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I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Absorb Emulate and Innovate
  There’s something good to be said about mimicry. When artists learned their trade in the way old days (and often today), they were pushed by their teachers to emulate the great masters, to understand their choices, to learn their brush strokes. Sometimes, it would be years of emulation and copying before a student was set free to try her own hand at a creative work. In marketing (and in business innovation overall), I’ve made quite a habit of absorbing other ideas that make sense from other industries or verticals, emulating key elements of their methodology, and then innovating to make them make sense for me.
• 4 Unexpected Situations For Creating Content
  To an already busy small business owner or marketer, you may wonder, how in the world do I make time to create content? To blog once or more a week on top of everything else I already do?
• How to treat new employees
  A person’s first day on a new job is a stressful time even under the best of circumstances. You don’t know anyone there, you don’t know your job, you don’t know the written and unwritten rules of the workplace – and yet you have a burning desire to do well, to show your worth and to excel.
• Start – Treehotel
• Old Spice Sales Double With YouTube Campaign
• Balanced Arguments Are More Persuasive — PsyBlog
  Every argument has at least two sides, even if sometimes, we're not prepared to admit it. But in the heat of battle many people present their own side of the argument as though there's no alternative.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Designing Objectively | UX Magazine
  It’s a common misconception that art and design are one and the same. But although design can be artful, the process behind it is quite different.<br />
  Artists engage in the manipulation of a particular medium to produce an aesthetic and personal response. Art is valued for its originality and ability to express an idea. Some people get it, some don’t, and that’s okay. Design, on the other hand, must solve a specific problem relative to a particular user or task, and is evaluated simply by how effective it is at solving that problem. If it doesn’t work, then it failed—period.
• The Creativity Trigger / FINCH
  Our creative thinking is quite dependent on technology and our connection to others. Take a moment to consider to what extent we are connected: Twitter, Facebook, Dribbble, Forrst, blah blah blah… I don’t have to go on. That connection to the community is something we tap into everyday. We rely on it for knowledge and inspiration.
• Best Practice on Basket Abandonment Emails « RedEye International
  At RedEye we are soon to launch a Benchmarking Report on Behavioural Email Marketing, but one of the standout statistics strikes me as important. According to RedEye’s own research, less than 10% of the top 100 UK e-commerce sites (as defined by Hitwise) currently do basket abandonment email (the research is reassuring, however, because half of those that do are RedEye clients!).
• Download the cards – Design with Intent Toolkit
  101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design
• The Influence of Fleeting Attraction — PsyBlog
  Compliance to a simple request can be doubled by the most innocent manipulation.
• Afghanistan, October, 2010 – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Readability: the Optimal Line Length – Baymard Institute
  Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to the readability of your text. It shouldn’t merely be your design that dictates the width of your text, it should also be a matter of legibility.
• A List Apart: Articles: Art Direction and Design
  Glorifying the supposed arrival of art direction on the web is one of the latest trends in interactive design. There are several galleries devoted to it. There’s even a plug-in for it. Sadly, many designers don’t understand the difference between design and art direction; sadder still, many art directors don’t either: Art direction gives substance to design. Art direction adds humanity to design.
• How to Communicate Value and Engage Users Instantly | UX Movement
  Does your web site offer value to users? The chances are that it does, but users can’t see it. If users can’t see the value of your web site, there’s no chance they’ll stick around for long.
• Usability for Handheld Devices Versus Computers :: UXmatters
  Many people now use different mobile devices—including smartphones, digital cameras, MP3 players, eReaders, and GPSs (Global Positioning System)—in particular contexts. How are users interacting with these devices when they are away from their computers? How does the design of a device—including the controls its hardware provides, its interaction models, and its form factor—determine the design and usability of the software applications that run on it? How can we understand user experience on the move?
• Conversion Room: Introducing Web Analytics TV
  We’re excited to introduce Web Analytics TV – a fun and interactive source of information for everything Analytics related. This exciting series of YouTube videos is presented by Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski from the Google Analytics team. You can ask questions, and vote for your favourite questions from other viewers, via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and then have our experts answer them in the next installment.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• YouTube Blog: Should quality matter in web video?
  Since I started working in web video, the most common misconception I face is, web video equals low quality video. This week we asked “What do you think the differences are between making videos for the web versus other venues like film festivals or TV?” on YouTube's Facebook fan page. Though there were a lot of positive voices talking about the immediacy, democracy and audience engagement of web video, some of the comments unsurprisingly echoed this idea.
• Photos as Web Content (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
  Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to "jazz up" Web pages.
• Ideal line length for content
  I’d like to design a site that uses optimal line lengths. I also want the line length to stay within the optimal range no matter what default font size the user has set in their browser. Is it possible?
• UXMovement: Applying the Golden Ratio to Web Layouts and Objects | Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media
  1.618 is a number all serious designers should know. It’s known as the golden ratio found through out nature, art and architecture. Seashells, the Mona Lisa and the Parthenon all show the golden ratio. Our faces and bodies are also proportional to the golden ratio. It’s so omnipresent that it’s even found in sounds and intervals of time. If there ever was a mathematical way to explain and express natural beauty, the golden ratio is it.
• 4 lessons The Apprentice candidates should learn about focus groups–Making Websites Easy To Use
  Every year I watch The Apprentice I grumble to my partner about the appalling way the candidates grill focus group participants. Their approach is to either present them with an idea and ask if they like it, or they tell them about the concept, ask for thoughts and then argue the participants into submission. When this doesn’t work and the focus group clearly dislikes the concept they just ignore it and carry on regardless.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• xSort is a free card sorting application for Mac OS X
  Free card sorting application
• 500 Internal Server Error
  500 Internal Server Error
• Four Essential Elements For Creating Captivating Websites | Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media
  The four principles of design are balance, rhythm, emphasis and unity. Each one of them is essential for bringing together the different visual elements that are necessary to achieving a strong design, which, in turn, is imperative for a website to succeed on any level. What follows is an examination of each principle, with insights about how to incorporate them into your own Web design for optimal results.
• Top retail names guilty of spamming customers, finds email study | News | New Media Age
  Andy Yates, co-founder of Spam Ratings, said, “Trusted brands are making a big mistake by not acting responsibly, openly and fairly with customers. Businesses spend millions building brands and then seem intent on destroying them by sending millions of unwanted emails.”
• » Beyond Staggered Sprints: How TheLadders.com Integrated UX into Agile Johnny Holland – It’s all about interaction » Blog Archive
  Agile has a relatively short history in the broader view of software development. Integration of User Experience into Agile has an even shorter history with relatively few stories of overwhelming success. Over the last eighteen months, we at TheLadders have had some successes—and some failures—in our foray into a post-waterfall way of developing elegant, efficient and sophisticated consumer-facing software. This is our story.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!