Usability Spot

Contrast between text and background

2009-12-20T21:43:00.000+02:00

Even though the background of your blog is not distractingly photo-realistic but all in nice single color, it doesn't mean the text is easy to read if the contrast between text and background is not sufficient enough. In this example the text is in black and background is darkish green, which made reading this blog felt like reading a book in candlelight, that there was not enough light in the room, i.e. tiresome. If you want to give your blog a personal touch and feel like black text in white background is too boring or somehow beneath your artistic merits, use light colors as background colors. If the user has to click and mark a portion of text with mouse to be able to read the text properly, you have a problem. In that case you may as well write On the Origin of Species 2.0 and have nobody bothering to read it beyond the first phrase. So remember the good contrast between text and background, and make reading easier for users!

Yet another distracting blog background

2009-12-19T18:58:00.000+02:00

I was again randomly browsing the vast blogosphere to find some interesting blogs (there are many good usability blogs around and of course blogs about nearly anything and then some more), to compare writing styles and to find some bad usability to point fingers at. Lo and behold! Among the first couple of specimens was yet another example of nice but distracting blog background to add to previous examples. Sunset and trees look really nice and moody, but the scenery really grabs your attention from the text even when you try hard to concentrate to read the posts. And reading isn't helped with the fact that the white text on dark background is not really ideal for reading from screen (though it is good for presentations) and in some places there is not really enough contrast between text and bacground for easy reading in the first place. Try not to overlap photo-realistic background and text, and make sure there is enough contrast between text and background to not make reading too difficult and tiresome.

Reducing the blog loading time

2009-12-18T23:14:00.000+02:00

As mentioned in the original web usability mistakes commentary, users will not give your blog too many seconds to load before they start giving up and moving elsewhere. Even a small extra waiting time can frustrate some users enough that they decide not to become your regular followers. Blogger help gives some easy steps to make sure that you Blogger blog will load as fast as possible, like reducing the number and size of images, hosting full-sized images in different service, putting custom css on top of the page and the number of posts displayed on the blogs main page. By some experimentation, and using Stopwatch (a nice service to measure loading times of web pages), I found out that trimming the posts displayed in Usability Spot main page from 7 posts to 5 posts decreased the loading time from 5-6 seconds to 3-4 seconds. It may not sound like much, but trimming two seconds from average page loading time can make all the difference between a happy user with good user experience and unhappy user with bad user experience. Google also has a good collection of articles and tools about web performance, loading time related issues and generally about making the web faster.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web desing - epilogue

2009-12-17T21:32:00.000+02:00

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) is now coming to an end and it is yet again time to give my own personal opinions on these usability mistakes, which mistakes are still valid and you must avoid making (important), which mistakes are not as critical or relevant any more but go against good usability practice (recommended) and which are not relevant any more so you can ignore them from usability point of view (ignore):

Using frames: important - I don't know who in their right mind would think of using frames any more, just don't do it!
Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology: recommended - maybe not as big of a problem any more, but it is good usability practice to use bleeding-edge technology only where it provides some additional value to the user
Scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animations: important - these are just plain evil in wrong hands and there are not that many legitimate reasons for using them.
Complex URLs: recommended - as there are now (hopefully) many navigational aids available for users to understand the website structure, URLs play smaller part but it is good practice to keep them as simple and easy to understand as possible. Unless you have dynamic web content, in which case your URLs will most likely be incomprehensible mess anyway.
Orphan pages: recommended - again, as there are now many navigational aids available (provided that they are used at the particular site!) orphan pages shouldn't appear any more if web designers know what they are doing.
Long scrolling pages: recommended - vertical scrolling has become part of our everyday life in the web, so it is not that big of a problem. Of course putting a whole novel on one web page gets very tedious very fast, and horizontal scrolling should be avoided at all costs!
Lack of navigation support: important - if you don't give your users any clues how they can navigate your website, how can you expect them to find anything?
Non-standard link colors: important - if the links doesn't look like links, how do you expect users to find them? By playing hide-and-seek?
Outdated information: important- if your users cannot trust that information on your site is still valid and up to date, how can they trust anything that is there? Users must always be able to trust that the critical data such as prices, contact information, legal information etc. are not outdated.
Overly long download times: important - connections speeds may get faster all the time, but so does the amount of stuff you can put on the website. And don't assume that since you have gigabit broadband, everybody has.

