After a few posts I had realised that I had not been HTMLing my hyperlinks so they were static. I realised that this is very bad form in terms of usability so I have gone back through and added the code to make the links clickable. Unclickable links is unacceptable on any website including blogs.
Unfortunatley, it seems as though I have to hand code the HTML here.. I will post on WebCT and see if there is an easier way.
I've also found a way to screenshot on my Mac using the 'Grab' program. Unfortunatley it creates .tif files which are unacceptable on Blogger.com so I am using Fireworks to batch process my images to .jpgs and it seems to be working! A litle bit time consuming, but well worth it. I think a blog with pictures is much more interesting than one without.
2007/03/28
2007/03/24
Holga Competing Sites
Using Yahoo! i searched for the terms 'Holga' and 'Holga for beginners'. Unlucky for Holga users there really is not much out there of value which shows up in the first page of Yahoo! results. This is, however, very good news for me as it means that I am able to create a site which will not have a lot of major competition to get into one of the top ranking spots.
Yahoo! search using the phrase Holga
1. www.holgamods.com - definatley not a site for beginners. This site is about making alterations to your camera.
2. Wikipedia
3. www.argonauta.com/html/holga_cameras.htm
4.www.holga.com redirects to http://www.smartspace.com/ which is a storage space company!!
5. http://shop.lomography.com/holga/ - This is the shopping part of http://www.lomography.com which is a site which has information on all sorts of lomography cameras - including Holga. The navigation is very bad and the site is cluttered. There are some good points about this site such as the 'Lomo spaces' where users can upload their photos and have them displayed for free. I will use a similar idea to this, but instead I will have people send me their photos and I will choose which ones will be displayed in the gallery.
Yahoo! search using the phrase Holga for beginners
1. Wikipedia
2. http://www.tlucretius.net/Photo/eHolga.html - part of a blog.
3. Amazon.com
4. A PDF file on holga use
5. Amazon.com
But is there a market for it? I hear you say. YES! Most definately. I am a Holga camera user myself and through online communities such as Myspace I have been able to meet many likeminded people who are very interested in the Holga camera, but have learnt how to use it only through trial and error or by asking friends who have learnt through trial and error. I want to promote the beauty of the Holga and take the trial and error part out of the equation and create a user friendly site which explains the basics in detail, but not too much detail.
Yahoo! search using the phrase Holga
1. www.holgamods.com - definatley not a site for beginners. This site is about making alterations to your camera.
2. Wikipedia
3. www.argonauta.com/html/holga_cameras.htm
4.www.holga.com redirects to http://www.smartspace.com/ which is a storage space company!!
5. http://shop.lomography.com/holga/ - This is the shopping part of http://www.lomography.com which is a site which has information on all sorts of lomography cameras - including Holga. The navigation is very bad and the site is cluttered. There are some good points about this site such as the 'Lomo spaces' where users can upload their photos and have them displayed for free. I will use a similar idea to this, but instead I will have people send me their photos and I will choose which ones will be displayed in the gallery.
Yahoo! search using the phrase Holga for beginners
1. Wikipedia
2. http://www.tlucretius.net/Photo/eHolga.html - part of a blog.
3. Amazon.com
4. A PDF file on holga use
5. Amazon.com
But is there a market for it? I hear you say. YES! Most definately. I am a Holga camera user myself and through online communities such as Myspace I have been able to meet many likeminded people who are very interested in the Holga camera, but have learnt how to use it only through trial and error or by asking friends who have learnt through trial and error. I want to promote the beauty of the Holga and take the trial and error part out of the equation and create a user friendly site which explains the basics in detail, but not too much detail.
2007/03/20
Recent Progress
Today I realised that I have been spending a lot of time on the forums (unmarked) when I shoudl really be spending more time blogging (marked).
I have come across one hurdle with this blogging system - screen shotting. Screen shotting on a mac is not very good as the software only captures what is actually on the screen. Unlike PC which captures a smaller version of the whole page on the screen. I'm going to do some more testing and see if I can fix it... I've tried before and haven't had much luck. I used to screen shot on my work PC, but recently this has had web filtering put on it so that's impossible now!
I've collated 15 questionnaries and found the results to be quite interesting. I will graph them as part of my assignment 2 which I am currently working on.
