Bruce Lewis

Usability studies. - Bruce Lewis

^^^ I have to agree that I hear a lot more about Jakob being a usability expert than I've seen of his actual work. When I heard him lecture I went to the lecture a fan and left skeptical. - Spidra Webster

The world needs more marketers. Too many good ideas die lonely. But ignoring the generalizations about the writer for now, this particular article looks solid to me. - Bruce Lewis

I LOVE that site. No Flash, no janky JavaScript. Text is text and links are links, and everything is indexable. :P - Tinfoil 2.0

I think he leaves it that way to make clear that when he talks about "design" he means usability, not looks. - Bruce Lewis

Things I find usable: easy-to-spot breadcrumbs. Search. High contrast. Readable text. - Bruce Lewis

There are really good usability people right here on FriendFeed, notably Kevin Fox. But being good at something and being a source of good explanations of something are two different things. Jakob Nielsen is a good source of explanations of usability. - Bruce Lewis

Kevin doesn't specialize in usability testing, but I think he does specialize in UX. - Bruce Lewis

[many comments above were replies to comments that the commenter later deleted] - Bruce Lewis

More from the article: "Screens that are very wide but not particularly tall are well matched with the human visual system. However, they don't fit the way we currently design web pages: most web layouts are fairly narrow and very long. Designers should start experimenting with ways to utilize horizontal screen space..." - Bruce Lewis

The old OurDoings design was optimized for 1024x768. The new design takes advantage of widescreen better. Today I made a dropdown menu (click the logo) that hides navigation to make it even wider. http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/ - Bruce Lewis

Not bad. It's certainly better than the black zit that was there before. I think the logo should toggle the sidebar instantly instead of giving you a menu. The first breadcrumb links to ourdoings.com anyway. - empiricist

I heard an anecdote about Steve Jobs: apparently, he wouldn't allow Apple's logo on the keyboard (command key) because he felt it cheapened it to have it there and to have people tapping on it with their greasy fingers, so they came up with the Bowen knot instead. But then again, they do have a clickable Apple logo on the menubar at top left, so that's similar to what you've done. - empiricist

Ah, toggling off the sidebar removes the breadcrumbs...well maybe you could have the breadcrumbs permanent. - empiricist

I'm sorely tempted to take your advice on that. Experts say clicking your logo should always take you to your home page http://friendfeed.com/kfury... but it feels so *good* to easily make use of the entire screen width. Especially on the iPad. Being able to toggle navigation with one click instead of two would have a great feel.... more... - Bruce Lewis

The "black zit" still shows on narrow displays like iPhone. But if I make the logo "the" way to toggle navigation, the zit can go away completely. - Bruce Lewis

OK, I went ahead and did it. I'll see how it feels tonight. - Bruce Lewis

Nonsense,responsive design first. That is to say, your design should work on small mobile screens first and scale accordingly. - Mo Kargas

Yes, responsive design helps on both ends. The new OurDoings design is responsive. - Bruce Lewis

empiricist: I like it. I'm keeping it until I can come up with something that feels as nice but is more discoverable. - Bruce Lewis

Instead of optimizing for specific resolutions, why not just let the layout flow to use all available screen area? - Morton Fox

In the article, he does recommend ensuring a design scales across screen sizes. But in the next bullet he says you must target something as your best case. What I've done is let thumbnails flow out to use all available screen area, but limited paragraph width for readability. The navigation hide/show functionality also helps optimize screen use. - Bruce Lewis

There's something satisfying about tapping on round, thumb-sized controls on the iPad vs pecking at hyperlinks (I hardly use my laptop now). You have it set up so sites are 'expanded' by default. That's OK, it helps with the discoverability anyway doesn't it? But I'd like it to honour my 'collapse' tap, so if I refresh the page or go to another ourdoings it will keep its current state. - empiricist

empiricist, I was thinking the same thing. I may need a few days to implement that, though. - Bruce Lewis

I was inspired to post this by Kamilah: http://friendfeed.com/kmeelah... - Bruce Lewis

:) - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

See also http://friendfeed.com/mati... - Bruce Lewis

Very cool! Did they get an explanation for the hole cut into the side? - Shannon - GlassMistress

I'll ask tonight and see if my wife remembers. This was 2004. - Bruce Lewis

Old (a.k.a. current) design: http://ourdoings.com/brlewis... - Bruce Lewis

It's totally unbranded, and I'm thinking I'll leave it that way, since branding gets in the way on mobile devices. - Bruce Lewis

I'd like to keep the calendar icons, giving more the idea of a photo-timeline (to use a now popular word!) - Flavio

I suppose I could keep the calendar icons, but have the circle with minus sign hide them. - Bruce Lewis

It's more efficient than the previous design, but It lacks personality. - chrisofspades

Yes, I do feel a tension between mobile-friendliness and personality. One's own photos go a long way toward conveying personality, but not 100%. - Bruce Lewis

Yes that's certainly a fine line. But it looks like you're already using media queries so maybe you can add something in for larger screen devices. - chrisofspades

Right, Chris. That's perfect. - Bruce Lewis

Cristo, I'm just looking at UI/UX changes for now. There are no deep architectural changes planned. - Bruce Lewis

Do these themes show personality? http://bootswatch.com/#gallery - Bruce Lewis

They do offer some. - chrisofspades

Do others agree with Flavio that the calendar icons should stay? They're present in my work-in-progress version http://alpha.ourdoings.com/brlewis... The sidebar still needs converting, minus sign does nothing, etc. But it gives you an idea what the calendar icons look like in the new style. - Bruce Lewis

not bad :) - Flavio

sorry for missing threads, since FF removed notifications I don't come here often... - Flavio

The new theme doesn't work so well with lots of custom widgets in the sidebar: http://alpha.ourdoings.com/flapic... - Bruce Lewis

Just noticed how good Kazutaka Ogaki's pictures are especially with the new camera: http://alpha.ourdoings.com/kgbu... - Bruce Lewis

What's actually wrong with the current design apart from the old-fashioned logo and old-fashioned calendar icon? I think the old version is better, with one or two caveats. The old version looks very nice on the new retina screen iPad with the possible exception of the low-res logo and low-res calendar icon. Maybe the grey bar at the top is a bit too deep (and a touch dark mood-wise). I... more... - empiricist

OK I've bookmarked this place. Let's see if I can remember to keep checking back for new posts. - empiricist

I think it would take a blog post to properly answer all your comments, but I'll give a partial answer here. I'm glad the current design clicked with you. I like it too. It doesn't click with everybody, though. There's a need for themes. For designers to make themes it needs to not be a waste of their time; they need to be doing work that they can apply elsewhere. Bootstrap, for better... more... - Bruce Lewis

How about a compromise: Keep the color of the current design. Lose the low-res logo and change the calendar icons to CSS borders. With the logo gone, the dark grey bar is no longer needed, and the bootstrap style now fits. Just the background gradient from the current design feels to me like enough to make things calm. What do you think? http://alpha.ourdoings.com/brlewis... - Bruce Lewis

Just a quick missive to say that I just looked at http://alpha.ourdoings.com/brlewis... a few minutes ago and it looks pretty nice (on the iPad). It looks attractive and clean. I like the lens logo, it gives the site a bit of personality while keeping out of the way. Nice idea, well done. Is there any chance you could try putting back the horizontal lines between the entries to see if they look OK? I like entries to be clearly delineated. - empiricist

I put the horizontal lines back and they go nicely. Go-live is not too far off. - Bruce Lewis

The horizontal lines seem to be right-aligned, or right justified. - empiricist