As we can see, every one of these original usability mistakes is still in one way or another relevant today. The interpretation and reasoning behind individual mistake might have changed, but these are still the mistakes we still have to see almost every day when browsing the web. No top 5 list this time since I really couldn't exclude any of the mistakes with clear conscience, so here is the top 10 list arranged as I see their order of importance today:

Overly long download times
Lack of navigation support
Non-standard link colors
Outdated information
Using frames
Scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animation
Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology
Long scrolling page
Complex URLs
Orphan page

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - is usability spot usable?

2009-12-16T19:12:00.000+02:00

Now that we have looked through the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) it is yet again time to see how this usability blog would do when evaluated against these original web usability mistakes, seasoned with some explanations and commentary:

Using frames: Nope, no frames used here. And if Blogger used frames, I wouldn't be here in the first place.
Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology: Nope, nothing here could be considered to be very much of bleeding-edge technology. No Flash based menus or chat-boxes or Twitter feeds.
Scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animations: No scrolling texts or marquees or elaborate animations that would make you feel like being in 90s disco.
Complex URLs: No way. As mentioned in the commentary, Blogger is almost (but not quite) exemplary for having URLs that us mere humans can actually decipher.
Orphan pages: Not a chance. There are navigational aids (chronological menus, tag search and normal search) and the blog banner links back to index page... except when you already are at index page when there is no link, which is a bit surprising.
Long scrolling pages: No horizontal scrolling necessary. Pages listing many recent posts can get quite long and require vertical scrolling, but that shouldn't be that big of a problem any more, especially with all the aforementioned navigational aids.
Lack of navigation support: Not a problem here. All those previously mentioned navigational aids provide good support for navigation.
Non-standard link colors: Links look like links and they have standard and distinct color, but visited links don't seem to change their colors. So bit of a problem here and I have to see if I can do something about it.
Outdated information: No outdated information here since this blog is relatively new and since blog posts are not usually meant to be modified after they are posted.
Overly long download times: Shouldn't be a problem here, since there are not many or big pictures, Flash, Java or Shockwave applets. Your mileage may vary if you have dial-up connection.

Overall, Usability Spot seems to do quite well when compared to the original list of usability mistakes in web design, which of course is not saying much. When it is time to do a commentary on more recent top 10 web usability mistake lists, things might change a bit but hopefully not very much.:

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - overly long download times

2009-12-15T17:51:00.000+02:00

The tenth and last (but not the least!) usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) is overly long download times. Users start losing their interest and patience quite fast when they have to wait more than 10-15 seconds for any reason. Back in good old 90s most internet connections were slow dial-up connections so loading a very big and elaborate web page might take so long that you could make a cup of coffee (and maybe drink it) before loading was finished.

Nowadays connections are usually broadband connections and getting faster almost every year, so one might be tempted to think that this particular usability mistake is not valid any more. Wrong! While connections get faster, also the web pages get bigger, more elaborate and full of all sorts of Flash, Java and Shockwave applets, widgets and kludges that have to be started and loaded. It is unfortunately common having to wait, twiddle thumbs and watch until the progress bar fills up or percentage reaches 100% and site that is entirely Flash-based is loaded. And that can take sometimes even longer than 10-15 seconds. So make sure that your website is not bloated (i.e. not too many pictures in one page), and doesn't have applets that take forever to load and force the users to stop browsing and wait until loading is finished. Even if your content is par excellence, your users don't want to wait for long and might go elsewhere.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - outdated information

2009-12-14T18:36:00.000+02:00

Outdated information on the website is the ninth mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). Some twenty years ago you might happily read a dictionary that was already ten years old, but nowadays web denizens want fresh, reliable and accurate information. If some pages in your website were last updated year or two years ago, your users will start asking questions and will wonder if these pages (or the wholes site) is still being maintained and if your site is reliable or not. Worst still, there might be some old and now false contact or price information still left in some distant corner of your website and no there is no doubt that some of your users will find those and then you might wonder why some of your customers (aka users) are furious that they cannot contact you or because price was higher than expected or certain item they wanted isn't available any more though some web page said otherwise.