I have a vision in my mind of a splash page for my Holga site... It consists of a black screen with a white Holga. However, this seems to go against all usability guidelines so I will need to think about this further.
I am really enjoying Krug's text and have been doing the 'trunk test' on websites subconsiously without realising!
I have come across one hurdle with this blogging system - screen shotting. Screen shotting on a mac is not very good as the software only captures what is actually on the screen. Unlike PC which captures a smaller version of the whole page on the screen. I'm going to do some more testing and see if I can fix it... I've tried before and haven't had much luck. I used to screen shot on my work PC, but recently this has had web filtering put on it so that's impossible now!
I've collated 15 questionnaries and found the results to be quite interesting. I will graph them as part of my assignment 2 which I am currently working on.
I have a vision in my mind of a splash page for my Holga site... It consists of a black screen with a white Holga. However, this seems to go against all usability guidelines so I will need to think about this further.
I am really enjoying Krug's text and have been doing the 'trunk test' on websites subconsiously without realising!
2007/03/16
More Research - Becoming a usability tester?!
http://www.usabilityeffect.com/
Interesting reading about somebody who works as a website usability tester!!
Why Usability Testing?
You have common questions about your web site. Can visitors use it? Will they return? Do they recommend it to others? What are you doing that really turns them off? Are sales down and you're curious because you swear you've done everything correctly? You need specific answers, not score cards and ratings.
My approach is to study your pages to find problem areas that cause common user frustrations. Tasks are conducted based on a user persona, used for illustrative and educational insight. A long list of user interface heuristics (that goes way beyond basic heuristic coverage offered by free web site reviews) is used to evaluate your entire site for compliance. I'll ask you questions you may not have thought to ask yourself or your team. From navigation to desirability, user interface to site architecture, with an expert eye towards search engine optimization tossed in, you receive a report that offers suggestions, reviews, tips and resources.
When you hire UsabilityEffect, you hire Kim Krause Berg. I personally evaluate your site, offer suggestions, and share your passion for your site. There is no log analysis, or metrics applied. These are very valuable pieces to the puzzle, but I exclude them to help keep costs down. Phone consultations are not included with reports, which also keeps fees down. However, if you have questions or concerns, I'm just an email away or we can set up a billable phone appointment.
Learn more about each type of usability report by selecting from the links above.
Read feedback on the reports or Order your report now
Partnership or Site Owner Purchase?
There are two types of approaches to services offered. One is to simply place an order from this website for your website for the type of report you need. The other is to contact a Partner who provides a more detailed service that may include website design or redesign, search engine optimization or marketing, data analysis, accessibility design and usability testing provided by UsabilityEffect.com.
Kim offers private usability services to companies as well, for those who do not have an in-house usability specialist. Fees charged by Partners or companies outsourcing UsabilityEffect are for customized work rather than the types of reports ordered from this website.
Interesting reading about somebody who works as a website usability tester!!
Why Usability Testing?
You have common questions about your web site. Can visitors use it? Will they return? Do they recommend it to others? What are you doing that really turns them off? Are sales down and you're curious because you swear you've done everything correctly? You need specific answers, not score cards and ratings.
My approach is to study your pages to find problem areas that cause common user frustrations. Tasks are conducted based on a user persona, used for illustrative and educational insight. A long list of user interface heuristics (that goes way beyond basic heuristic coverage offered by free web site reviews) is used to evaluate your entire site for compliance. I'll ask you questions you may not have thought to ask yourself or your team. From navigation to desirability, user interface to site architecture, with an expert eye towards search engine optimization tossed in, you receive a report that offers suggestions, reviews, tips and resources.
When you hire UsabilityEffect, you hire Kim Krause Berg. I personally evaluate your site, offer suggestions, and share your passion for your site. There is no log analysis, or metrics applied. These are very valuable pieces to the puzzle, but I exclude them to help keep costs down. Phone consultations are not included with reports, which also keeps fees down. However, if you have questions or concerns, I'm just an email away or we can set up a billable phone appointment.
Learn more about each type of usability report by selecting from the links above.
Read feedback on the reports or Order your report now
Partnership or Site Owner Purchase?
