New "Polar Bear book" on the way
A second edition of the definitive book on Information Architecture for the web is underway. It should be out this summer -- around July, according to Lou Rosenfeld, one of the book's authors, in comments on his web log yesterday.

Information Architecture primer
Keeping hearing about "IA", and want to get up to speed? Check out John Rhodes' introductory article on the topic over at WebWord. He breaks it down into three basic components:

• Orientation - determining your current position
• Navigation - helping people figure out where they want to go
• Routefinding - the art of finding the best path given your skills and equipment

How many ways can you fail...let me count the ways.
From USA Today: Designs that made consumers, reviewers cringe. What's amazing is how many of the products covered had huge design budgets and professional designers and engineers at the helm. Would be interesting to find out what they would do different if they knew then what they know now.

Agony of defeat for accessibility at the Olympics site (again)
Shirley Kaiser reviews the 2002 Olympics web site for accessibility on her blog, Brainstorms and Raves. I found it escpecially ironic (in a bad way) that even the Paralympics site doesn't follow accessibility guidelines. The Paralympics are the Olympics for athletes with a disability.

This site best viewed in a movie theatre
"Say you went to the video store and rented "Apocalypse Now," a movie that truly deserves to be seen in a theater on a big screen with surround sound. But, not unreasonably, you wanted to watch it at home on your 21" TV. You put the tape in your VCR and saw: "To view Apocalypse Now you must have a 54" or larger screen equipped with Dolby® Digital SurroundSound."

"Would you be impressed with Francis Ford Coppola's artistic vision? Or would you be angry at his arrogance?"

Design Not Found
One of my favorite sites lately is "Design Not Found": a site dedicated to "the best and worst of contingency design." They point out good and bad design elements. For example they show how Amazon helps users who enter the wrong URL, or how Apple further frustrates users who are already having trouble.

What is contingency design? Here's the answer from the Design Not Found FAQ:
"Things go wrong online. Contingency design is the way the creators of the site right the ship. It includes error messaging, instructive text, information architecture, programming, and graphic design. Successful contingency design helps wayward surfers succeed at their goals in obtaining information, completing a transaction, or other tasks. Poor contingency design results in frustration and lost visitors."

Although I really like Design Not Found, I have to say the company that created Design Not Found, 37signals, has a home page that is pretty...uh, shall we say "overly-creative".
Update: 37signals redesigned their site and the old home page can be seen here.

Usability is lacking in the consumer electronics world as well.
An LA Times article, The Curse of Complexity, shows how bad usability is becoming in electronics like TVs, satellite receivers and stereos.

Pretty good article, even with the obligatory 2 cents opinion from Jakob Nielsen. You have to wonder if Jakob accepts every possible interview opportunity...seems like he's the only usability "expert" professional writers can locate.

Divining standards from the most popular sites?
The Web Developer's Virtual Library (WDVL) presents an interesting survey of the most popular sites on the web. They compare the sites' designs, looking at fonts, colors, links, navigation, titles, page width, use of JavaScript, CSS and page download size.

While I'd never jump to the conclusion that being one of the most popular sites means you have the best design, I would concede that it means you probably haven't committed as many design sins as Boo.com. [Maybe we should just call design flaws "boo-boos"...]

I also think that many developers who are not experienced in the intricacies of UI design and usability should, whenever possible, copy aspects of well established designs rather than try to invent their own "creative" solutions.

I think it's interesting that Disney differs greatly from many of the other sites. I'm sure Jared would have a few words to say about that given that he seems to rip Disney in almost every interview, article, class, and book. You'd think Disney was the only bad site on the web.

Usability web sites du jour
The National Cancer Institute's Usability site is a great reference. I especially like the way they try to sort through the clutter of sometimes conflicting usability guidelines available by assessing the amount and types of evidence to support specific guidelines.

Also, what's up with our buddy Keith over at UsableWeb? Looks like he's been too busy with the new day job at IBM to do much updating. He even calls it a "stale" site himself . I'll have to pester him about it at CHI. ...but if your just starting out, there's no better place to immerse yourself to learn about usability as it relates to the web.

When you want to be a millionaire, you use Google
It's not a surprise, but more validation of something I've known for at least a few years: that Google is the best search engine out there.

"Google is so fast and accurate, it is used by millions of viewers of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Google's statistics show spikes in usage after each question." -- from an article in USA Today.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not JUST Google's technology that makes them the best --it's their design. Their interface, speed, accuracy and pure utility have all been "baked into" their design. The technical stuff (e.g. server farm) is just there to support the design.

Note that while some engines like Norhern Light are conceding that web advertising doesn't work, Google is proving that a better design can work. And it can provide something that both users and businesses want. In the last year I've probably clicked on more ads in Google's search results than on all other web sites combined...and I find stuff I like and need...therefore I click again in the future. Google doesn't annoy me with animation, popups or other trickery. They don't imply that the content I want is less important than some stupid banner ad that says "punch the monkey and win!". Rather, they deliver relevant ads with real content and build my trust.

Can you say "best practice"? I thought you could.

How would you feel if Google just vanished tomorrow? I think I'd feel like I lost a leg.

