No Mod Required

Where Visual Design Meets Usability - An Interview with Luke Wroblewski, Part II

"It’s also very valuable to look at the visual design from the perspective of what is absolutely necessary to communicate. Do you really need a different background, font size, font color, and drop shadow to distinguish that content? Would just a background color suffice? A common tendency I see is over designing, such as employing too many different colors and too many different graphic elements, which ultimately result in visual noise or just design-for-design’s sake."

That speaks to the core of the way I look at the web.

(yes, I'll read the whole article eventually. I collect those and the HFI newsletters and read them in one big Usability blur)

(I'm slowly pulling in some old posts from my blog @ raizlabs.)

Juidth Robichaud

ABSOLUT.COM - The Official ABSOLUT Web Site

You would think it would be a simple operation to find out what artists did the latest campaign. It's bloody impossible.

Institutionalization of Usability : A Step-by-Step Guide

None of you want a review. I know this…

(it's a very good book and will certainly color my approach to design and development.)

I strictly go to ESPN.com - Lite now. I got sick of all the flash movies, ads and crap they jam into their homepage. Plus with all that flash you can't "open in new window" on anything (Which is ridiculous when you think about the purpose of a page like that.)

Colorblind Web Page Filter

I just bought a new watch. I was filling out the little warranty card and I realized I didn't know what the model number was. I didn't feel like taking it off to look at the back, so I went to the company's site to see if I could find it on-line… I couldn't. What a shitty site. Shitty. Shitty. Shitty. Nice watches. Useless web design.

I've linked to a couple of sites recently purely because I thought they were poorly designed. I guess I should spread some good for a change and point out some sites that I think are well designed. For starters there's the personal site of designer guy/ web standards guy Jeffrey Zeldman and the home base for A List Apart, a mailing list "For People who make Websites." Light, crisp and cool…

Up for a challenge? Visit this over-animated, blue on blue, spinning, flipping, piece of crap web site. It looks like the inside of a pinball machine designed by a thousand flying monkees working blindfolded and on angel dust.

With all apologies to Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, I present to you one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen –> WHATYOUWRITE.COM. First, when you get to the site, your browser window is resized to… well, I'm not sure, but it's bigger than my screen (which is set to 800 by 600.) Then, after you resize your window back to something comfortable, for "navigation" you're faced with 5 drop down menus, and one image that sometimes is and sometimes isn"t a link. There's a large image, which while often interesting, is never a link. And there's never any copy in regards to what the hell it is, so you've got to guess at which picture it is on the dropdowns. If you can first figure out what category it is of course. And forget about finding out what's new. The only hope you have of that is via memory- piecing together what you have and haven't seen. Did I mention that every link opens a new window; or that, since everything is in a drop down menu you have no clues as to what you've already seen; or that you can't even directory browse? Ad banner popup windows, did I cover those?

Why go on like this? It's a perfect example of poor, overworked design getting in the way of what users want. Serving up a gallery of images is simple design- thumbnails, decent organization and back and next buttons. Is that so hard? The crappy thing about all this is WhatYouWrite.com has one of my favorite collections of New York City graffiti photos on the Internet, but every time I visit I just give up before I've probably seen a third of what's new. I just can't be bothered fighting that hard with a web site.