usability | Ian Chan's Blog

I find myself using delicious.com more and more (yes, I was a very late joiner). I read so many random blogs and articles and always feel bad when I forget where I got an idea from. I have been using delicious as a reference to my brain, the tagging system makes things really easy to recall. But the thing that always gets in my way is their tagging system, space delimited. Since delicious only accepts “spaces” rather than commas, I was frustrated one day to find duplicates of some of my tags:

And no, there is no such thing as "ui,"

I couldn’t imagine myself being the only one with this issue, 5 seconds of Googling uncovered this 3 year old thread about the problem. My usual greasemonkey disclaimer applies (I love delicious, and I allowed 3 years for this to be fixed, so I will make a patch if people choose to use it). So, better late than never, this one is for you @stowboyd!

Install the GreaseMonkey Script Here

I don’t know why, but I never really used Delicious.com (actually I had an account a long long time ago). I recently made a new account and came across an interesting UX scenario. It took me like 30 seconds to figure out how to actually make a bookmark (and yes, I was trying, and no, I am not an idiot). Once I figured it out, it was simple, but it got me thinking of an important web principle: “Make your core feature offerings DEAD SIMPLE to find.” While companies probably don’t like getting simplified down to a single feature, that is often what makes them popular. Using a technique from Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think,” lets see if we can figure out what some popular websites are trying to offer to us. Instead of showing a normal screenshot, each shot has a light gaussian blur applied to it. For me, this is how I often “see” my own work through the eyes of a new visitor. I also came up with some unofficial one liners for each:

Step 1: Create a Call to Action

It’s interesting, because you can find a lot of great design resources and AB tests on “sign up” or “buy now” buttons. However, I rarely see discussion on action items in terms of core functionality of a web application or service. This first caught my eye while reading “Designing Web Interfaces” (pg. 82-83) on “Clear Call to Actions and Relative Importance.”

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