Buy our products and make us rich
A small software shop called OmniGroup uses a pretty catchy tone on their web site to get a leg up on the competition. The tone makes you want to buy their products because they are a small, likable company -- not some big faceless corporation. It's a great example of a small firm differentiating their brand image through the tone of writing on their site. Check out Peter's post that shows some of the text. Note you have to scroll down a bit.

Too bad they only develop Mac software. I'm just not cool enough for a Mac.

Excuse me, your Johnson & Johnson is showing...
Maybe I should have named this post "crappy mega-company-site-o-the-day". Johnson & Johnson is #57 in the Fortune 500 according to Hoovers Online, but could their corporate home page suck any more?

Why would a designer say "let's bombard our customers and potential investors with no less than nine, yes *9*, drop-down navigation boxes"? Notice that some drop-downs only have one choice -- why not just use a simple link?! I suppose someone said something about "we have to be consistent for usability's sake", bastardizing the precepts of User Interface Engineering like a religious zealot quoting scripture out of context. Also note that the "Company websites" drop-down has 368 options in it!!!! This has got to be some kind of nightmarish UI record. See the linkable list of web sites for a sense of the number of sites in the drop-down. (Scroll down to see the full list.) Evidently they need to learn the concept of "Information Architecture".

Oh, did I forget to mention the auto-scrolling Java applet for news headlines? I love it when sites determine how fast I can read, and then give me a moving target to catch with the cursor. What fun!

The "Johnsons" also choose to speak to us in a very friendly tone (in bigger bolder text than everything else on the page): "You are solely responsible for your interactions with that website [that we link to above]." I understand the need to give the lawyers their space, but don't let them command the spotlight on your front doorstep.

Any consulting IAs or usability types looking for work might want to give J&J a ring...they could use the help.

Amen to that...K.I.S.S. me
"Perhaps then we should design more simply? If we don't do any of the complex stuff then maybe it will display on everything just fine and we can sleep at night."
Edge of my Seat reminds us it doesn't have to look the same…

Note the elegant (and simple) CSS and XHMTL design. I count only two images on the site. Beautiful!

New ACM SIG-CHI mailing list
ACM's Special Interest Group (SIG) on computer-human interaction just announced a new listserv for announcements of resources of interest to the CHI community, for example: seminars, conferences, events, products, books, and web sites. Check out the CHI-Resources list page for more information. If you're looking for more community interaction and dialogue, check out the CHI-Web list it has about 3,200 subscribers.

Big changes @ Yahoo
A new CEO, and new directions. Check out the NY Times article: Mr. Semel's Internet Search.

Notable: No more free listings on Yahoo? -- "And soon Yahoo will no longer provide a directory of all the sites on the Web. Rather, any company that wants its site listed on Yahoo will need to pay an annual fee."

Handspring Treo: product of good design processes
I was impressed with the number of good design practices mentioned in an article about the new Handspring Treo, which combines PDA, wireless Internet access and a mobile phone

Prototyping: "You can sit around and argue for another hour, but with the prototype, it becomes obvious where you screwed up"

User profiling: "Novice users are supposed to find the most- used functions in an intuitive way, while more advanced users can find shortcuts through more complex button sequences."

Ethnographic research: "Celine Pering sat for hours near busy intersections or near entrances to subway stops in Europe and Japan, examining how people used their cell phones. She also hopped into the cars of friends and family of Handspring workers, snapping pictures and taking notes on drivers who were dialing."

Now I'm interested in actually playing with a Treo...I could use a better cell phone.

It's all about who you know
I just found this awesome "people browser" on the CHIplace site. You could use the same type of navigation for a skills-based directory of employees or community members. Try the checkboxes on the right...you can combine them to find people with multiple roles (can do an "and" or "or" search)!

Online shopping experiences getting worse. Amazon can learn from a few competitors
A recent NY Times article shows that setting and meeting customer expectations is critical to a successful online customer experience.

[A] "Jupiter survey found that one-third of online consumers expect a response to an e-mail inquiry within six hours, and that virtually all consumers expect a response within 48 hours. Nevertheless, the number of sites meeting this expectation, including retailers, travel suppliers and financial services companies, slipped to 22 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001, the lowest level since Jupiter began tracking customer service response times."

It also looks like Amazon is no longer the best total user experience on the web according to a Reuters article in the Chicago Tribune:

"While Amazon's mediocre B-minus grade earns it a ranking below e-tailers like Target.com, which got a B-plus rating on PlanetFeedback, and Drugstore.com Inc.'s A, it is hardly alone with its rising level of unhappy customers."

I also noticed that in the NYTimes article, Target.com responded to customers within 6 hours, while Amazon only responded within 24 hours. The PlanetFeedback ratings seem to support the idea that response times have an impact on overall customer satisfaction.

Is your web site self-centered?
The We We Copy Calculator tries to measure the text on your site for customer focus. It's an interesting reminder that the words we choose imply our internal focus. The text version (linked above) works better then the URL fetching version -- plus it gives more explanation of the words evaluated.

If you keep saying these words, then the terrorists will have won.
In the wake of 9-11 these frigging words were banished with a surgical strike using doppler friendly fire.