This mistake is still as valid ( and maybe even more so than before) as it was before, so don't just keep on creating new content but stop to do some pruning to your site from time to time and try to find and update or remove all traces of old information. And if you have a habit of sprinkling the same information all over the website in different pages, it will not only be a nightmare to update that information when necessary but you will certainly forget to update some of the places, much to the chargin of your users.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - non-standard link colors

2009-12-13T22:31:00.000+02:00

Jakob Nielsen presents non-standard link colors as third common mistake in his original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list from 1996. Just think about it, how many times when you browse a web site you have to search and guess where the links are and is a particular piece of text a link or not? This mistake is even more valid today than it was back in 90s because now there are plenty of possibilities and technologies, like CSS, to change the color and look of links. So sometimes links are made to look exactly like the rest of the text and then user is forced to play a game of "find every link from this page" which doesn't amuse the user at all. Links that are not visited by user should have a visible and consistent color (usually blue), visited links should have a clearly different color (usually purple, not just a bit different shade of unvisited link color) and links should be underlined.

Nowadays it seems sometimes that some web designers think the underlining of the being somehow beneath them and either don't underline the links at all or grudgingly try to compromise by putting the underline under the links only when users manage to point their mouse pointer over a link. Don't forget that quite big percentage of people have some sort of color-blindness and underlined links help these users a lot! When designing a web site you should therefore check that links have standard link colors (or at least distinct colors between unvisited links, visited links and body text) and that links are underlined. Also, if some of the links has to be for some reason or another opened into new window/tab, tell your user about it (either textually or by using an icon) in the descriptions of those links. Users don't like to be surprised by links that look the same and usually open in the same window but sometimes open in new window or tab.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - lack of navigation support

2009-12-12T17:35:00.000+02:00

The eighth usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) is still as valid as it was back then, namely the lack of navigation support. Sometimes the web developers assume that their users know somehow inherently the structure of their web site no matter how deep and complex hierarchies it might have. So helping the users to navigate the web site is always important, no matter what technologies might be used. Breadcrumbs, site maps, searches and hierarchical menus (more about all these will be discussed later) are great ways of making the users life every bit easier. It is not enough that you know the structure of your web site as web designer, you must communicate this structure somehow to your users, or they will be either forever wandering in your site like rats in a maze or (more likely) they just leave as quickly as they can when they realize that finding anything from your site is almost impossible. So support the navigation!

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - long scrolling pages.

2009-12-11T16:25:00.000+02:00

Long scrolling pages are sixth mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). Back in the middle of 90's when the World Wide Web was young and its full potential was still far in the future, certain conventions in web browsing had not yet developed and therefore user studies hinted that people don't want to scroll at all when reading a web site. Times have changed and now scrolling is part of our everyday web experience and we don't even think about it. Putting the full content of a web site into individual web pages so that no scrolling would not be necessary, would nowadays result a web site with bazillion of pages and users feeling like being trapped into a maze in that kind of navigational nightmare. Times have moved on and scrolling is now accepted part of web development, web use and web experience. Just keep in mind that this applies mainly to vertical scrolling, because horizontal scrolling should still be avoided because it breaks the natural flow of reading. Just try to read a web page that requires horizontal scrolling and you see soon how this forces the users to constantly scroll back and forth to read the text. So use the vertical scrolling whenever needed (but try still to avoid making the pages too long), but avoid the horizontal scrolling all cost like you would a plague or swine flu.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - orphan pages

2009-12-10T20:07:00.000+02:00

The fifth usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) might sound a bit odd today and it is true that this mistake is not very common any more, though you still can find it every now and then: orphan pages, or web pages that don't tell what web site they belong to and don't provide links to home page or other pages on the same site. Often orphan pages force the users either to use the Back-button to return to previous page, shorten the URL to access home page that way or just type other URL and leave such badly designed web site as soon as possible. Nowadays most web sites provide information what web site they belong to and maybe even provide some visual clues about web site structure with structured menus or breadcrumbs as navigational aids, so orphan pages are not such a big problem as they were back in the beginning of World Wide Web. But keep this mistake in mind because now only a n00b web designer would make such a usability mistake that was a bit passé even back in 1996! Remember, l33t web designers use navigational aids to make the navigation in their web sites very easy for the users!

