Chapter 7: Designing the Home Page
Things that the home page has to accommodate:
- Site identity and mission
- Site hierarchy
- Search
- Teases
- Timely control
- Deals
- Shortcuts
- Registration
Abstract Objections:
- Show me what I’m looking for
- And what I’m not looking for
- Show me where to start
- Establish credibility and trust
The home page needs to answer four questions (pg 93)
1) What is this?
2) What do they have here?
3) What can I do here?
4) Why should I be here and not somewhere else?
How to get the message out? (pg 101)
- The Tag Line
- The Welcome Blurb
Note: Perhaps ITAC’s site needs a Blurb?
Pull Downs and Drop Downs
- You have to seek them out
- Hard to scan
- They’re twitchy
Chapter 8: Why most web design teams arguments about usability are a waste of time and how to avoid them.
Left to their own devices, web development teams aren’t notoriously successful at making decisions about usability questions. Most teams end up spending a lot of precious time rehashing the same issues over and over.
Chapter 9: Usability testing on 10 cents a day.
Focus groups are not a usability test!
Focus Group: People react to ideas and designs. React to each other’s ideas.
Usability Test: One user at a time (web).
A) Figure out what it is. B) Try to use it to do a typical task. (pg 133)
Several true things about testing
- If you want a great site, you’ve got to test.
- Testing with 1 user is 100% better than testing none.
- Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 users near the end.
- The importance of recruiting representative users is overrated.
- The point of testing is not to prove or disapprove something. It’s to inform your judgment.
- Testing is an iterative process.
- Nothing beats a live audience reaction.
Recruit loosely and grade on a curve. (pg 139)
- We’re all beginners under the skin.
- It’s usually not a good idea to design a site so that only your target audience can use it.
- Experts are rarely insulted by something that is clear enough for beginners.
For usability testing use Camtasia to record on screen use. For $1,000 more we can buy Morae (Camtasia on steroids).
Types of testing:
- Get it Testing: See if they understand the site.
- Key Task: Ask the user to do something then watch how they do it.
Note: perhaps we should test our new site.
Chapter 10: Usability as Common Courtesy
- Do not cause the user to drain their reservoir of goodwill.
- Avoid things that can diminish goodwill (pg 164)
- Do things that increase goodwill (pg 166) example: printer friendly pages.
Chapter 11: Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets and you
1) Fix the usability problems that confuse everyone.
2) Read an Article.
3) Read a book (reference)
4) Start using CSS.
5) Go for the low-hanging fruit.
Chapter 12: Help! My boss wants me to _____________.
Do not ask for too much information for online forms.
This book was very informative. I loved the common sense approach.
DJ
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Audience Digital Signage System Upgrade from 3.3 to 3.5
There was an issue with sending video to client’s digital signs using our digital signage system called Audience 3.3.
We recently had a request to display a video on the School of Business’s digital signs. A video was created as a MPG, version 2. Several years ago we did this without any problems.
I was able to have the video display on the Audience system using “local/host”. Note: Audience will convert MPG to WMV files. However, the system could not push to the video (via the web) out to our clients display. The video would appear only as a black rectangle.
I spent a good deal of time trying to research the issue. To make a long story short, audience can not push video to displays using Internet Explorer 7 or 8. It would display only on IE 6. Our Audience system has IE6 and that is why it could display the video just fine. However, for security reasons, I could not expect our clients to downgrade to IE6.
I contacted the tech department of Capital Networks (the maker of Audience) and they confirmed an issue with IE7 and 8. I was referred to their sale person. He suggested upgrading to an entirely new system for around $4,000. That included a new computer, video card, graphic card along with new software. He suggested that I get back in contact with the tech department to make sure there would be no issues with displaying the video.
I called back to the tech department and was told that just having a software upgrade should take care of this issue. This software upgrade would be free. However, they wanted to take some time to make sure there would not be a problem. After a week (without hearing back from them) I emailed them and found out that there was indeed an issue with the new software being able to push video to IE8 and they were researching the problem.
Then it became a comedy of errors. I dealt with three different tech people. None of whom were communitcating with each other. First there was a delay on researching the video issue. Then I was sent a software patch. After trying to install this patch I realized it was for the software upgrade Audience 3.5. I had never received the upgrade.
