Monthly Archives: January 2010

Web Industry – Lack of Ethics and Morals

Jan
22
2010

Ethics and morals should be a big thing in our industry, and yet I’m beginning to think that some people have forgotten all about them recently.

I’ll tell you a story.

We have been working with a development company, who support a various range of their own products. Products that one of our clients use.   Straight forward, when we have issues with their product we email their support line. The other day we discover that the client’s site was down, we trace the issue back to badly written script injection hack. Easy to fix.

A Review – Fancy Form Design

Jan
17
2010

Rating:
4.5

As I’m designing forms I don’t usually have an issue making then usable or accessible within the limits of the clients budget.

However taking the form to the next level technically can sometimes be an issue. This is exactly what Fancy Form Design by Jina Bolton, Tim Connell and Derek Featherstone is all about, designing and building those great forms on the web.

When I first purchased this book (yes I do purchase my books, they aren’t usually review freebies) I was a little skeptical as to whether this book would have any content in it that would be relevant to me. This is an issue that I’m running into more and more these days.

Improving Your Listening Skills

Jan
14
2010

Not Listening

Listening is one of those skills that no one really talks about, and yet listening is critical to User Research and general business as well.

You have to understand, and in some cases even become emotive, with the users you are listening to.  Yes we can all listen to some degree, but the reality is this will not be that thorough, there will be gaps, major things that you will miss or just did not understand completely.

It follows in the field of user experience listening is critical. Without it you just aren’t going to a able to understand the issues your users are telling you, or worse you will miss important information.