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - complex URLs

2009-12-09T16:46:00.001+02:00

Complex URLs is the fourth mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). "How can an URL be complex?" asks your average propellerhead developer. Sometimes users try to decode the internal structure of the website from the URL and use it as means of navigation, especially if the site doesn't offer any other usable mean of navigation for the user, or maybe the user has formed a habit of just backspacing the URL until the next interesting directory. In these cases the ideal URL would be something like server.domain.tld/directory/subdirectory/topic.html where user can backspace the URL to server.domain.tld/directory/subdirectory/ or server.domain.tld/directory/ to access those parts of the website immediately. Whereas an URL like server.domain.tld/index.php?id=18 doesn't tell the users anything about what the content of that particular page might be. Blogger is a good example of simple and meaningful URLs, for example the Usability Spot post archive from November can be accessed from URL http://usabilityspot.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html and URLs for individual postings are formed like blogname.blogspot.com/year/month/post_topic_DateWhenNecessary.html. But surprisingly the post archive URL for whole year is not so simple or consistent any more and when you try the logical URL format for archive by year URL (blogname.blogspot.com/year_archive.html), the result is an error 404 page not found message. This usability mistake in web design is as valid now as it has been since the beginning of the World Wide Web as we know it, so try to keep your URLs as simple, meaningful and consistent as possible.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animations

2009-12-08T20:04:00.000+02:00

The third usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) has been a bane of web users ever since blink- and marquee -tags were introduced for web designer's disposal. Anything that blinks, scrolls or constantly fidgets tends to grab the users attention and distract from the main substance of the web site and is therefore very bad for usability. Blinking or scrolling text is very difficult to read because the natural flow of reading is interrupted or distorted every time text disappears or user has to wait for new text to scroll visible. Anything that moves in any way tends to distract the users, but nowadays users who have long since been bombarded with web ads have started to develop some kind of cognitive filter to weed out anything that blinks, scrolls or is animated. So if you have something important to tell to your users and you blink it, scroll it or animate it, there is a good chance that your users will simply ignore it. Unless you really know what you are doing and are certain that using blinking, scrolling or animation in any way will bring more benefit than harm to your users (and I think that will almost never happen), you should think twice and use other means of attracting the attention of your users. Be a responsible web designer and just say no to blinking, scrolling and animation!

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology

2009-12-07T13:00:00.000+02:00

Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology is the second mistake in the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design list by Jakob Nielsen (1996). Have you ever loaded a webpage to look at something and had to stop to wait until some Java applet has loaded? And all that wait to load an applet that displays some scrolling text, plays some background music or displays a slideshow you didn't want to see in the first place. Or maybe the site has buttons and menus made in Flash and since you have long time ago installed a flashblocker to weed out all those flashy ads from websited, you have to click the Flash content open one by one to find means for navigation in the site... for every page you load in that site! New bleeding-edge technology come and go, but this mistake remains. Just because you can put some fancy new gimmick to your site doesn't mean you should put it there. Bleeding-edge technology that only looks nice (or maybe it doesn't) and fancy but that distracts, or in worst case hinders the user from enjoying the main content of the site doesn't have any right of being in the site in the first place. Use the bleeding-edge technology when and where it provides some additional value to the users, but don't use it just as means of decoration.

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - using frames

2009-12-06T19:22:00.000+02:00

First usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) is mistake that plagued web design many years until some years ago it fortunately started to disappear into oblivion of time - using frames. Frames are bane of web usability because they break link between content and URL so bookmarking a certain page becomes a nightmare, frames tend to show differently in different browsers and versions depending of phase of the moon, frames can hide content that is stolen directly from other websites, frames mess up how back button works, arriving directly to a page without navigation frame can make the browsing quite frustrating and when printing you usually know which frame you will be printing only by trial and error. Also external links that open to whichever frame they like will make users life miserable. Fortunately frames as we know them from the past will be obsolete in the new HTML5 revision so both users and usability advocates can make a huge sigh of relief. Don't use frames, don't even think about it!

Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web desing - prologue

2009-12-05T17:26:00.001+02:00

When I wrote the commentary about top 10 blog usability mistakes I mentioned that blogs as specific type of web medium should follow the general web usability guidelines. So lets dig almost fifteen years into the past when first web usability guidelines were revealed to the then still young web developer and user community who was still exploring the possibilities of this new web environment. Many things were different back then and some of the usability issues and techniques have been long forgotten. But some of the usability issues are still valid today, so it is worthwhile to look at the genesis of web usability guidelines before moving on to newer web usability guidelines. So the next ten posts will again form an editorial commentary of the genesis of web usability, the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996):

Using frames
Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology
Scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animations
Complex URLs
Orphan pages
Long scrolling pages
Lack of navigation support
Non-standard link colors
Outdated information
Overly long download times

Not quite different enough

2009-12-04T21:33:00.000+02:00

It has happened so many times already. I come across with a shockingly deplorable excuse of an user interface and want to take a screen shot of it. So I open the Start menu, glance the list of recently used programs and select the Microsoft Office Picture Manager from the list to start editing the screen shot... only to realize moment later that I have opened PowerPoint instead. Problem is that the icons of both PowerPoint and Picture Manager are very close to each other when compared for color and style. Both have sort of reddish icon with pictorial elements in them, while all other Office programs icons have very distinct colors and styles. Only when you look closer you can see that icons have different color (orangeish red vs. red) and different themes (slide vs. drawing), while having similar elements (like circles) in similar positions. And the fact that the names of the both programs start identically ("Microsoft Office P...") doesn't really help either. So when you are designing an icon for program or function, please make sure that every icon has a distinct visual message from other icons and are easily recognizable. And remember that when designing icons "less is more".

Distracting background was not an isolated case

2009-12-03T19:40:00.000+02:00

Speaking of the devil, after I posted yesterday about background images that distract from the content, it seems that many of the blog I have come across today has been suffering from this particular problem. Either make the text surround your stunning visuals or the other way around, but don't overlap them! And when considering the background decoration for your blog or website, please keep in mind that photo-realistic image is more distracting than non-photo-realistic image and that repeating patterns can be very distracting whether they are big or small.

When the background makes the text unreadable

2009-12-02T20:52:00.000+02:00

Some time ago I came across with blog that had very nice visual look with a beautiful floral background. Unfortunately the text was completely hidden by the beautiful background, so actually reading the blog was not possible without considerable effort. It is not uncommon to see so distracting visuals on the background of blogs and website that it makes users abandon all hope of reading the content and wanting to leave as soon as possible. Flashing advertisements may try to steal your attention but at least they don't (usually) hinder you from reading the content of the site. So if you want to put some nice visuals on the background of your blog or website, please make sure that decorations and text don't overlap.

Where is english?

2009-12-01T21:36:00.000+02:00

Recently I encountered this language choosing dialog and at first it seemed quite puzzling because for a while I thought there were no selection for English. Only when I stopped glancing those flags and read the texts I found English was the first of the selections, which makes sense, but why do they use flag of Canada to mark English language? Of course English is used in Canada, but usually English as a language is marked with either UK or US flags or their combination. And if they thought UK and US flags were too predictable and easy for the users, then why they chose Canada and not Australia, New Zealand or Nauru? Maybe the designer was from Canada?

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - epilogue

2009-11-30T17:32:00.001+02:00

Commentary on the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is now coming to an end and I want to give my own personal opinions on which blog usability mistakes you must avoid (important), which mistakes are not as critical but go against good usability practice (recommended) and which you can ignore from usability point of view (ignore):

No author biographies: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
No author photo: ignore - you can safely ignore also this from usability point of view.
Nondescript posting titles: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
Links don't say where they go: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
Classic hits are buried: recommended - try to avoid making this mistake.
The calendar is the only navigation: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
Irregular publishing frequency: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view if you post "on hiatus until" messages when necessary and encourage users to subscribe feeds.
Mixing topics: recommended - try to avoid making this mistake.
Forgetting that you write for your future boss: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
Having a domain name owned by weblog service: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.

When we take important and recommended items from that list we come up with my personal condensed list of "Top 5 Blog Usability Mistakes That Are Really Related To Usability And That You Really Should Avoid" or T5BUMTARRTUATYRSA for short (and yes, capitalizing every word in the sentence is not good practice) in order of importance:

Links don't say where they go
Nondescript posting titles
The calendar is the only navigation
Classic hits are buried
Mixing topics

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - is usabilityspot usable?

