Posts Tagged ‘usability’

As a fan of Jakob Neilsen and a skeptic of the “every design should be responsive” methodology, I have been frustrated with the criticism of Neilsen’s stance on mobile websites. Recently I published my thoughts on the two sides (mobile specific websites and responsive design) hoping to cultivate a discussion on mobile design and why [...]

Snippet: Mobile First is History Repeating

I respect navigation more than any other element on a website. Little else commands the responsibility of navigation. Poor navigation leaves people dumbfounded, confused and frustrated. Great navigation effortlessly directs users toward the content or actions they desire and can reroute lost users while minimizing mental processing. Even the over glorified “call to action” is simply another [...]

Snippet: Designing Navigation, a GitHub Case Study

Most discussions of speed and websites focus on response time, download footprint and rendering performance. While all aforementioned elements are important, there is another aspect of site performance to be aware of— the speed of the human mind. It’s safe to say the human brain processes information faster than any computer, browser and of the internet, so it [...]

Design, Copy and Mental Processing

Over the past fifteen plus years of designing websites for other people, I have received countless requests to remove elements from a design because they are “redundant.” The perception is that if something is included on the page once, especially in an obvious fashion, there’s no reason to repeat it elsewhere. Further baffling, it’s my [...]

Redundant is Usable

Few websites are designed with bad intentions. If the designer or stakeholders care about the project you can be sure every element on the page has been analyzed, reviewed and tweaked. This sounds obvious, but it should be disconcerting. Let me explain further. If most websites have had thought and care put into them, why are [...]

Selective Disregard, Why It’s Causing Your Website To Fail