Category Archives: usability

CSS menus why use Display:None

Dec
6
2009

Hiding In Plain Sight

You know in accessibility circles we are constantly telling people using drop down CSS menus that when the menus are not visible  we shouldn’t be using display:none to achieve this.   We all know this one, right.  Just to refresh your memory, remember the display:none rule takes an element assigned right out of the picture completely,  for anyone using a screen reader the assigned content will just not “exist”.

This is all well and good.  Well that depends, maybe there is a case for the use of display:none afterall.

It’s Simply About Selling and UX

Feb
24
2009

What we don't need is a smack in the face

The other day we came across a web site that  shows all the things that are wrong with a good deal of e-commerce sites on the web.

A little background, we were looking for education books for our youngest child -  so why not look online.  You  know, from the convenience of our own home and all that.  So on  the recommendation of  a friend we went to a local publishers web site.

This site in question does children and adult education  books, judging from the home page I would say that they are focusing on an adult market, from young parents to grandparents.

Emotion and User Experience

Feb
1
2009

According to Eric Schaffer in his post Beyond Usability: Designing Web Sites for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust – persuasive design is the next big thing.

I don’t know about you, but this is nothing new, For me the User Experience of a web site has always been more than the usability or achieving the sites business goals. Some say that we should be telling a story or translating those magical moments in real life onto web. Now in order to do this I would have thought it was a given that we have to engage with people on an emotion level and build trust. After all a good deal of our experiences are at least tinged with our emotions. We are after all emotional beings.

Southern User Experience

May
16
2008

Web Directions UX 2008

After a workshop with Andy Budd yesterday and an evening with the WSG, it was time for Web Directions User Experience 2008 conference proper. With a packed out the Melbourne Town Hall with a focused not a the general web process but the user experience.

Andy Budd – Designing the Experience Curve

Initial and end experiences are the ones that are memorable.

Negative experiences stand out more than the positive experiences

We don’t have experiences in a vacuum, they are supplemented by the previous experiences