Michael Wilcox's Blog » design

User manuals – don’ts and dos

Michael — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:30:32 +0000

Sometimes you don’t need a user manual…

and sometimes you do…

I prefer systems like the first one.

The Groundswell – figures for UK 2008

Michael — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:20:54 +0000

Just for the record really, but am reading The Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester. They accompany the book with a website which includes a profile tool. For this to make sense you need to understand their ”Social Technographics®” classifications which describe: Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Collectors, Critics, and Creators.

Their profile tool includes data for the UK from 2008, and provides the following slices organised by age group.

Data from Forrester Research Technographics^® surveys, 2008.

Tea bag splats

Michael — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:04:56 +0000

As of today, our Library has a nice new web site. Last week our IT Services were re-launched.

Thousands of pages have been converted to a new template. New structures have been tested and implemented. New ideas have been included. Lots of consultation and feedback happened. Many stakeholders have pulled together and finally the work can see the light of day as it goes live.

The team doing this project have been working incredibly hard on this over most of the summer. They’ve had many issues to deal with and remarkably they are still standing and still smiling. (Well done to Fran, Sarah, Leon and everyone else for all their hard work.)

So what happens on the day this thing goes live?

Well… lots of people find that their tea bags go splat on the floor.

I shall explain via a quick anecdote. After having lived in our house for three years we realised one day that the kitchen bin was in the wrong place. It was by the back door and not very near to the sink and cooker. So we decided to move it.

In fact we moved it to inside the ‘kitchen triangle‘. That’s the area between your fridge, cooker and sink which is meant to be the optimal zone of efficiency. Placing the bin inside this triangle is a very good design.

The trouble comes the day after this change has been implemented.

7.30am and the kettle goes on. 7.38am and the first cup of tea has finished brewing. Time to remove the tea bag and add the milk. So you take the tea bag out and chuck it in the bin. Only the bin isn’t where it used to be so the tea bag hits the floor.

Tea bag splat.

It doesn’t matter how good the new arrangement is, for the first couple of the weeks the tea bag keeps hitting the floor. Does this mean the new design is bad? No, of course not. It just means that when you’re used to one way of doing things, a different arrangement can take some time to get used to.

Many of the feedback comments about re-launched web sites can be safely filed under ‘tea bag splatters’. However if you’re still getting tea bag splats after a few weeks then you might have a problem…

Duke's homepage: content is not King?

Michael — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:18:17 +0000

CMS Watch points to a Duke University homepage redesign – see before (left) and after (right) snapshots:

This is a change from content-focused design to search-focused design. As a user you might find the new search version quicker, but CMS Watch points out: only if the search engine works.

The content that was there hasn’t been removed. Instead it has been transferred to a Duke Today site. This looks and feels much more like a traditional university homepage.
Judging from their redesign blog this change was made with consideration and consultation. The blog previewed two homepage designs – the comments show an overwhelming preference for design mockup 2 over design mockup 1. So why did they decide to go live with design 1? This (from the blog) goes some way towards explaining the position…

Our approach to minimialist design isnâ€™t to say â€œLess is moreâ€ but rather, as the designer Milton Glaser once said, â€œJust enough is more.â€ Through exhaustive research we determined that the current approach of posting news and services on one site was trying to do too many things for too many people and as a result not effective. Weâ€™re not getting rid of the content with this new design, weâ€™re simply shifting much of it to DukeToday where it can be more effectively managed. Recent usability test results were quite favorable.

I’m not sure they’ve made the right choice. A university homepage has many competing claims on it’s supposedly valuable space. But by choosing to move the up-to-date information to a secondary page Duke are hiding the content that is alive and breathes. I think they’re left with a homepage that may score well in usability tests but doesn’t project the image of a vibrant and busy place.

Header design with options

Michael — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 15:34:48 +0000

I like The Man in Blue’s header. A ‘Page Options’ tab elegantly opens to reveal some style sheet options.

These look like accessibility-driven options but it got me thinking that this type of design could be used for other options:

standard utility features such as Contact, About, Sitemap
inter-network links for a site that is part of a bigger grouping
page info?: last updated, author, copyright
more accessibility options such as font-resizers
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