I’ve done a re-design of my Radio weblog, using CSS. Look ma, no tables! Yes, it’s now a tableless design. I’m doing my bit for the web standards cause, although I haven’t yet achieved 100% XHTML validation. For my re-design I used a CSS Zen Garden design by Michael Landis, who kindly gave me permission to use it. I figured the best way to get into CSS design is to learn from the masters, then later when I have more confidence I’ll attempt an original design. This re-design exercise has been an excellent lesson for me on CSS and XHTML. You can’t beat the motto ‘learn by doing’ in the...
So although the Dodd-Frank Act went into law in 2010, the issues remain and are spreading on a massive scale. The advent of millennials becoming a more substantial purchasing power will help all of us. The millennial has their eyes cast upon saving the planet — and gaining civil rights for
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
And what does this mean for business? From the looks of it, some existing revenue streams may be threatened as blockchain’s prevalence grows. Banks, for example, may find a good chunk of their transaction fees substantially reduced (or even eliminated) because of blockchain technology replacing
The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice
We wanted to make sure changes in the 4 tone-of-voice dimensions would be noticeable to our users, and not just theoretical concepts. In preparation for an upcoming study, we used these 4 dimensions to create paired tone-of-voice samples for made-up websites from 4 industries (2 samples per
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that you are not the user. This is why it’s a disaster to guess at the users’ needs. Since designers are so different from the majority of the target audience, it’s not just irrelevant what you like or what you think is easy to use — it’s
Website Logo Placement for Maximum Brand Recall
In a word, no. There were no statistically significant differences (according to a two-sample t-test) in how people rated the hotels with traditional left-aligned logos, compared to the ‘unconventional’ right-aligned logos. In fact, in most cases, the left-aligned logos were rated slightly more
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes of 2008
As far as the mutual funds company is concerned, new investments and current investments are treated differently. Reallocating future additions means changing the funds they'll buy when the employer transfers money into the account. Reallocating current investments means selling some of the
css conversion of my radio weblog
Defeated By a Dialog Box
The lesson from this case study is not how to design a better "Save As" dialog. Depending on the circumstances, you could use any of the four designs I listed, or perhaps even design a fifth that works better for your particular type of data. It's easy enough to find out what's best for your users
Customization vs. Personalization in the User Experience
Designers often have many good ideas for things that can be provided to users, from ideation, feature requests, and other sources. It’s tempting to throw all these options into the system and rely on customization or personalization for pruning the screens into a manageable level of complexity
Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX
In UX, sympathy is limited to acknowledging that users are going through a difficult scenario, task, or journey. If we are sympathetic to our users, it does not mean that we put ourselves in their shoes and feel their pain or annoyance. For example, when we’re designing an accessible website for
How to Display Taxes, Fees, and Shipping Charges on Ecommerce Sites
Some organizations take advantage of the principle of commitment & consistency to force users to make the purchase: they know that, once people have invested time and effort to find a product they like and have decided to buy it, they will have a hard time giving it up when they find about
Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks
Don’t make users scan through a long list of disorganized commands. To help users focus on the most relevant options, place the ones used most often at the top. Because people scan lists from top to bottom, place seldomly used commands low down in the menu. Let users decide which option best
Join WP Engine at SXSW 2019
In this panel, Brunner will be joined by popular Austin figures as they discuss who and what has been the major change agent in Austin. Brunner will represent technology while other panelists will represent food and film. Joe Nick Patoski, author of Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers
css conversion of my radio weblog
Customer Updates to WordPress 5.0
The process of disabling the 5.0 editor should not be a hassle. In the coming days, we will be rolling out an admin notice that will display on the Dashboard page* of your site(s). This notice will have information about adopting the new editor and will provide buttons to install/activate the
Always Innovating for You: WP Engine Mid-Year Review 2018
As voice technology continues to expand and see greater adoption, expectations that digital experiences include voice tech are growing. The Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress, co-authored by AWS and WP Engine, lets users bring voice technology to their websites by turning text into lifelike speech
Facilitating an Effective Design Studio Workshop
Edward de Bono developed the Six Thinking Hats method in 1985. It is a discussion framework that defines six metaphorical hats which represent different modes of thinking, therefore enabling participants in a group to think and discuss ideas together effectively. A set time interval is used for
A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises
It is hard to play both roles well. Because the facilitators act as authority figures throughout the exercise, their contributions will be taken at a high regard (which defeats the purpose of many of our UX collaborative exercises). Better to stay neutral. If you do not have the luxury of a
Troubleshooting Group Ideation: 10 Fixes for More and Better UX Ideas
Adding structure and rules to your session can make your ideation process effective. In particular, parallel design can help you reap the benefits of both individual and group ideation. One way to implement it in an ideation session is to have team members start working on ideas solo for a short
6 Brain Sensors You’ll Be Using Soon
NeuroSky‘s first commercial product is a brainwave interface headset with medical-grade data acquisition capabilities. The device has a non-gel sensor and supports a Bluetooth headset with MP3 and VoIP capabilities. The first function of the headset was to help users pay attention and focus
What Does Your Credit Card Company Know About You?
This piece is a bit trickier. Most credit cards don’t have a built-in feature that allows them to track your location, but if you’re using the credit card company’s signature app, you may be giving them more data than you realize. Merely having the app installed (with permissions granted) may
In an Experiential-Obsessed Marketplace, Surkus Uses Tech to Stand Out
Surkus’ knowledge of where members are at every touchpoint is valuable: By tracking members’ locations and activity, the platform can nudge them and offer reminders. The platform, designed for Instagram posts, can point out that a member, still at an event, just took 50 photos and should post
Your Swag is an Extension of Your Brand, So Don’t Neglect It
Here’s the bottom line. When your swag is premium, your brand is premium. Conversely, poor quality swag sends a bad message to not only the public but also your team. Unless you’re a household name like Nike or Apple, there’s a slim chance someone is going to stick your company logo on the
css conversion of my radio weblog
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog | Image-Focused Design: Is Bigger Better?
Image-Focused Design: Is Bigger Better?
The entire Southwest homepage is designed to focus attention on the image: the top navigation links are small and have no background color; the search function is represented with a magnifying glass icon instead of an input box, and even the Book now call to action button is an understated outline
Top 10 Enduring Web-Design Mistakes
Since 1996, we have been compiling lists of the top 10 mistakes in web design. This year, we completed a large-scale usability study with 215 participants in the United States and United Kingdom to see what today’s web-design mistakes are. After analyzing results across 43 sites that ranged from
Also, this lack of information and required registration could have contributed significantly to system failures, because account setup requires more processing power (that is, server or database calls) than simple browsing of the site to gather information. Forcing people to create an account