There are two types of approaches to services offered. One is to simply place an order from this website for your website for the type of report you need. The other is to contact a Partner who provides a more detailed service that may include website design or redesign, search engine optimization or marketing, data analysis, accessibility design and usability testing provided by UsabilityEffect.com.
Kim offers private usability services to companies as well, for those who do not have an in-house usability specialist. Fees charged by Partners or companies outsourcing UsabilityEffect are for customized work rather than the types of reports ordered from this website.
2007/03/12
Quirky Site
I'm generally a little rigid and boring when it comes to usability and the types of websites I like. However, today I stumbled across a quirky little site for a Japanese camp site which I just can't get enough of.
http://www.chichibu.ne.jp/%7Ecamp/kanko/index.htm
I think the colours are appropriate for the subject matter and I am going to take a look at the code to see if there is something in there which I can incorporate into my Holga site design...
http://www.chichibu.ne.jp/%7Ecamp/kanko/index.htm
I think the colours are appropriate for the subject matter and I am going to take a look at the code to see if there is something in there which I can incorporate into my Holga site design...
2007/03/10
Research
http://www.usabilityfirst.com/
What is usability?
Usability usually refers to software but is relevant to any product. Some ways to improve usability include:
* shortening the time to accomplish tasks,
* reducing the number of mistakes made,
* reducing learning time,
* and improving people's satisfaction with a system.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
Summary:
How to define usability? How, when, and where can you improve it? Why should you care? This overview answers these basic questions.
This is the article to give to your boss or anyone else who doesn't have much time, but needs to know the basic usability facts.
What (Definition of Usability)
Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.
Usability is defined by five quality components:
* Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
* Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
* Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
* Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
* Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
There are many other important quality attributes. A key one is utility, which refers to the design's functionality: Does it do what users need? Usability and utility are equally important: It matters little that something is easy if it's not what you want. It's also no good if the system can hypothetically do what you want, but you can't make it happen because the user interface is too difficult. To study a design's utility, you can use the same user research methods that improve usability.
Why Usability is Important
On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.
The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either.
For intranets, usability is a matter of employee productivity. Time users waste being lost on your intranet or pondering difficult instructions is money you waste by paying them to be at work without getting work done.
Current best practices call for spending about 10% of a design project's budget on usability. On average, this will more than double a website's desired quality metrics and slightly less than double an intranet's quality metrics. For software and physical products, the improvements are typically smaller -- but still substantial -- when you emphasize usability in the design process.
For internal design projects, think of doubling usability as cutting training budgets in half and doubling the number of transactions employees perform per hour. For external designs, think of doubling sales, doubling the number of registered users or customer leads, or doubling whatever other desired goal motivated your design project.
How to Improve Usability
There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and useful is user testing, which has three components:
* Get hold of some representative users, such as customers for an e-commerce site or employees for an intranet (in the latter case, they should work outside your department).
* Ask the users to perform representative tasks with the design.
* Observe what the users do, where they succeed, and where they have difficulties with the user interface. Shut up and let the users do the talking.
It's important to test users individually and let them solve any problems on their own. If you help them or direct their attention to any particular part of the screen, you have contaminated the test results.
To identify a design's most important usability problems, testing five users is typically enough. Rather than run a big, expensive study, it's a better use of resources to run many small tests and revise the design between each one so you can fix the usability flaws as you identify them. Iterative design is the best way to increase the quality of user experience. The more versions and interface ideas you test with users, the better.
User testing is different from focus groups, which are a poor way of evaluating design usability. Focus groups have a place in market research, but to evaluate interaction designs you must closely observe individual users as they perform tasks with the user interface. Listening to what people say is misleading: you have to watch what they actually do.
When to Work on Usability
Usability plays a role in each stage of the design process. The resulting need for multiple studies is one reason I recommend making individual studies fast and cheap. Here are the main steps:
1. Before starting the new design, test the old design to identify the good parts that you should keep or emphasize, and the bad parts that give users trouble.
2. Unless you're working on an intranet, test your competitors' designs to get cheap data on a range of alternative interfaces that have similar features to your own. (If you work on an intranet, read the intranet design annuals to learn from other designs.)
3. Conduct a field study to see how users behave in their natural habitat.
4. Make paper prototypes of one or more new design ideas and test them. The less time you invest in these design ideas the better, because you'll need to change them all based on the test results.
