Posts filed under “Design”
Search Shortcuts in Yahoo Mail
I noticed a small menu called “Search Shortcuts” in Yahoo Mail a couple of days ago. This is a great example of a simple feature addition that has a huge payoff. alice in wonderland download People send photos around all the time and having one-click access to all photos in your email account is awesome. [...]
How to make your site better
The best way to figure out what works and doesn’t work in your product is to watch a member of your target audience using it. Prior to our recent release we conducted a number of simple focus groups at Judy’s Book where we had people come into the office for individual 30 minute sessions with [...]
Right Click Preview in Gmail
If you’re using the Better Gmail extension in Firefox, you can get a right-click message preview in Firefox. The goal of enabling users to scan messages without unnecessary clicks is a noble one, but I don’t think it¬† should come at the cost of the expected right button behavior. I think a mouseover preview would [...]
How Amazon Does A/B Testing (via the Winery Web Site Report et al.)
One of Brad’s posts led me to The Winery Website Report Blog which so far has been fantastic. The initial post was about “failing to address a point of pain” in talking about the ‘hiatus’ of the Winery Report. It led me to a post titled “What should you put on your home page?” In [...]
Got Blist?
Matt gave Dave and I a quick demo of Blist’s software last week and I have to say I came away very impressed with what they’ve been working on. They’ve clearly thought a lot about the user experience and it shows. They’ve innovated a lot on the UI front and I saw some things I [...]
Every Page Counts
Seth’s post on follow through and caring about the last inch is a must-read if you haven’t read it already. Obsessing about the last inch of follow through ensures that the important parts of what you do get just as much (if not more) commitment. ipod death race free You can’t afford to stop caring [...]
To make something great, you have to be a little obsessive
If you’re trying to put something great together, at some point, you have to get a little obsessive. This means you have to pay attention to little details that matter to users that aren’t quite right and highlight them again and again until they get taken care of. In the ideal scenario, you do all [...]
Closing the loop
Most affiliate sites are designed to get users to discover the site, find what they are looking for and then click through onto the target merchant site to complete a purchase. Some sites take this a step further and try to close the loop. I was trying to book a flight on Kayak and clicked [...]
Measure Aggregate Behavior, but also remember to observe individuals
Measuring consumer behavior and watching consumers interact with your site are the best ways to find out what works and what doesn’t. There’s a great post on Signal vs. Noise about some of the things behind Amazon’s success. Two paragraphs that jumped out at me: Use measurement and objective debate to separate the good from [...]
Impact of Font on Perception of Email (via Usability News)
Switch to ‘Comic Sans.’ Ok, that’s not true. The power font of choice is Calibri . Usability News has a fascinating article about the impact of the font of an email on the reader’s perception of the writer of the message. The article is dated January 9, 2007 and the results are really interesting and [...]