brandon

New Minimum Font Size: “The good people of Microsoft User Experience and Microsoft Typography have found that the minimum font size used on computer screen is too tiny for modern computer displays. The absolute minimum size used to be Tahoma 8pt (comparable to 11px on Mac OS X or on the web). But, as the average screen display has moved from 640×480 to 1024×786 (and above) the font has simply become intelligible for most people. This evidently caused by that the average screen resolution has increased more rapidly than the use of larger displays. It is a problem that has become profound on most laptops, and noticeable on many desktop systems. To fix this Microsoft has developed a new font – Segoe UI (pronounced, ‘SEE-go’), and changed the minimum from 8pt to 9pt. But, that is not all. The new font has also been designed specifically for ClearType, and has been given a more human appearance than Tahoma. You should care too In May 2004, I wrote an article about the minimum font size you could use on the web. With this, that article, and my recommendation has changed. If you are creating a website, web application or a regular application, you should actively consider using a larger font-size – based on this new knowledge about user experience vs. computer displays.

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Web 3.0: “Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005.”

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Web 2.0: A glimpse into the future?: ” What is Web 2.0? (as of Dec. 2005) A new approach to web and web application development that is characterized by: Web sites offering free (cool) web services and tools (examples below); Open source code (open API’s)- software code becomes a viral marketing tool; An enhanced user experience afforded by new approaches to information sharing and use of existing/new web scripting technologies; Giving users the ability to share their opinions, media or to offer back to the community aka ‘The Architecture of Participation’ (see Wikipedia’s Web 2.0 definition) or peer-to-peer goes mainstream. Web 2.0 seems to have taken flight in the last 10 months related to: The rising popularity of social networking websites (like MySpace); online dating sites (like Match.com) and social networking sites (like LinkedIn) that create more emphasis on the ‘Social Web’. Google’s rising influence and use of new ways to present a map interface (Google Maps; Gmail; Google Suggest). And Amazon, Microsoft and other big players are working on what will be central to the ‘Web 2.0’ user experience (i.e. Tagging in Amazon and RSS web feeds in IE 7). Yahoo’s positioning as a stakeholder in Web 2.0 with it’s acquisition of Flickr photo sharing and del.icio.us social bookmarking services and hiring of key ‘Social Media’ executives to spearhea”

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The Politics of Pop-Ups, Pop-Up Blockers and the Pop-Up Error Message: ” Pop ups are dead- so what? First of all, let me just get this out in the open: there is nothing wrong with pop-ups per say. Next, let me qualify what I just said: Pop-ups are ineffective as an advertising tool and are not recommended on the web since pop-up blockers are ubiquitous. E.g. Every browser and search engine tool these days has a pop-up blocker: AOL pop-up blocker, Google Toolbar pop-up blocker, Yahoo Toolbar pop-up blocker, Firefox built in pop-up blocker, third party free pop-up blocker tools…etc. Google Killed the Pop-Up From the late 90’s to the early 00’s Google quietly used it’s simple and easy to use design (read great user experience) to hijack the pop-up as a form of web advertising. If you remember every credible large and small website used pop-up windows for advertising and more. Google’s text advertising (right column block short phrase with a link) wiped out the pop-up since the click through rates (CTR) for text based advertising (or contextual advertising) were higher: under .5% CTR for pop-ups to 2-3% CTR for text ads. Back to ‘There is Nothing Wrong with Pop-ups’ Pop-ups are not the problem. It is the forcing of them on your users without telling them, which also violates the permission-based marketing model.

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Too many tabs. This is a common problem I see when teams have not anticipated the information hierarchy of the data they want to represent. As the number of tabs increase the designers are often forced into situation where they are adding 2 and 3 tiers of tabs to handle the application complexity.

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Complex coffee machine. This coffee machine had so many usability problems, the company had to post (see right) a complete set of ‘Fault’ instructions to facilitate caffeine dispersal.

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Inconsistent design. I was over in the UK north of Birmingham trying to use this phone. The inconsistent keypad made a simple task complex and frustrating.

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questions about the gestures in the world

Good site to educate Americans on gestures and their impact on a world audience. I once used the ‘OK’ symbol at a speaking engagement down in Brazil with 100 people in the audience. Hopefully, you’ll spare yourself the experience I had although they simply chuckled and wrote it off as an “American” thing…

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