Art and Design (2)
Print Style Sheets and URLs
Print style sheets are awesome. They’re easy to write, too. Site owners and developers who care about print typically know what to do. Alas there’s one thing that’s done rather the wrong than in any right way: printing URLs…
On Correct Punctuation
Let’s speak the unspeakable: Correct punctuation, here referring to the use of the correct characters for quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes, and ellipses, will forever remain a dream online…
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, which John Brooke created back in the 80s. SUS results yield a score between 0 and 100, with 100 indicating “best” usability…
Punctuation Cheat Sheet
Developing and working with international sites is an interesting challenge, not just because of right-to-left contents. Typographically, there are differences between many locales. To improve punctuation in Google translations I’m using a localization aid…
Another Survey (Including Website Usability Scale Template)
I’m doing it again: Do you have another 15 seconds to answer a couple of questions? The survey is based on the System Usability Scale (SUS) John Brooke presented in the 80s. Which means nothing less than that there’s another experiment taking place with me testing SUS…
The Greatest Secret in Web Design
Alright I cheated, this isn’t really a secret. Or an open secret. Or whatever. It’s that web design is a process. Good web design is an ongoing endeavor…
Updating a Definition of Art
When I once tried to define art, design, and decoration, I described art as: “Art hides. Art has a meaning, and it hides it, on purpose. Art delivers a message, and that message is hidden, on purpose. It is an art to create art. Art is unusable, by definition.” Continued.
Compared to What?
…is probably one of the most important questions there is. “Compared to what?” is the question that should be answered every time it is about data, be it through charts, in newspapers, on websites, or in conversations. Yet it is rarely asked, rarely answered, and people end up with less or even false information.
Web Design: 10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know
Following up on last year’s post on web design research, here’s another collection of research findings, this time featuring further reading. I still watch the work of Association for Computing Machinery, Human Factors International, and the like…
The 10 Design Theses of Dieter Rams
Moving up industrial design on my agenda and studying the work of German top designer Dieter Rams (who was responsible for the great design of Braun products for about 30 years), I deemed it useful to emphasize his design theses…
Qualities of Design: It Works and It’s Durable
Attempting to improve my simplified definition of design—“design reveals”—I identified another important attribute beside functionality, namely durability (or robustness). This means that a design—be it physical or intangible—that works may nonetheless be bad…
7 Additional Ways to Focus on Users
Smashing Magazine just published my article on “20 (Alternate) Ways to Focus on Users,” and not only may I point out the article but even extend it with a few additional methods. A quick bonus level, so to speak.
The Art of Dancing in 1910 and Narratives of Time and Space
Information design time travel with several photos of Zorn’s ancient “Grammar of the Art of Dancing.” Featuring craftsmanship, “small multiples,” and, surprise, “narratives of time and space.”
Are You a Web Designer or a Web Decorator?
This has bothered me for for a long time, it popped up when I thought about art and design, and it had to get out when Roger asked whether we were designers or developers…
Requirements for Website Prototypes (and Design Systems)
Best practices for HTML, CSS, and DOM scripting based website prototypes, covering essential requirements from accessibility to universality, and including definitions, pros, and contras. Derived from a recent presentation.
Principles of Art, Design, and Decoration
Much thinking on design lead me to the conclusion that defining the terms art, design, and decoration can be pretty simple. Outlining their principles, at least. Simpler than I thought in school (anyone remembering these “what is art” questions?) …
10 Steps to Create a High-Quality Website
A valuable source of information does not fall from the sky, and it’s impossible to create in a few easy clicks. In setting up a website, one needs goals, content, structure, design, programming, and maintenance. What one needs is expertise…
On Updating a Book (Webdesign mit CSS, 2nd Edition)
I’m still working on the second edition of Webdesign mit CSS. And I can say: I like this work, though updating a book’s more challenging than starting from scratch. It looks like less work at first, but that work’s different.
Revitalizing SUS, the System Usability Scale
About 20 years ago, John Brooke published the concept of a “System Usability Scale,” a “reliable, low-cost usability scale that can be used for global assessments of systems usability.” SUS is based on a Likert scale questionnaire…
25 Excellent Usability/UX Articles and Resources
Today I thought I’d share some of the most valuable usability and user experience articles and resources I know, in a somewhat wild mix. Since there’s presumably enough to read and talk about later, please just welcome some great articles and research papers…
Photos Make Websites More Credible
An important finding of Stanford University’s work concerning web credibility is that “photos [can] make websites more credible.” A prior study of B.J. Fogg et al. again revealed that “a photograph of an author had significant effects on how people perceived the credibility […]”…
Hire Only Web Designers with a Website
…is a good rule of thumb when you need a web designer or developer. Though it’s not necessarily the most important criterion, the benefits must be obvious. Web designers who also own websites are more likely to be close to the medium…
1 + 1 = 3: Explaining Busyness and Background Noise on Websites
“1 + 1 = 3 (or more)” is an important design effect described by Josef Albers and Edward Tufte. It means that two elements in close proximity cause a visible interaction…
Web Design: 15 Important Research Findings You Should Know
A small selection of web design, usability, and accessibility related results of research, most of them derived from Human Factors International. Some of them are relatively known, while others may enrich our professional self-understanding…
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Perhaps my most relevant book: CSS Optimization Basics (2018). Writing CSS is a craft. As craftspeople we strive to write high quality CSS. In CSS Optimization Basics I lay out the, at least some of the most important aspects of such CSS.