Learn from the Bad, Practice the Good and CITE WHAT YOU FIND!!!
The
BAD!!
– From Jakob Nielsen’s http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
Some History:
Top 10 Mistakes (1996) –(Visit http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
for details)
Top 10 NEW Mistakes (1999) – (Visit http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html for details)
Top Ten 2005 Mistakes:
1. Legibility problems (kooky fonts -- small fonts – poor contrast)
3. Flash
4. Content that’s not written
for the web (i.e. loooooong, verbose, jargonistic)
5. Bad search (can you find
the Alexandria Parking Services office by using the “Search the NVCC Web”
option on www.nvcc.edu?)
6. Browser Incompatibility (Firefox? Opera?)
7. Cumbersome forms (what is
mandatory and why?)
8. CONTACT INFO!
9. Frozen Layouts (i.e. don’t
resize to the window: and printing!)
10. Inadequate photo
enlargement (does “enlarge” really enlarge?)
Top 10 2006 Mistakes:
(Nielsen. “Ten Good Deeds In Web Design.” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/991003.html)
1.Placing your name and logo on every page and make the logo a link to the home page.
2.Provide search if the site has more than 100 pages.
3.Write straightforward and simple headlines and page titles that clearly explain what the page is about and that will make sense when read out-of-context in a search engine results listing.
4.Structure the page to facilitate scanning and help users ignore large chunks of the page in a single glance
5.Instead of cramming everything about a product or topic into a single, infinite page, use hypertext to structure the content space into a starting page that provides an overview and several secondary pages that each focus on a specific topic. The goal is to allow users to avoid wasting time on those subtopics that don't concern them.
6.Use product photos, but avoid cluttered and bloated product family pages with lots of photos…..The primary product page must be fast andshould be limited to a thumbnail shot.
7.Use relevance-enhanced image reduction when preparing small photos and images: instead of simply resizing the original image to a tiny and unreadable thumbnail, zoom in on the most relevant detail and use a combination of cropping and resizing.
8.Use link titles to provide users with a preview of where each link will take them, before they have clicked on it.
9.Ensure that all important pages are accessible for users with disabilities, especially blind users.
10.Do the same as everybody else: if most big websites do something in a certain way, then follow along since users will expect things to work the same on your site.
Remember Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience: users spend most of their time on other sites, so that's where they form their expectations for how the Web works.
Citing
what you’ve found:
As with all citation formats, the goal is to allow the reader to re-trace your steps. However, with the Internet, it is also wise to indicate the last date a page was visited, in case it is made inactive.
Elements to include in an Internet citation are:
Author of Site Title of Site
Date Site Accessed Site URL/Address
Visit http://www.nvcc.edu/library/BOW/eleccite.htm for links to examples for APA, MLA, CBE (Biology) citation formats.