5. Refine the design ideas that test best through multiple iterations, gradually moving from low-fidelity prototyping to high-fidelity representations that run on the computer. Test each iteration.
6. Inspect the design relative to established usability guidelines, whether from your own earlier studies or published research.
7. Once you decide on and implement the final design, test it again. Subtle usability problems always creep in during implementation.
Don't defer user testing until you have a fully implemented design. If you do, it will be impossible to fix the vast majority of the critical usability problems that the test uncovers. Many of these problems are likely to be structural, and fixing them would require major rearchitecting.
The only way to a high-quality user experience is to start user testing early in the design process and to keep testing every step of the way.
Where to Test
If you run at least one user study per week, it's worth building a dedicated usability laboratory. For most companies, however, it's fine to conduct tests in a conference room or an office -- as long as you can close the door to keep out distractions. What matters is that you get hold of real users and sit with them while they use the design. A notepad is the only equipment you need.
What is usability?
Usability usually refers to software but is relevant to any product. Some ways to improve usability include:
* shortening the time to accomplish tasks,
* reducing the number of mistakes made,
* reducing learning time,
* and improving people's satisfaction with a system.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
Summary:
How to define usability? How, when, and where can you improve it? Why should you care? This overview answers these basic questions.
This is the article to give to your boss or anyone else who doesn't have much time, but needs to know the basic usability facts.
What (Definition of Usability)
Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.
Usability is defined by five quality components:
* Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
* Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
* Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
* Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
* Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
There are many other important quality attributes. A key one is utility, which refers to the design's functionality: Does it do what users need? Usability and utility are equally important: It matters little that something is easy if it's not what you want. It's also no good if the system can hypothetically do what you want, but you can't make it happen because the user interface is too difficult. To study a design's utility, you can use the same user research methods that improve usability.
Why Usability is Important
On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.
The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either.
For intranets, usability is a matter of employee productivity. Time users waste being lost on your intranet or pondering difficult instructions is money you waste by paying them to be at work without getting work done.
Current best practices call for spending about 10% of a design project's budget on usability. On average, this will more than double a website's desired quality metrics and slightly less than double an intranet's quality metrics. For software and physical products, the improvements are typically smaller -- but still substantial -- when you emphasize usability in the design process.
For internal design projects, think of doubling usability as cutting training budgets in half and doubling the number of transactions employees perform per hour. For external designs, think of doubling sales, doubling the number of registered users or customer leads, or doubling whatever other desired goal motivated your design project.
How to Improve Usability
There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and useful is user testing, which has three components:
* Get hold of some representative users, such as customers for an e-commerce site or employees for an intranet (in the latter case, they should work outside your department).
* Ask the users to perform representative tasks with the design.
* Observe what the users do, where they succeed, and where they have difficulties with the user interface. Shut up and let the users do the talking.
It's important to test users individually and let them solve any problems on their own. If you help them or direct their attention to any particular part of the screen, you have contaminated the test results.
To identify a design's most important usability problems, testing five users is typically enough. Rather than run a big, expensive study, it's a better use of resources to run many small tests and revise the design between each one so you can fix the usability flaws as you identify them. Iterative design is the best way to increase the quality of user experience. The more versions and interface ideas you test with users, the better.
User testing is different from focus groups, which are a poor way of evaluating design usability. Focus groups have a place in market research, but to evaluate interaction designs you must closely observe individual users as they perform tasks with the user interface. Listening to what people say is misleading: you have to watch what they actually do.
When to Work on Usability
Usability plays a role in each stage of the design process. The resulting need for multiple studies is one reason I recommend making individual studies fast and cheap. Here are the main steps:
1. Before starting the new design, test the old design to identify the good parts that you should keep or emphasize, and the bad parts that give users trouble.
2. Unless you're working on an intranet, test your competitors' designs to get cheap data on a range of alternative interfaces that have similar features to your own. (If you work on an intranet, read the intranet design annuals to learn from other designs.)
3. Conduct a field study to see how users behave in their natural habitat.
4. Make paper prototypes of one or more new design ideas and test them. The less time you invest in these design ideas the better, because you'll need to change them all based on the test results.
5. Refine the design ideas that test best through multiple iterations, gradually moving from low-fidelity prototyping to high-fidelity representations that run on the computer. Test each iteration.
