As you can see my new blog follows some unconventional design philosophies. What are your thoughts?
I think it sucks, I can’t get to any of your posts with out knowing what they are about. I type in the word user, and nothing shows up even tho one of your tags is for user interfaces.
I think you need to study user interface design first. :-/
My thoughts are that for a blog about UI, it seems to be completely lacking a cohesive UI. I can’t even figure out how to view your posts. :lol:
The reason you cannot find content with the keyword “user” because I only have 1 post in my blog and it discusses blog design. The default WordPress installation does not search tags I think. You brought up a good point. I should make WordPress search tags too.
That’s not a very helpful statement. Maybe you can point out 1 or 2 reasons why you think I am not fit to talk about user interface design? Maybe I can learn something from you.
I’m actually a UI Designer and Design Consultant by profession so I guess I know something about UI Design :ne:… maybe not as much as you.
There is only 1 post now. You were expecting complexity that have not exist yet :lol:
Okay I made tags, categories search-able and added a new post on organic mouse interaction.
Some fundamentals are way off, and considering this is a blog about UI…
- Don’t make the user scroll to the bottom to get to the RSS feed.
- Use text as well as icon for the email link.
- Live search is not cool, when I disable Javascript on my browser I don’t have a button, let’s say I don’t know to press enter after I type a term… core functionality is broken.
- Search results are broken in Firefox ([U]link[/U]) (I haven’t checked IE6+, safari or opera)
- Link colour is too light compared to the main copy text, links should also be underlined.
- When I click a link there is not indication I clicked it… you should look into pseudo classes for link tags (link, visited, hover, active)
- No about page… who is writing this, why should I listen to them etc, credentials. (Clear and usable UI design goes way beyond a fancy interface).
This is only at a quick glance, and don’t take it personal, I’m only trying to help 
RB
Thanks for the help ramie.
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Scrolling to get RSS Feed
I’m not trying to change the way people use their browser. Every browser has their way of subscribing to RSS feeds. In Firefox it is to the right of the address bar. Clearly an UI issue here. Every website puts their RSS icon/link in different places… sidebar, footer, top-right corner, in every blog post… In the same way I don’t create extra Back/Forward buttons in my website, I place the RSS icon at the bottom, away from the one already in the browser. -
Icon for email link
Icon-only buttons are everywhere, like web browsers and the OS, OS X Finder, Windows Explorer, IE7, etc… You don’t need a label to explain something as ubiquitous as an envelope icon. Of course for an icon that’s not obvious, a label would help. -
Live Search
You are right on this one. I was trying too hard to implement the live search feature that I neglected the button. But it only affects a small percentage of idiots so I’ll take care of it at the end of the day. -
Links
Is it easier to recognize a visited link by its context and surrounding content and even visiting it again, than by color? Color would be a better choice if blue and purple are used (default browser link colors) but when styling requirements–not so much of a designer’s whim but stuff like corporate brand guidelines are in place, it is perfectly acceptable to use non-default link styling. -
No About page
Would it make an article different whether you knew who wrote it? I am no celebrity on the net and I don’t have to pretend to be one. Nobody knows me so it is very unlikely that an “About Me” would be more enticing than post titles alone. So no “Hello I am XYZ and I am a Wed Designer” cliche.
The current standard of clear and usable UI design (presumably yours) goes beyond too many things. So I would like to cut whatever that is standard in half. Like I said in my first blog post, a blog is a blog and nothing more, else it wouldn’t be a blog. My blog has no hidden agenda, background business goals, monetizing… so naturally it would seem to lack many things most other blogs would have.
Thanks for the tip on the button. I’ll add it right away.
ok, like I said your way off, your thinking about users like yourself and not the ‘mom and pop’ demographic (which a lot of so called web professionals unfortunately fall into), I’ll re-address my points…
- Scrolling to get RSS Feed
I’m not trying to change the way people use their browser. Every browser has their way of subscribing to RSS feeds. In Firefox it is to the right of the address bar. Clearly an UI issue here. Every website puts their RSS icon/link in different places… sidebar, footer, top-right corner, in every blog post… In the same way I don’t create extra Back/Forward buttons in my website, I place the RSS icon at the bottom, away from the one already in the browser.
You assume that users know to click a little icon in the address bar or even use the browser, wrong. I work with designers who don’t know this (good designers).
Why put a barrier for subscribing to a feed simply because you don’t want something as obvious as a link at the top of the page saying something like ‘subscribe to my feed’, this is not a issue like the back and forward button, that is core functionality of the browser, I would class feed subscriptions secondary, they are not relevant to each others functionality and incomparable when making a UI judgment call - a browser can survive without a feed subscribe feature, it simply can’t without back and forward.
With all that in mind, making the user scroll to subscribe to a feed is extra effort to activate a function, minor, but your blog is about UI, therefor usability.