After several days I was sent the link for the upgrade. I had to download the software upgrade in sections from their FTP from their server. I was asked that before I install the upgrade to call the tech desk for help. When I called them, they had me do the install and walked me through manually upgrading the software.
Once everything was loaded, I hung up and tried to load the video on a test playback. It did not work. I called the tech desk back and found out through trial and error that the videos must be placed within a folder on the C drive called Digimation. Once I did that the video was encoded as a WMV and it played. The older software did not care where the video file resided.
Keep in mind our Playbacks are pushed out over the internet. The system updates every 30 minutes so every time I made a change I have to wait for a result. I also had to use another computer that had IE8 installed to confirm the outcome. It was a matter of patience.
The final result is that we are able now to push video to the client’s computers and signs.
Now when I load a video I have to match the display time to the length of the video.
Success!
We recently had a request to display a video on the School of Business’s digital signs. A video was created as a MPG, version 2. Several years ago we did this without any problems.
I was able to have the video display on the Audience system using “local/host”. Note: Audience will convert MPG to WMV files. However, the system could not push to the video (via the web) out to our clients display. The video would appear only as a black rectangle.
I spent a good deal of time trying to research the issue. To make a long story short, audience can not push video to displays using Internet Explorer 7 or 8. It would display only on IE 6. Our Audience system has IE6 and that is why it could display the video just fine. However, for security reasons, I could not expect our clients to downgrade to IE6.
I contacted the tech department of Capital Networks (the maker of Audience) and they confirmed an issue with IE7 and 8. I was referred to their sale person. He suggested upgrading to an entirely new system for around $4,000. That included a new computer, video card, graphic card along with new software. He suggested that I get back in contact with the tech department to make sure there would be no issues with displaying the video.
I called back to the tech department and was told that just having a software upgrade should take care of this issue. This software upgrade would be free. However, they wanted to take some time to make sure there would not be a problem. After a week (without hearing back from them) I emailed them and found out that there was indeed an issue with the new software being able to push video to IE8 and they were researching the problem.
Then it became a comedy of errors. I dealt with three different tech people. None of whom were communitcating with each other. First there was a delay on researching the video issue. Then I was sent a software patch. After trying to install this patch I realized it was for the software upgrade Audience 3.5. I had never received the upgrade.
After several days I was sent the link for the upgrade. I had to download the software upgrade in sections from their FTP from their server. I was asked that before I install the upgrade to call the tech desk for help. When I called them, they had me do the install and walked me through manually upgrading the software.
Once everything was loaded, I hung up and tried to load the video on a test playback. It did not work. I called the tech desk back and found out through trial and error that the videos must be placed within a folder on the C drive called Digimation. Once I did that the video was encoded as a WMV and it played. The older software did not care where the video file resided.
Keep in mind our Playbacks are pushed out over the internet. The system updates every 30 minutes so every time I made a change I have to wait for a result. I also had to use another computer that had IE8 installed to confirm the outcome. It was a matter of patience.
The final result is that we are able now to push video to the client’s computers and signs.
Now when I load a video I have to match the display time to the length of the video.
Success!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Google Apps Intro
This course was taught at Case Western Reserve University by Roger Zender.
You can visit Google Guides at CaseLearns:
http://researchguides.case.edu/content.php?pid=92130&sid=686301&search_terms=google+apps
G-mail:
I check my e-mail directly in G-mail, however G-mail can be set via i-map to Outlook or any other mail handler. I-map is a mirror image of G-mail and Outlook. So if you remove a file in Outlook it will be removed from G-mail.
All messages are set up to be in a conversation mode. Meaning that a string of content will always be included in one file. Personally, it took some getting used to this initially. However it does save space in our g-mail files.
Calendar:
Quick Add. This sets up a very fast posting.
Search options: I really haven't used this feature since it is not very prominent. However it make searching far more accurate. It uses Who, What and Where, plus more options to aid in searches.
Offline: To use this function you must download Google Gears. Google Calendar will give you read-only access to your calendars when there is no internet connection. This feature will download your events onto this computer. Please make sure you are not using a public or shared computer. You will need Gears for offline access, and the installer will restart your browser.
