Rob Fay › Comments

Web designers are starting to take accessibility as seriously as button placement or heading layout when they develop their products, improving the Web experience not only for people like Tsaran -- who lost his sight at the age of five -- but for Web users in general. - Rob Fay

So, here are the 10 RTEs that I can find online. From the most basic support of font formatting to advanced features such as image upload, table creation, ajax support and so on. - Rob Fay

This list of WYSIWYG rich text web editors is being maintained as a general resource for developers who want to add a richer editing experience to web based applications. - Rob Fay

10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way. - Rob Fay

How To Use An Apostrophe - Rob Fay

I created a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise. - Rob Fay

Mockingbird. A wireframing tool that uses html/js/css for its canvas. - Rob Fay

Compare what your web page looks like across browsers. - Rob Fay

Piskorski has spent years studying users of online social networks (SN) and has developed surprising findings about the needs that they fulfill, how men and women use these services differently, and how Twitter—the newest kid on the block—is sharply different from forerunners such as Facebook and MySpace. He has also applied many of the insights to help companies develop strategies for leveraging these various online entities for profit. - Rob Fay

Confluence macro that lets you embed a Google Wave into a Confluence wiki page. - Rob Fay

The Typography Articles and Tutorials section includes annotated links to helpful articles and tutorials on Web site typography, such as choosing fonts for Web sites, accessible typography, readability, white space, CSS typography techniques, design and typography for Web sites, and image replacement techniques (IFR, sIFR, swfIR, others) with CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and more. You'll also find articles, tutorials on font design and creation, and short reviews of recommended books on typography, fonts, and lettering. - Rob Fay

The free Adobe Shortcut App gives fast access to look up keyboard shortcuts for the entire array of Adobe products from one simple place. Once you've installed the Adobe AIR application, you can choose a program from the buttons on the top, and find a shortcut using the search box, browsing, or even adding them to a favorites list. You can switch between viewing Windows or Mac shortcuts, or even view the cheat sheet in PDF format. It's a quick and easy way to look up the shortcuts without having to pull out the help file. Adobe Shortcut App is a free download for all platforms, requires Adobe AIR. - Rob Fay

UX Exchange is a User Experience (UX) Q & A site. You can register if you want to collect reputation points and win valuable flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it's just free to post and answer questions. - Rob Fay

I thought people mind find it useful to know the state of support in the current browser market. I've taken all the A-Grade browsers and tested them one-by-one for their feature support . Needless to say it's produced some interesting results. Safari (on Windows) has by far the best feature set in the current market, outdoing competitors like Firefox 3.5 and even Google Chrome. - Rob Fay

This companion site features a number of short role-playing videos that accompany Moderating Usability Tests. The videos were filmed in the Bentley College Design and Usability Center laboratory, and were carefully scripted to illustrate the points made in the book. Some of the clips show both good and not-so-good moderating practices. - Rob Fay

Brand your Twitter avatar - Rob Fay

Personas are a powerful tool for helping you to better understand the needs of your users. In this comic, drawn exclusively for Think Vitamin, you’ll learn more about Personas and how they’ll revolutionize the way you design and build web sites. - Rob Fay

In this article, I’ll expound on the tools I use every day to design interfaces and experiences. I’ve spent years trying a variety of tools, and so far, analog tools such as markers, notebooks and paper templates have proved to be the most effective because of their constraints and flexibility. - Rob Fay

Over the last 6 years we’ve watched over 800 user testing sessions between us and on only 3 occasions have we seen the page fold as a barrier to users getting to the content they want. - Rob Fay

Clean. Easy to use. User-friendly. Intuitive. This mantra is proclaimed by many but often gets lost in translation. The culprit: complexity. How one deals with complexity can make or break an application. A complex interface can disorient the user in a mild case and completely alienate them in an extreme case. But if you take measures first to reduce actual complexity and then to minimize perceived complexity, the user will be rewarded with a gratifying experience. - Rob Fay

We start by consolidating our research findings in a single first-person narrative – an X-log (experience log). This is somewhat related to phenomenology. Once we’ve assembled this story, we work together with the client to: 1. mark each individual interaction – we call these “snapshots” 2. assign a value from 1 to 3 to each snapshot in relation to its contribution to the overall experience 3. grade the experience on a scale from -3 to +3 4. multiply the value by the grade to get a score (this is the really useful number) 5. note any events that are recurring, unique, or may be influenced by chronology (cause and effect relationships). - Rob Fay

Many companies have noticed serious grade inflation. Google Inc.'s YouTube says the videos on its site average 4.6 stars, because viewers use five-star ratings to "give props" to video makers. Buzzillions.com, which aggregates reviews from 3,000 sites, has tracked millions of reviews and has spotted particular exuberance for products such as printer paper (average: 4.4 stars), boots (4.4) and dog food (4.7). - Rob Fay

Cambridge, Mass.-based car-sharing service Zipcar this week launched an app that lets you locate and reserve one of its vehicles, unlock it using the iPhone's touch-screen and drive it off the lot. - Rob Fay

Favicons are small 16x16 icon files that are displayed next to the URL of your site in a browser's address bar. Additionally they're often displayed next to the name of your site in a user's list of open tabs and bookmark listings making it easier for the user to quickly identify amongst other sites. - Rob Fay

Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. - Rob Fay

The Concierge experience begins when a shopper makes their list on their home computer linked to the supermarket’s Web site. When the shopper arrives at the store, they begin pushing the cart down the aisle. They can enter their Web site username and password on the 8.5-inch diagonal touch-screen LCD panel, or scan their loyalty card past the bar code reader, and up pops their shopping list. The bar code reader also tells you the price of each item as you put it in your cart and keeps a running total so there are no surprises at the checkout counter. The Concierge connects to an ultra-wideband wi-fi network in the store. Here’s where it gets weird. Using location-based technology on the network, Concierge knows where your cart is and arranges your shopping list by where the items are located in the store. You’re in Aisle 1? Aisle 1 is where you can find the toothpaste and shaving cream on your list. - Rob Fay

The Autodesk® SketchBook® Mobile painting and drawing application extends your digital sketchpad to your Apple® iPhone® or Apple iPod touch®. With the same paint engine as Autodesk® SketchBook® Pro software, SketchBook Mobile offers professional-grade painting and drawing tools in a streamlined and intuitive user interface. Use it to digitally capture your ideas as napkin sketches or produce artwork on-the-go. - Rob Fay

When planning a website the first important steps involve just a pen and a paper. It’s crucial to understand what we are creating and its nature. To list the purpose, the expected content and draw its structure will be our first concern. - Rob Fay

Tufte, or ET as he prefers it, possesses an invaluable combination of talents that he draws from and to our collective benefit as visualization workers: an eye for art, thorough knowledge of content, design prowess, discipline, a desire to share and the energy for successive public speaking engagements in which he preaches his gospel. I met up with ET after one such lecture in Cincinnati on August 25th, at which time he was kind enough to participate in an audio interview that sits at the end of this post. - Rob Fay

But how, exactly, do you turn attention into engagement? How do you convert a member of the crowd into a member of your team? To answer these questions, innovative organizations will have to grapple with the new challenge of harnessing "participation bandwidth." To do so, they may start to take their cues not from the world of business, but rather from the world of play. Game designers, virtual world builders, social media developers, and other "funware" creators have the potential to offer essential design strategies and economic theories for otherwise "serious" initiatives. - Rob Fay