Here’s another idea that should never have made it out the petri dish at Google Labs. Gmail, which I like, has added a new feature to prevent you from sending email that you might later regret. You can enable a new feature in Gmail called Mail Goggles which will prompt you to solve some math problems after you click ‘Send’ to verify you’re in the right state of mind and that you are sure you really want to send the email. Luckily, the pesky thing is only active by default late at More»

Labels: Gmail, google, usability 2.0, user experience, web 2.0

Google is currently doing a retrospective of their famously sparse search results pages and if you look at it from ten years ago to today, you will notice some marked differences. Most notably, it is no longer as bare as a decade ago. In fact, although we have all grown accustomed to the current version and consider it pared down, it is actually quite crowded and busy today. There is a whole lot more going on on the pages - a lot more links, content, features, and functionality. The color palette is toned down; yet, there is more color More»

Labels: google, usability 2.0, user experience, web 2.0

Yahoo has come out with a Web-based smushing tool. Smush.it optimizes your imagery for you so you can minimize your page size and load time. Upload an image or input the image url and Smushit will smush it for you and provide the results of the smushing. You can then download the decreased file size image in a zip file. I tried it; you can see the results in the screenshot. You can also get a Firefox extension to optimize the images found on any Web page.
As described on the site, “Smushit.com is a service that More»

Labels: usability, user experience, web 2.0, Yahoo, YHOO

If you Google ‘recession proofing‘, you’ll find everything from recession proofing your job, life, diet, vacations, finances, wedding, retirement, etc. And, unlike other recession proof industries like healthcare, food, debt collection, tax filing, career services, energy, and tobacco, booze, porn, and gambling, high tech is not one of the recession proof industries. Most of us manage web sites, work on sites, and run businesses on sites. So, we are about to or are already walking a virtual tightrope. But before we all rush for the nearest exit, lets think about this for More»

Labels: recession, sem, seo, social media, usability 2.0, user experience, web 2.0, websites

According to the Founder and CEO of the largest usability consultancy, Human Factors International, Inc. (HFI), usability is no longer enough as a measure of a successful Web site. Dr. Eric Schaffer states that “We’re nearing the end of the time when usability is a key differentiator. Websites must now be designed for Persuasion, Emotion, & Trust (PET) in order to stay ahead.” He believes that companies and their sites whether it’s an e-commerce, informational, or a transactional site, need to influence and deepen their interactions with online customers through persuasion, emotion, and trust.
Understanding More»

Labels: usability 2.0, user experience, web 2.0, websites

In its first major redesign in two years, Yahoo announced plans to makeover several popular front-door sections of its Web site including the homepage over the next few months. The company plans to streamline the design of Yahoo.com giving users what matters most to them no matter where they ‘live’ on the Web. The company plans to:

add more bells and whistles like widgets for increased personalization
provide users with a dashboard area (off to the left) that will let users add previews of their favorite Yahoo and non-Yahoo services such More»

Labels: redesign, usability, user experience, web 2.0, Yahoo

The online Health information category got a healthy prognosis today. According to a study conducted by comScore, health information Web sites grew 21 percent over the last year – more than four times the growth rate of the total U.S. Internet population. WebMD Health led the category with 17.3 million visitors in July (up 3 percent versus year ago), followed by Everyday Health with 14.7 million visitors (up 63 percent), Revolution Health Network with 11.3 million visitors (up 182 percent), and AOL Health with 11.1 million (up 88 percent). The visitor spike More»

Labels: google, Microsoft, usability, user experience, web 2.0

As part of an estimated $6M settlement of a lawsuit against Target by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), Amazon will be required to make the Web more accessible. According to the Financial Times, Amazon Enterprise Solutions which provides Web technology to the sites of Target, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, Lacoste, and Timex, will be required “to ensure ‘full and equal’ access for blind people both to its own site, and to those of the merchants it supports”.
The Target suit claims that alternate text and accessible image maps are missing More»

Labels: design, usability 2.0, user experience, web

Microsoft today released IE8 Beta 2 for public download. The newest iteration of the browser was created around three themes: everyday browsing (the things that real people do all the time), safety (the term most people use for what we’ve called ‘trustworthy’ in previous posts), and the platform (the focus of Beta 1, how developers around the world will build the next billion web pages and the next waves of great services).
The new browser promises an improved tab and navigation experience. When navigating to a web site in IE8, the smart address bar searches across Favorites, History, and RSS feeds More»

Labels: browsers, internet explorer, Microsoft, msft, Privacy, usability, user experience, web, web browsers

Could your site map be a design cop-out for poor information architecture? In a recent piece titled, The Site Map: An Information Architecture Cop-Out, usability guru, Jared Spool, contends that users don’t want site maps and if they are asking for it or a large number of them are going to it, that could be indicative of a scent problem.
By itself, “site map” doesn’t give off scent — the clues that tell the user if the link will lead them to their desired content. It’s only in the absence of anything else that gives off scent that users start More»

Labels: internet, usability, usability 2.0, user experience, web