page.

I guess to some Web designer, somewhere, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

The owner of the Web site, however, was not amused. The fish had leaped into his eyeballs dozens of times and what started out as a nifty little dash of motion and sound had turned into an annoying intrusion onto the user experience.

Remember the last time you heard a good joke? It was a real belly-shaker when you first heard it, right? Now imagine hearing the same joke, at the same time, every day for an entire month. On the 31st telling, would it still be as fun to hear as it was the first time?

When designing a Web site, creativity is always a good thing, but designers need to make sure that the visual design and the interactivity don’t get in the way of what the site visitor is looking to do. Otherwise, no one will come to swim in your pond.

Web designers are often tempted to try the latest flashy technique. After all, that’s what makes Web design fun. Before you upload that snazzy whizbang, however, think of the impact your flying fish will have on potential visitors… potential customers… and especially your brand.

And as for the proud owner of the Web site w/t/giant jumping bass? He’ll be throwing that one back.

There’s an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal on Apple CEO Steve Job’s drive to minimize buttons. As most people in the known universe understand by now, Apple’s new iPhone lacks buttons found on other cell phones and, well, almost every other handheld device.

It’s part of Job’s overall design aesthetic – which you could sum up as Less is More.

I was reminded of Less is More a few days ago when a friend sent me a link to a new online ad campaign being run by Volvo. Shortly thereafter, I bumped into the ad campaign’s message again as part of a larger post on the topic on 37 Signals’ blog.

Less is More is certainly a good mantra for Web interface designers. Avoid “Nascar Syndrome” (the tendency to load up an interface w/links and features regardless of how often they’ll be used – hmm, there’s another post in there somewhere…) and focus on a simple, clean design that’s easy to understand.

For those of you who still may be wondering if, instead, More really is More, I submit this for your consideration:

As everyone in North America knows, today’s the day Apple launches its new smart phone, the iPhone. Apparently no one is working today b/c they’re all standing in line to get one.

• iLine – People standing in line to get their iPhone
• iLike – New York Times says iPhone’s revolutionary interface design mainly lives up to the hype
• iDon’t - In case you were wondering, there are some people who don’t want an iPhone

What can the iPhone do? Play clip below.

Hello… Houston… we have a tech bubble. TechCrunch reports that one of the latest startups to gain funding is MizPee, a site for your mobile devices that lets you know where the nearest loo is located.

Consensus on the new site is “Huh?!?” (Read the comments). It seems most people just look for a Mickey D’s or an Irving station when they’ve got to go, instead of whipping out that cellphone and scrolling through search results.

Which brings us back to Web site usability, interestingly. Moral: think about whether people will use that Web interface before you sink millions into a Web site (oh, wait – it’s not their money they’re spending, it’s venture capital – forgot)

Looks like the whole Web 2.0 thing is bottoming out (remember companies that wanted you to buy pet food online and had sock puppet mascots?) The canary’s coughing. Deja vu, baby.

Did you know: People are already selling iPhones on eBay, even though Apple’s highly-anticipated cellphone doesn’t officially hit the market until June 29th?

Think about it: when’s the last time you saw a cell phone ad that featured the user interface? Well, that’s just what Apple does in three new spots out in advance of the release of its anxiously-awaited iPhone.

I have one guess as to why Apple decided to show off the phone – at a base price of $499, the company had to show people why it’s worth shelling out the extra moola (they sold me). Second guess: the user interface is so different from other cellphones that the ads serve as a brief tutorial on how to get the most out of the device.

There’s a lot of news this morning about a new computing device from Microsoft called the Surface.

It’ll be rolled out first in hotels and perhaps the local coffee shop…