Posts Tagged ‘user friendly design’

Musings on Media at ASCO 2010

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

I attended ASCO last month to get a sense of how various companies are handling the new fair balance guidelines, to check out the Boehringer Ingelheim booth for which D2 Creative provided rich media, and to see how other pharma companies are using interactive media in the trade show setting.

cimg1308

With their hands tied by regulatory minutiae, pharma’s media is traditionally several steps behind other industries from a storytelling perspective.  It is in the area of technology where pharma is much more free to flex its creative muscles.

A huge, international meeting like ASCO is exactly the type of showcase where one would expect to encounter the latest, greatest media wizardry.  Granted, ASCO attendees are an unusually learned audience who are most interested in the science, but they interface with technology just like the rest of us.  And when technology enters the fold, the importance of usability—and the user experience—cannot be ignored.
(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Creative, Design & Usability, Technology | Comments Off

First Contact

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

HelloPerhaps the most undervalued page of your Web site is the “Contact Us” page.

Here’s a story from my friend, Jon Websurfer. Jon was assigned the task of finding a supplier to make customized edible treats to use as corporate gifts for his company. He typed some keywords into his search engine, including his location. Out of thousands of bakeries in the U.S., a lucky eight showed up on the first page of  results (the rest of the results weren’t bakers). Jon clicked on the results for five or six of these and looked over their websites, taking a maximum of two minutes on each page (for some it was more like 10 seconds). He evaluated them for:

  • Presentation (if the site looks good, chances are they’ll do good product presentation)
  • Ease of navigation (if he’s frustrated with your site, he may be frustrated with your service as well)
  • Best looking (and best variety of) product photos
  • How well they explained their ordering procedure, packaging, delivery and lead time.

Hoping to patronize a local supplier, he was frustrated at how hard it was to find out their locations. (more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Design & Usability, Marketing | Comments Off

Life without white space

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Listening to my local radio traffic report is a painful reminder of the importance of white space. “What’s white space?” you ask.  In the design world we use the term white space to refer to the empty space around a graphic, text or other design element. Effectively it’s the space where your eyes take a breather and your brain has time to digest what it just encountered.

Back to the traffic report.  I know the station is determined to make everything entertaining or cool, but they’ve gone too far.  In addition to the woman reporting traffic you also hear MUSIC and CAR HORNS in the background.  Car horns, in a traffic report, really?  Guess what I do every single time I hear the traffic report? I look all over trying to figure who I just cut off.  As a result I never hear the traffic report, and I can’t be the only one.

Your Web site is no different.  If visitors are bombarded with text, images, calls to action and a host of other distractions, they aren’t getting your message. That’s because without white space, it’s difficult or even impossible to visually sort and prioritize what’s on the page.

Here’s an example of excellent use of white space in design from the 37signals site.

white-space3

Take a look at your Web site.  Are you asking too much of your visitors? Are there too many words, too many calls to action?  Next time you are considering a redesign (maybe that should be now) think about what adding white space can do for you.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Design & Usability | 2 Comments »

Contact us - If you can

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Most nights driving home from the office I listen to NPR.  As a proponent of user contribution, peer to peer sharing and most things Web-social I am always pleased to hear the comments of listeners read (or played) over the air.  Even if I disagree I enjoy hearing dissenting or opposing opinions. This is the new world publishers live in and clearly NPR gets it – right!  Well, maybe not.

Here’s how it unfolds.  Regardless of the particular program, each night after listener comments are aired the host typically says something to this effect:

“If you’ve got comments – we’d love to hear from you.  Go to our Web site and click on the link that says comments at the bottom of the page.”

Wait a minute, did you catch that?

If comments are desired and appreciated why is it that in order to make them you have to scroll to the bottom of the page?  In the Web design world we refer to anything below the viewable area on your browser as “below the fold”.  It’s generally where we put the less important stuff.  So users who want to comment are required to scroll through all kinds of content to find the link.  This is a mixed signal for sure.  Ultimately the motivated commenter will always find that link – they have a desire to contribute beyond the average listener.  That doesn’t make NPR’s handling of this feature right.

Here’s my solution.  If you REALLY want user feedback make it a design priority. To illustrate my solution I have tapped our expert interaction design team to produce these before and after images (actually I just did it myself with Photoshop). (more…)

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Design & Usability | No Comments »

© 2010 D2 Creative - 28 World's Fair Drive, Somerset, New Jersey 08873