2009-11-29T09:27:00.000+02:00

Now that we have gone through all of the top 10 blog usability mistakes list by Jakob Nielsen (2005) it is time for the mandatory "how would this usability blog do when evaluated using this list of usability criterion" -evaluation. So without further ado, lets see how does this usabilityspot blog do when compared against these blog usability mistakes, salted with some commentary to add flavor:

No author biographies: No author biography here. Not really because author identity would be very big secret but because I don't think advertising my usability experience or publications in this blog would contribute very much to the actual posts.
No author photo: No author photo here either because I don't think it is necessary in other than consultant blogs.
Nondescript posting titles: This is hard one to evaluate but I try to keep the post titles descriptive though sometimes attempting to add some dry humor into appropriate titles.
Links don't say where they go: Shouldn't be a problem here since links have long descriptions.
Classic hits are buried: This is not quite yet applicable here since this blog is not very old and there really isn't yet any classical golden posts of infinite wisdom to be promoted. Lets wait one year and see if there are any particular posts that attract attention.
The calendar is the only navigation: Labels and search are also navigation aids here so this shouldn't be a problem here.
Irregular publishing frequency: So far it has been post per day, but o guarantees are given for that posting frequency. There are so many things in the field of usability to talk about and of course world is full of examples of bad usability to point fingers at, but there is also life outside blogging. There will be notification before expected longer hiatus.
Mixing topics: No topics are mixed here, though usability is wide and high field so you can expect posts ranging from theoretical papers to game usability and beyond. If it is about usability, it belongs here. But you will not likely find cookie recipes or lolcat pictures here, unless they can somehow be related to usability.
Forgetting that you write for your future boss: No big secrets here and an usability advocate writing about usability shouldn't be very shocking finding for any future boss.
Having a domain name owned by weblog service: Guilty as charged in this account, but using Blogger as blogging service gives enough flexibility with relative ease of use (usability problems in Blogger are a topic of some other post) and building a dedicated blog of my own would not be worth the hassle.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - having a domain name owned by weblog service

2009-11-28T17:21:00.000+02:00

Tenth and final mistake in the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is having your blogs address pointing to blog service (Blogger, Typepad etc). Nielsen sees this as sign of naive beginner who shouldn't be taken too seriously. And again, in my opinion this mistake is not really usability mistake at all but rather a question about PR and image. If you are pro blogger by all means you can have your own domain and build your own blog as you like it, but I follow several professional blogs and v-logs (some in Blogger, some in other blog services), and the idea that blog service provider would somehow lessen the value or image of information or entertainment I get from that particular blog hasn't crossed my mind. I would argue that using a blog service lets you as blog writer concentrate better to the main attraction (i.e. your blog posts) and not worry about technical details, layouts and trying to get problems solved with sometimes quite unresponsive tech support especially when using cheap service provider.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - forgetting that you write for your future boss

2009-11-27T15:22:00.000+02:00

Forgetting that you write for your future boss gets the ninth place in the Jakob Nielsens top 10 blog usability mistakes list from 2005. Write anything into internet and it can be found quite easily. Even if writing is modified the originals can sometimes be found from Google caches, archive.org archives or other similar sites. So in case you want to get name and fame or think that your current or future boss or colleagues might get curious, it is good idea to think carefully what and how you write into internet and perhaps make a search using your name to find out where your name pops up. Of course you can write anonymously, with pseudonym or just with fake name. While there is nothing wrong with this kind of advice and certainly blog writers would be fools not to think with what kind of things and issues they want their real names to be associated with, I have to again respectfully disagree here that this advice would have much to do with usability. So think what kind of image you want to give for those who google your name but it has more to do about creating a professional public image than about usability.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - mixing topics

2009-11-26T12:51:00.000+02:00

Mixing different topic in one blog is the eighth mistake in the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005). One easy way to confuse your readers is to write posts from various topics into same blog. If the users don't know whether your blog is about political satire or family dilemmas, they have to live in permanent uncertainty not knowing which topic will the next post be about. Or more likely they just move along and find a blog that actually can stick to one topic and not meander aimlessly over all possible topics and then some more. In case you really have burning desire to blog about more than one issue, by all means make multiple separate blogs each with their own distinct topic. How this mistake is connected to usability may not be apparent at first, but letting your users know what they can expect is a good usability practice in general.