The Metropolitan Police have launched a website which uses Google Maps to display London crime figures. It provides a clear visual representation of complex data and also adjusts depending on how far you’ve zoomed in. It’s a great example of using a clean and simple interface to make otherwise dull information accessible. The related information in the bottom right corner is an inspired touch too, inviting people to learn more about crime in their area and what they can do about it.
Published in Websites on 20th August 2008. No comments.
I’ve just spent the last week in Nottingham designing the first issue of Impact Magazine and I thought I’d share a few of the pages that I’ve designed:
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Published in Design, tagged Impact, magazines on 18th August 2008. No comments.
As far as usability books go, there are few that come more recommended than Don’t Make Me Think! Steve Krug’s expanded and revised second edition, published two years ago, is a surprisingly short introduction to usability, but that’s really the point. It defines a few key principles and lessons from which you can begin to learn about usability or refresh your knowledge of it.
Krug starts by laying out why you’d want to read Don’t Make Me Think! and what it will and won’t contain. It’s a smart introduction to a book which is not just aimed at designers, but manager and executives as well. He then proceeds to outline the book’s central principle: “Don’t make me think!” It’s a remarkably simple rule, but you’d be amazed how many websites and interfaces forget to spell out the obvious.
Don’t Make Me Think! goes on to explain how people really use the Web; not by reading everything and making logical decisions, but by scanning and muddling through. Krug focuses on a great little fact; we don’t make optimal choices; we satisfice (a neat portmanteau of satisfying and sufficing). People choose the first reasonable option, not the best one.
The book moves on to visual hierarchies, choice, writing for the Web and an extensive section on graphical cues and conventions. Krug touches on a few business issues too, including homepage design and how to safely navigate making design decisions in a team. He introduces more formal usability testing, then moves on to accessibility and a brief introduction to cascading style sheets.
What makes Don’t Make Me Think! so easy to recommend is not just the balanced choice of topics, but also Krug’s writing style. He explains issues and suggests guidelines in plain English that everyone can understand. The book is also in full colour with plenty of illustrations, so you know exactly what he’s talking about.
Looking at the cover, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a one principle book that revolves around a few anecdotes and a handful of buzzwords, but it’s the complete opposite. Don’t Make Me Think! is an essential read for anyone remotely interested in the subjectand a great title to having lying around as reference. If I could only have one book on usability, this would be it.
Published in Book reviews, Usability on 9th August 2008. No comments.
I recently started a twelve month internship at BT, where due to security reasons, I can’t take a laptop or any removable media to work. As a result, I can’t use my tried and tested system to get things done. At first, I was given one task at a time, so didn’t really need to organise myself much, but as time has gone on, I’ve had more and more things to deal with at once.
Working in a Microsoft Office environment, everyone has and uses Outlook, but its to-do list is not the most flexible tool and doesn’t scale nearly as well as a dedicated program like Things. Instead, I’ve started to use 37signals’ Ta-da List, a simple online task manager.
Ta-da List is far more basic than Outlook and much more than Things, but its beauty lies in the lack of clutter. To get to my tasks in Outlook, I’d have to open the application, click the to-do tab and then focus on the small portion of the screen in which the list resides. With Ta-da, I get a plain list with large fonts, devoid of emails, calendar items and other noise. Outlook is a wonderful program if you need total integration with the Office ecosystem, but when I’m deciding what to do next, I need as few distractions as possible.
I guess this highlights the divide that separates many programs; those that do one thing and those that try to do everything. When you’re reading your calendar, do you need your email there as well? Is it sensible to put your RSS feeds in your email application? Looking at the programs on my personal computer, it’s definitely a case of one application per task, with the notable exception of Coda. But I digress.
When your productivity system is suddenly rendered unusable, it’s initially difficult to adapt. Without your trusted tools, you have to invent an entirely new system within a set of limitations and this takes time to adapt to. However you manage, it’s important to remember not to lose control over your time because of unfamiliar surroundings and tools.
Published in Productivity, tagged 37signals, Outlook on 5th August 2008. One comment.
Designing forms for the web is a tricky business. Left-aligned labels or right-aligned labels? What about putting them above or using none at all? Tool tips or more substantial help text? Thankfully, Yahoo design chief Luke Wroblewski is here to help.
Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks is sadly not available in the UK, so if you really want to buy it, you’ll have to either download the digital copy or have it shipped from America (although it comes with the PDF version if you order a hard copy). I think it’s a shame because it would probably do well enough to justify its presence over here, but I guess that’s the cost of going with a smaller publisher.
Wroblewski begins by outlining the problem: “Forms suck. We should design accordingly.” He introduces the basic benefits of good form design and then moves on to cover every aspect of web form design in the clearly delineated chapters that follow.
Although there’s a lot to take in, Wroblewski writes very clearly and the full colour book is full of illustrations. Best of all, each chapter ends with a short list of best practices, so you don’t have to read through an entire section again when you use it as reference. Web Form Design also includes a number of contributions by other authors, labelled as ‘Perspectives’ in the book. These are well placed and offer additional context to the main text.
With the higher price due to shipping, my expectations were somewhat higher than usual for Web Form Design, but it’s more than justified the price I paid for it. It’s a very specialist book, but one that will probably stand the test of time better than a lot of other technical books. For anyone who designs web forms on a reasonably frequent basis, this is an essential read.
Published in Book reviews, Usability, Websites, tagged forms on 2nd August 2008. No comments.