6. Inspect the design relative to established usability guidelines, whether from your own earlier studies or published research.
7. Once you decide on and implement the final design, test it again. Subtle usability problems always creep in during implementation.
Don't defer user testing until you have a fully implemented design. If you do, it will be impossible to fix the vast majority of the critical usability problems that the test uncovers. Many of these problems are likely to be structural, and fixing them would require major rearchitecting.
The only way to a high-quality user experience is to start user testing early in the design process and to keep testing every step of the way.
Where to Test
If you run at least one user study per week, it's worth building a dedicated usability laboratory. For most companies, however, it's fine to conduct tests in a conference room or an office -- as long as you can close the door to keep out distractions. What matters is that you get hold of real users and sit with them while they use the design. A notepad is the only equipment you need.
2007/03/07
New topic... HOLGA
I'm kind of taking a bit of a turn away from the whole 'web designer'
type site.. Basically I have thought of something which might be a bit
more relevant to one of my current hobbies..
I am proposing to design a simple beginners guide to the Holga camera...
Yes, there are quite a few sites out there regarding this at present,
but being a semi-beginner myself I haven't come across one site yet
which actually explains the basic starting points of getting into Holga
yet... I have had so many problems just trying to find out totally BASIC
stuff like how to load film and which film is best which which setting
etc...
I could also possibly put in a page for a 'personal shopping assistant'
for anyone in Tokyo who had the same hell of a time that I did trying to
find information on where to get film cross processed (VERY hard to find
info on this in Japan - and when you do find it it is all in Japanese).
Not sure if this would be very popular, but you never know.. I could
offer my time to help anyone (probably people new to the area) with
directions to camera stores etc... for a small fee...
For anyone who doesn't know what a Holga is, it is a cheap toy camera
made in China which takes some amazing arty type photos... I'm trying to
get more into it, but the lack of information and knowing where to buy
stuff around here has held me back somewhat... I hope that creating this
site will also increase my knowledge on the subject so that I can in
turn pass it on to others...
In future if the site goes live and I can get it up there on the page
rankings I might consider some google advertising and the like to keep
the site running...
Comments?
P.s - A few Holga photos I have taken attached...
Thanks,
Peta
2007/03/02
Scraped!
Ok so after advice from Edwin and inspiration from other students I've decided to scrap my first couple of ideas and go for a website which I can use to my advantage in future.
I plan to create a simple yet effective website for a my (currently non existent) website design service.
I feel that there are plenty of sites out there that I can use as examples of good and also of bad.
My aim will be clean lines and fresh innovation.
Good: http://www.sarkis-webdesign.com/ (I don't like the colours of the Flash version though)
Corporate: http://www.pdesigner.net/
Interesting: http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/
Bad: http://www.nodswal.com/
Worse: http://www.zwebspinner.net/
/
:) I'm inspired now!!
I plan to create a simple yet effective website for a my (currently non existent) website design service.
I feel that there are plenty of sites out there that I can use as examples of good and also of bad.
My aim will be clean lines and fresh innovation.
Good: http://www.sarkis-webdesign.com/ (I don't like the colours of the Flash version though)
Corporate: http://www.pdesigner.net/
Interesting: http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/
Bad: http://www.nodswal.com/
Worse: http://www.zwebspinner.net/
/
:) I'm inspired now!!
2007/03/01
Hierachy
I got to page 50 of the text today and am really enjoying Krug's humorous explanation of what works and what doesn't on the web!
After reading about visual hierachies I was seeing the signs at the train stations in a different light. I found myself distinguishing between the easy to follow and hard to follow and making suggestions of how these could be improved in my mind!
I did some surfing on some Holga and lomography photography websites today which were impossible to navigate! www.lomography.com although yes, there are some great pages in the mess.... This could be another topic I could approach for my page design.
More thinking required...
After reading about visual hierachies I was seeing the signs at the train stations in a different light. I found myself distinguishing between the easy to follow and hard to follow and making suggestions of how these could be improved in my mind!
I did some surfing on some Holga and lomography photography websites today which were impossible to navigate! www.lomography.com although yes, there are some great pages in the mess.... This could be another topic I could approach for my page design.
More thinking required...
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