- Icon for email link
Icon-only buttons are everywhere, like web browsers and the OS, OS X Finder, Windows Explorer, IE7, etc… You don’t need a label to explain something as ubiquitous as an envelope icon. Of course for an icon that’s not obvious, a label would help.
Contacting you is fundamental part of a blog, as a blog is in some ways a two way communication tool, the contact link would be better placed (there is no main navigation) below the categories. Doing this gives the user a consistent place to look for links… at the moment it’s just a cool email icon sitting in the top right of the browser, it has no relevance to the main navigation and is orphaned.
- you could also put the RSS link here, this gives the user a single point of navigation for the site’s functions.
- Live Search
You are right on this one. I was trying too hard to implement the live search feature that I neglected the button. But it only affects a small percentage of idiots so I’ll take care of it at the end of the day.
The small percentage of idiots are the Internet, dig about and you’ll find that percentage is not so small
In my opinion live search is fundamentally a broken concept within a webpage, it introduces alien UI interaction and is intrusive - I will type and I will press search when I am ready. Average Joe user sees this and its a simple WTF, it’s completely alien to them and is often badly implemented (please don’t mention finder or vista’s search, those are operating system concerns and not standard web behaviour).
What happens if I use the tab key, accidentally tab into a live search and hit a key - I get some search results I didn’t ask for.
- Links
Is it easier to recognize a visited link by its context and surrounding content and even visiting it again, than by colour? Colour would be a better choice if blue and purple are used (default browser link colours) but when styling requirements–not so much of a designer’s whim but stuff like corporate brand guidelines are in place, it is perfectly acceptable to use non-default link styling.
Why should I visit it again to see if I already visited it? just colour the link (:visited) and I know.
My point was the links should be underlined, I understand brand guidelines, better than most, I work with and am constantly arguing the point for and against when it comes to UI design. It’s a lot easier to bastardise a brand through poor implementation than it is through good technique (which can work with guidelines). Poor implementation will be associated with the brand.
Using grey with a copy text of black hides the links in the content, if you understand UI then you understand colour theory (it’s a fundamental part of HCI teaching) then you will understand that people with colour blindness see a lot of things in grey, your links are potentially invisible, this is easily countered with a underline, which on the web is the standard way to signify that a piece of text is a hyperlink.
- No About page
Would it make an article different whether you knew who wrote it? I am no celebrity on the net and I don’t have to pretend to be one. Nobody knows me so it is very unlikely that an “About Me” would be more enticing than post titles alone. So no “Hello I am XYZ and I am a Wed Designer” cliche.
Ok, so I stumble across your blog, your telling me what’s what as far as UI design goes, why should I listen, what is your experience? what are your credentials? what is your motivation?
So I move onto the next blog, that is not as visually pleasing, but contains basically the same content, wrote by some bloke who works for X, had done Y and is interested in Z… I think I’ll listen to him.
This is not about being some Internet celebrity, its about credibility.
The usability of your blog is now zero, simply because I am not using it.
I could go into the quality of the markup, eye tracking issues, cognitive issues and so on, but will leave it here. I am not trying to knock you either man, it’s just if you have a blog about UI (therefor usability) get the fundamentals correct, because your target demographic is other professionals and they will tear you a new arse when your off the money.
RB
You see the internet is so full of opinions and people who thinks they know a lot.
They do know a lot though.
Are fundamentals still fundamentals if they are debatable?
I don’t agree that the internet is completely full of idiots who don’t know how to hit RETURN to submit a form. It has to be a smaller number.
Dude if you want credibility that much, I’m a human living on Earth and has 2 eyes, a nose and a mouth. I like fish.
By the way thanks a lot for pointing out issues like link color and the search button, which I’m going to address. Though we have differentiating views on UI Design, I am very happy to learn from you. I will post more stuff so I welcome your arguments (on the blog).
Thanks!
glad to help.
Are fundamentals still fundamentals if they are debatable?
The thing is in most areas they are fundamental, debate is usually futile when presented with hard fact.
However I do feel that UI techniques should always be challenged/debated, that way things will inevitably get better if the argument for is strong enough, and of course user interaction with machine always changes and evolves, so they need to adapt regardless.
What is the point of having a pull quote a third of the way down the article and right beside the paragraph it is taken from?
That really defeats the point, doesn’t it?
[quote=paddy.;2331346]What is the point of having a pull quote a third of the way down the article and right beside the paragraph it is taken from?
That really defeats the point, doesn’t it?[/quote]
Yeah that struck me as odd too. I also agree that if you’re going to be blogging about user interface design, you’ll gain a much better readership if you establish your credibility somehow. By the way, I think your current site is quite nice in a lot of ways.
I dont mind certain parts of it. But when I look at it I get generally confused. I would work on separating the navigation for all of your categories from the post itself. When I look at the first post I see categories listed on either side of it and I don’t really know which set is affiliated with the article itself until I see the second post. That may sound a little picky but I think it would definitely help the look and design.
![[U]link[/U]](http://ramieb.com/broken.jpg){kind=link}