Aza Raskin condemn the use of monolog boxes - dialog boxes where there's nothing one can do but click "OK". Instead, she suggests the use of transparent messages:

"Transparent messages are the brainchild of Jef Raskin. It's simply a large and translucent message that's displayed over the contents of your screen. They fade away when the user takes any action (like typing or moving the mouse). In practice, the message is both noticeable yet unobtrusive. And because the message is transparent, you can see what's beneath it. It's just humane."

Links:

• Monolog Boxes and Transparent Messages

Henrik Olsen - September 14, 2006 - via Usernomics

See also: Tips and guidelines (73)  Error handling (6)  Web page design (27) 

Leo Frishberg from UXmatters has written a lengthy review of Dan Saffer's book Designing for Interaction.

To qoute:

"In fewer than 300 pages, he has attempted to cover the history, current practice, and notions about the future of the rapidly evolving discipline of interaction design (IxD)."

"Designing for Interaction succeeds as a quick survey of the landscape of IxD, suitable for familiarizing a project manager or an individual considering it as a career with the breadth of the practice. However, its broader discussions about design theory, product-development practices, and the like are less successful, because of their lack of attention to detail."

Frishberg concludes:

"All in all, the book is a substantial piece of work with an ambitious intent that Saffer delivers on well. I recommend it to those curious to learn more about the evolving discipline of interaction design."

Links:

• Review of the book
• Chapter 1 excerpt (PDF)
• The book's companion website
• The book at Amazon.com

Henrik Olsen - September 11, 2006

See also: Books (36) 

Stephen Cox from the Australian consultancy Intuity has published a presentation with an overview of how to conduct field studies. The presentation features a case story about how a study of sports fans was transformed into improvements of the FOX Sports website.

Links:

• Presentation about field studies (PDF)

Henrik Olsen - September 06, 2006 - via putting people first

See also: Requirement Analysis (14)  Cases and Examples (18) 

A major redesign of MyTravel has increased their online booking conversion by 20%. Streamlining the booking process reduced booking times by up to 40% and resulted in a 10% improvement in conversion. A more intuitive navigation structure and better use of page real estate improved conversion by a further 10%.

Links:

• ROI: MyTravel Redesign increases online Booking Conversion by 20%

Henrik Olsen - September 05, 2006 - via Usernomics

See also: Cost-justification and ROI (20)  Cases and Examples (18) 

Designing a user interface is an exercise in compromise. According to Mike Padilla, every design decision has its costs and benefits. Using a drop-down box in a form has the drawback of hiding the available choices from the users. Radio buttons reveal the choices, but might take up a disproportionate amount of screen real estate.

Every design has its deficiencies. But the presence of deficiencies doesn't make a design bad. What makes one design better than another is the net usability - the good minus the bad - and educated compromises are essential to creating the best interface possible.

Links:

• User Interface Design - Taking the Good with the Bad

Henrik Olsen - August 31, 2006

See also: The design process (14) 

"After forms, data tables are likely the next most ubiquitous interface element designers create when constructing Web applications. Users often need to add, edit, delete, search for, and browse through lists of people, places, or things within Web applications. As a result, the design of tables plays a crucial role in such an application's overall usefulness and usability."

Luke Wroblewski shows a number of interface design solutions that enable users to find their way through large data sets.

Links:

• Refining Data Tables

Henrik Olsen - August 29, 2006

See also: Web page design (27)  Tips and guidelines (73) 

Studies by UIE show that users have nothing against scrolling long web pages. But pages that appear as if there is nothing below the fold makes people think that there isn't anything to scroll for.

But according to Jared Spool, pages that seem to be cut off at the bottom of the browser window, showing only the top part of the content below the fold, communicate that there is more to see, and makes it more likely that people will scroll for the additional content.

Links:

• Utilizing the Cut-off Look to Encourage Users To Scroll

Henrik Olsen - August 14, 2006 - via Column Two

See also: Home pages (4)  Web page design (27) 

Here's an entertaining video featuring Seth Godin talking about all the bad designs that surround us and why bad designs exist. The talk is from the Gel 2006 conference.

Links:

• Seth Godin on broken designs

Henrik Olsen - August 13, 2006 - via goodexperinece.com

See also: Audio and video (11)  Fun music and videos (6)  Bad designs (8) 

A click stream study from 2005 show changes in the way we navigate the web. More forms are submitted, more pages are opened in new windows and, consequently, the use of the back button has decreased.

- Navigation by clicking links has decreased slightly from 45.7% to 43.5% in the past 11 years
- Opening new windows has jumped from 0.2% to 10.5%
- Form submission has increased from 4.4% in 1996 to 15.3%
- With the increase in new windows and form submissions, the use of the back button has dropped from 35.7% in 1994 to 14.3%
- 76.5% of all selected links were visible in the browser window at load time
- 23.1% of all links followed were below the visible area
- Most users didn't utilize their entire screen for their browser window (about 160 horizontal 170 vertical pixels were unused)

Links:

• Clickstream Study Reveals Dynamic Web

Henrik Olsen - August 09, 2006

See also: Research (96)  Navigation (50) 

According to Jakob Nielsen, web pages should use a liquid layout that stretches to the user's current window size. He recommends that we optimize page layouts for 1024x768 pixels, which is currently the most widely used screen size, but that we make sure it works for any resolution from 800x600 to 1280 x1024.

Pages should also work at smaller and bigger sizes. But a less-than-great design is an acceptable compromise. Fewer than half a percent have screen resolutions of 640x480 and users with large screens rarely maximize their browser window.

A liquid design should scale all the way down to the tiny screens found on mobile devices. But mobile services should be designed specifically for use on small screens.

Links:

• Screen Resolution and Page Layout

Henrik Olsen - August 07, 2006

See also: Tips and guidelines (73)  Web page design (27)