When linking part of a sentence, what words belong inside the link? This seems to be a lesson that every new UI designer stumbles on. Bad Click here to see the next page. Because readers scan text, the link is read as standalone (“here”) text and is unintelligible. Still bad Click here to see the… Continue reading How to compose link text
Category: web design
35 tips for writing for online and mobile UIs
Writing for web- and app-based UIs often means breaking traditional grammatical “rules,” which were derived from different user contexts (slower publishing/delivery cycles and longer attention spans). Here are some rules for better interface writing, courtesy of Jakob Nielsen and my own interactive product design experience. Nielsen’s reader research demonstrates that people scan UIs and apps… Continue reading 35 tips for writing for online and mobile UIs
Wireframe porn
Update: See Will Evans‘s extremely thoughtful response in the comments – there’s a method to this madness that I was unaware of when I wrote the post. Thanks Will, for calling me to task so kindly. Sketches, wireframes, and mockups are an essential part of the product development process and popular standards are beginning to… Continue reading Wireframe porn
Peak shift
First read about this on Dustin Curtis’s blog, which describes an experiment where a mouse trained to find food at a rectangle will choose a more rectangular rectangle if the option presents itself. Lesson: rather than look for specific patterns, animals identify a characteristic features and look for the “peak” instance. Another example is V.S.… Continue reading Peak shift
Moderating semantic HTML zealotry
I’ve recently the been letting go of my blind faith in page-wide semantic HTML. Today I found this old post from Jeff Croft describing the myth of content and presentation separation in HTML and CSS, which provides a realistic layman’s take on the situation: semantic HTML is too hard. While I agree with that sentiment… Continue reading Moderating semantic HTML zealotry