Jens Meiert

window.scrollTo() or: When to Stay Clear of User Agents

If you were to ask me whether you as a web designer or developer should tackle user agent issues, my answer was “no.” It’s not your responsibility. You may lack important insight into decisions made on the user agent side. You’re going to inherit technical debt. …

¶ January 24, 2012, filed under Web Development, Usability.

SUS: How to Easily Grade Your Site’s Usability

The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a Likert scale-based questionnaire to grade the usability of systems. SUS questionnaire results are used to calculate a score between 0 and 100, with 100 indicating “best” usability. Since websites can be considered “systems,” SUS can also be used to grade websites …

¶ November 27, 2009, filed under Usability.

HTML/CSS Frameworks: Useful, Universal, Usable, Unobtrusive

A high quality HTML/CSS framework needs to have four attributes: useful, universal, usable, and unobtrusive. The four U’s.

¶ November 18, 2009, filed under Web Development, Usability.

HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future

Articles with a title consisting of more than 15,000 characters don’t need an introduction.

¶ October 15, 2009, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, User Experience.

How Much Intelligence Does Good Design Really Require?

Of the definitions for art, design, and decoration I published back in the days, I do believe in the statement that design works – or has to work, respectively – the most. However, one thing’s still challenging me, and that is how much intelligence good, working design requires …

¶ April 28, 2009, filed under Usability, Design.

Website Optimization Measures, Part VI

In this episode: On the utilization of Google Friend Connect, maintenance of Google Analytics, sanity checks, type attributes, charset rules, cite elements, and ICRA labels. Fresh and sexy.

¶ March 10, 2009, filed under Web Development, Usability, Design.

Another Survey (Plus System Usability Scale Template)

I’m doing it again; do you’ve got another 15 seconds to answer a couple of questions? Survey: How usable is meiert.com? I might return the favor then: The survey you filled out is based on the System Usability Scale (SUS) John Brooke presented in the 80s. Which means nothing less …

¶ February 25, 2009, filed under Usability.

The Greatest Secret in Web Design

Alright I cheated, this isn’t really a secret for professionals. Or an open secret. Or whatever. It’s that web design is a process. Good web design is an ongoing endeavour; and thus, excellent web design an expensive undertaking …

¶ December 1, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, Design.

Website Optimization Measures, Part V

Almost half a year since my last article in that regard it’s about time to present version 5 of some random website optimization measures hopefully being great for your site as well. Short and crispy, to use some equally random German saying …

¶ November 3, 2008, filed under Web Development, Usability, Design.

When Guidelines Should Be Descriptive or Prescriptive

Every time I’m setting up guidelines and standards, mostly within companies, one of the questions I need to ask and answer myself is whether or not they, or which parts of them, should be descriptive or prescriptive. For coding guidelines this would mean the difference between …

¶ September 13, 2008, filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, Design.