Sync: Is a help page to help clients get set up for Outlook and other mail handlers.
Start Page:
Is our home page for news and university information. By default, all content is Case related. However, other content such news, sports, weather and many other different content can be added.
Google Docs:
These are all open source programs that can export to Microsoft Office plus other office suites.
Options are for Documents (Word), Presentations (Power Point), Spreadsheets (Excel), Forms (this is rather a simple tool for creating quick forms and the results are e-mailed with as a spreadsheet). You can create folders to store selected documents. Finally, there is a folder to select pre-assigned templates.
Presenter: You can share, publish and embed. Also there is a small selection of templates to help clients to get started. Graphics and images can be imported.
Spreadsheet: We can right click on a cell to add gadgets such as graphs and metric dials.
Forms: This is not Survey Monkey but it does have it advantages such as template designs and being able to import graphics. As mentioned above the results are exported via e-mail as a spreadsheet.
Folders: Once there are created files can be "uploaded" into the folder.
Google Sites:
This is a feature not available on public G-mail. For the Case version we can use Google Sites to quickly create web sites. As the other offerings with Google, there are templates to get you web site up fast. You can even add logos. Of course these site would not meet the university's web template but for a temporary web page this could be very useful.
Google Apps is not and end all program but can be very useful especially since it is open source and all content can be import to other programs. This course was a very brief over review but revealed features that I was not aware of. I have been using g-mail for over a year and really see no reason to export my e-mail into outlook. It's main advantage is being able to check my e-mail from any computer. With experience I will find many more features that I will take advantage of.
Overall, two thumbs up.
You can visit Google Guides at CaseLearns:
http://researchguides.case.edu/content.php?pid=92130&sid=686301&search_terms=google+apps
G-mail:
I check my e-mail directly in G-mail, however G-mail can be set via i-map to Outlook or any other mail handler. I-map is a mirror image of G-mail and Outlook. So if you remove a file in Outlook it will be removed from G-mail.
All messages are set up to be in a conversation mode. Meaning that a string of content will always be included in one file. Personally, it took some getting used to this initially. However it does save space in our g-mail files.
Calendar:
Quick Add. This sets up a very fast posting.
Search options: I really haven't used this feature since it is not very prominent. However it make searching far more accurate. It uses Who, What and Where, plus more options to aid in searches.
Offline: To use this function you must download Google Gears. Google Calendar will give you read-only access to your calendars when there is no internet connection. This feature will download your events onto this computer. Please make sure you are not using a public or shared computer. You will need Gears for offline access, and the installer will restart your browser.
Sync: Is a help page to help clients get set up for Outlook and other mail handlers.
Start Page:
Is our home page for news and university information. By default, all content is Case related. However, other content such news, sports, weather and many other different content can be added.
Google Docs:
These are all open source programs that can export to Microsoft Office plus other office suites.
Options are for Documents (Word), Presentations (Power Point), Spreadsheets (Excel), Forms (this is rather a simple tool for creating quick forms and the results are e-mailed with as a spreadsheet). You can create folders to store selected documents. Finally, there is a folder to select pre-assigned templates.
Presenter: You can share, publish and embed. Also there is a small selection of templates to help clients to get started. Graphics and images can be imported.
Spreadsheet: We can right click on a cell to add gadgets such as graphs and metric dials.
Forms: This is not Survey Monkey but it does have it advantages such as template designs and being able to import graphics. As mentioned above the results are exported via e-mail as a spreadsheet.
Folders: Once there are created files can be "uploaded" into the folder.
Google Sites:
This is a feature not available on public G-mail. For the Case version we can use Google Sites to quickly create web sites. As the other offerings with Google, there are templates to get you web site up fast. You can even add logos. Of course these site would not meet the university's web template but for a temporary web page this could be very useful.
Google Apps is not and end all program but can be very useful especially since it is open source and all content can be import to other programs. This course was a very brief over review but revealed features that I was not aware of. I have been using g-mail for over a year and really see no reason to export my e-mail into outlook. It's main advantage is being able to check my e-mail from any computer. With experience I will find many more features that I will take advantage of.
Overall, two thumbs up.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)