NOTE: Sorry, typed this live. Please excuse the typos and errors.
- link to session
- reducing design elements, form elements, focus a page
- what makes an ‘obvious’ blog?
- 2 principals. building only what is absolutely necessary
- 1) ditch what is not essential
- each screen lot more focused and easier to use
- 2) surfacing important elements
- 1) ditch what is not essential
- blog essential elements are different
- make sure in blog pages that you have elements on page that are essential to make point clear
- that’s what blogs about
- make sure take all out that doesn’t have to be there
- 2 principals. building only what is absolutely necessary
- audience question: what are the essential elements
- essential elements
- search
- comments
- post title
- the post itself
- about page
- what is this blog about
- reader may not know what site is about
- what is your bran
- link to permanent URL
- most popular posts
- and short list of related posts
- good writing
- e.g. guy works for adaptive path
- turns out that todd put up post usability path to failure. he talked about companies focused on business model but if you focus on usability it’s going to be a failure.
- robert wrote back why narrow mindedness is a path to failure
- have to have good value proposition
- have to understand user
- todd responded to feedback, here’s what i really meant and turned it into a conference
- got attention by being controversial
- robert wrote back why narrow mindedness is a path to failure
- need to say what you mean
- turns out that todd put up post usability path to failure. he talked about companies focused on business model but if you focus on usability it’s going to be a failure.
- e.g. guy works for adaptive path
- speed (extremely important)
- google did a study
- instead of 10 results they did 25
- taking longer to load
- growing impatient
- lost something like $3M in small time with small sliver of people
- taking longer to load
- instead of 10 results they did 25
- google did a study
- not essential
- comment count
- author
- they’re looking for content not looking for me
- blogroll
- matt: personally disagrees and likes blogrolls as a way to discover other sites. act of sending people elsewhere is part of the nature of blogging
- essential elements
- surfacing the important elements
- make sure right things in front of user and wrong things are not
- make it easy for people to glance at page
- userinterfaceengineering.com
- 5 second test
- show for 5 seconds and ask them to remember what they saw
- robert does same for task oriented process
- give user task and show them screen for 5 seconds and see if they can figure out
- 5 second test
- blogs aren’t not about action, but want to inspire them to get them to thinking
- what can you do to encourage comments
- instead of using word ‘comments’ using something that is more a call to action statement.
- trackbacks
- ideas, the post themselves
- thought provoking topics
- what can you do to encourage comments
- ? from audience: how can we graphically encourage comments
- they are informative, the move you. emotive
- it’s not about pretty pink flowers
- it’s about getting people to react
- from a business perspective
- you put a blog up
- you want to build your community
- want people to come back to your site
- wouldn’t want to send people off their site
- why do bad designs succeed
- e.g. myspace
- it’s all about the history that helped them get famous
- friendster had slow speeds and myspace had the speed
- e.g. myspace
- tumblr.com
- an interesting thought streaming example that takes out some of the key elements of a blog
1 Response to “WordCamp 2007: Day 1: Designing the Obvious Robert Hoekman, Jr.”