ReachCustomersOnline.com

“To date, the most common approach to propagating a single user experience standard is the development of UI guidelines and principles documentation within an organization. Development teams — usually incorporating a user experience specialist — then reference this documentation during implementation and upgrade processes. However, as the numbers of systems grow within an organization, so... 
Read the full story

Recently came across two articles about free website monitoring tools, Top 10 Free Website Uptime Monitoring Services, from Design Live, and 12 Excellent Free Tools for Monitoring Your Sites Uptime, from Six Revisions. Both articles are good for identifying possible services to use. Both have some overlap in the services they document. (I’ve also covered this topic before, Website Monitoring... 
Read the full story

“How many times have you had to debug your web pages on virtual or multiple machines running different versions of Internet Explorer? Or had to wait for a slow web service to return renderings of your pages? You don’t have to do that anymore. Now you can debug your pages on multiple versions of IE on the same machine that you use for Web development.” From the MSDN Blog about Microsoft... 
Read the full story

“There are numerous ways for brands to leverage Facebook but the overall branded experience is becoming increasingly integrated into a single offering as the new Pages product highlights. So what are the primary benefits and changes for the new branded pages?” From AllFacebook. This article nicely describes how to take advantage of Facebook for your business. It is extremely comprehensive,... 
Read the full story

“Information architecture is an often misunderstood job title. Are they Designers? Developers? Managers? All of the above? In this article we’ll discuss what information architecture is, why it’s related to usability, and what are the common tools/programs used in information architecture. Along the way we’ll share some of the tweeters, books, and resources we found useful for budding information... 
Read the full story

Google stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small, like eBay, which owns Skype, telephone companies and a string of technology start-up firms. Google Voice is an expanded version of a service previously known as GrandCentral, a start-up that Google acquired... 
Read the full story

“In this article tripwire magazine presents an overview of more than 75 excellent free fonts you should consider using for your designs. Not all free Fonts are worth using but the Fonts listed in this article have all been picked out because they are better than the rest. Before using fonts please read the license agreements carefully — they can change from time to time.” From Tripwire.... 
Read the full story

“How do you scale CSS for millions of visitors or thousands of pages? Nicole first presented Object Oriented CSS at Web Directions North in Denver. Since then, the response has been overwhelming. OOCSS allows you to write fast, maintainable, standards-based front end code. It adds much needed predictability to CSS so that even beginners can participate in writing beautiful websites.” From... 
Read the full story

“It has been predicted that Apple will have sold 45 million iPhones by the end of 2009. And that’s before it hits China. There aren’t hundreds of type-related apps for the iPhone, but here are few; and a few type-related tips too.” From I Love Typography. I have way too many apps on my iPhone, most of them games to appease our kids on long trips, but there are a few here worth a mention.... 
Read the full story

“A personal portfolio website is all about promoting you. You are a brand, and your name is a brand name. No one is going to know about your brand unless you get it out there; and if you’re a Web designer, developer, writer, gamer or any other type of creative, then it’s essential that you have a good portfolio website.” From Smashing Magazine. A basic but thorough list of what should... 
Read the full story

“Completely ignoring a browser in terms of CSS is a wonderfully freeing thing. It certainly can’t be done on every site. The important thing to remember is that it’s a site’s statistics that should determine what level of support you decide to offer.” From Simple Bits. Includes some examples using conditional statements to isolate IE6 web browsers without affecting the ability of... 
Read the full story

“I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t profess to be an expert speaker. I’ve had my share of presentations that have been total flops, along with some very successful ones. But if anything, I’ve done quite a bit of speaking over the past four years (see the summary on my LinkedIn public profile), and therefore I’ve learned a few things about speaking along the way. Below are 20 things... 
Read the full story

“In the past days I received several requests from my readers to suggest some CAPTCHA scripts and services quickly to embed into a web page. This post proposes a list of ten interesting scripts and services you can use to provide protection from spam bots and ensure that only humans perform certain actions.” From Woork. This is a good canonical list. The comments include a link to a variation... 
Read the full story

“Such problems often come from trying to make a Web site accessible without understanding how people with disabilities actually use the Web. The challenge for UX designers is to find ways of including real people with disabilities throughout the design process, starting with initial user research and going all the way through final usability testing. This gets back to the issue of familiarity.... 
Read the full story

” There are some basic approaches, guidelines and goals to consider when working with type on the Web. Overall, the medium of Web typography involves readability, accessibility, usability, and brandability. On the Web, these aspects function together to accomplish design’s goals of communication and user interaction. There are many ways to approach Web typography in order to create effective... 
Read the full story

“In the broadest sense, all kinds of design artifacts are prototypes. Pencil sketches, blocks of wood, storyboards, wireframes, foam-core models, pixel-perfect state renderings, clickable demos, and functioning production code are all strategies for representing a thing being designed. However, in the world of interaction design, we usually reserve the term for ways... 
Read the full story

“A SEO log that includes notes on all changes made to a Web site can be absolutely invaluable. One of the best reasons for this is that it can give you an idea as to the cause and effect of SEO, at least as it relates to your specific site. At its root, SEO is an inexact science. It’s a world where we follow best practices and use our best judgment to make decisions on what to do next.... 
Read the full story

“Many people have asked me which text type is best for a magazine, a newspaper, a poster, a newsletter, a publication, etc. In general, I tell them which to use, but I know that this is not the best answer, because they won’t learn to do this by themselves. Today, I want to take time to analyze how to choose correct text typography design in different cases. It is very important to understand... 
Read the full story

“Late last year, my family found a line-a-day diary maintained by my great-aunt from 1937 to 1941. She was in her early teens, living on a small farm in rural Illinois with her two brothers, one of which was my grandfather. It’s a fascinating account of life in a bygone era, a time when my family’s only connections to the world were schoolhouse chatter and a neighbor’s radio. Looking... 
Read the full story

” Unfortunately, we’ve found that many teams don’t know how to iterate effectively. Good iteration is a deliberate activity, with four important stages: planning, implementing, measuring, and learning. The best teams focus on each stage appropriately, making sure they get the most out of it. While iterations can be very short, (we’ve seen teams that can iterate a dozen times... 
Read the full story