Go Forth and API

To most, the virtues of Web 2.0 are rather ephemeral; that’s always been one of its main criticisms. However, I like to think that one of the movement’s key aspects is a sense of community, an ability to create sites and applications that bring people together.

Adams, Cameron. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Goal Composition: Extending Task Analysis to Predict Things People May Want to Do

One of the basic questions during the development of a computer system and its user interface is what the users will want to do with the system. Unfortunately, a task analysis of users' current activities is not sufficient to predict what they will do in the future. It is well known that people's use of computers change over time and that new and unexpected uses are found for most new systems.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1994). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin

Kim Goodwin is the General Manager and Vice President of Design at Cooper. The great folks at Cooper created an interaction design methodology known as Goal-Directed Design. Their methodology identifies the goals and behaviors of users and directly translates them into the design. UIE's Christine Perfetti recently had the chance to talk with Kim about her work and we've included an excerpt of their conversation below.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2007). Articles>Interviews>Web Design

Good to Great Intranets

QAS is a small company with only 400 employees. However, this small postal software company well understands the power and value of knowledge and empowering employees with the right information and tools to excel in their day-to-day jobs. How? Rather than accepting their small size and stature as an impediment to intranet success, QAS has evolved their intranet from good to great.

Ward, Toby. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Intranets

Good Writing on Your Web Site: How and Why You Should Ensure the Quality of Your Content

Discusses the importance of writing well and some simple methods for ensuring your content is well-written and then move on to ways clever content-management systems can make your life easier.

Mercurytide (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Google Optimization Secrets From The Trenches

What do learning how to outline a research paper and optimizing your website to rank highly in Google have in common? Much more than you might think at first glance.

SEOchat (2004). Articles>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

The Google Sandbox and How To Get Out

The Google Sandbox is a filter that was put in place in about March of 2004. New websites with new domain names can take 6 to 12 months to get decent rankings on Google. Some are reporting stays of up to 18 months. The Sandbox seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on probation. Similarly, websites that have made comprehensive redesigns have been caught up in this Sandbox. Does this Sandbox Really Exist, or is it just part of the Google algorithm? This has been a big controversy with many different opinions. Most now believe that this is an algorithm. In either case, the Sandbox functions to keep new sites from shooting to the top of Google in just a few weeks and overtaking quality sites that have been around for many years. This appears to be an initiation period for new websites.

Williams, Doug. stevenforsyth.com (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Engine Optimisation and their 80/20 Rule

Google's increasing use of anti-spam features has meant that optimising websites for Google has become much harder and it's now not just a case of opening your websites source files in notepad, adding some keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results. In fact in my opinion and I'm sure others will agree with me, this type of optimisation, commonly referred to as onpage optimisation will only ever be 20% effective at achieving rankings for any keywords which are even mildly competitive. Those of us who aced maths in school will know this leaves us with 80% unaccounted for.

Callan, David. stevenforsyth.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Google Voice Search

Google Voice Search allows you to make a telephone call to Google with a search query and get the results on a web page. The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the user experience and investigate the usability implications of this tool.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2003). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Audio

Google, the Naked Emperor

Google rules. Wherever you turn you hear about a new Google initiative. Clearly, Google has the money to do some interesting things. But with all the hype and hullabaloo, it can be all too easy to overlook some serious flaws in Google's services. As librarians, we should not be giving Google a 'pass' that we would not afford other vendors. By being clear about Google's strengths and weaknesses, we can make effective decisions about when and how to use Google's services and advise our users appropriately.

Tennant, Roy. Library Journal (2005). Articles>Web Design>Search

Google: The Ultimate Web Writer's Style Guide

Forget that Google is a search engine. Just for a moment, imagine it is a style guide. A very different kind of style guide.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Google广告有害吗？

Google是一个什么样的公司？对于大多数人来说，对这个问题的回答会是“搜索”。虽然说Google确实是一个关注搜索的公司，它却并不靠搜索来生存。与之相反，和其它公司一样，由利益来决定。并且就像John Gruber所指出的，它通过出售广告来生存。 这使得Google成为一家广告公司。这意义也许比你一开始猜测的要深远的多了。 不过让我们不要走得太远。让我们来谈一会儿可用性。我将要向您解释Google对于广告的必要关注可以让我们学到很多可用性的内容。更严格的讲，这篇文章将描述一个困境，一个与Google对于发布商如何防止广告的建议紧密相关的困境。可用性解决了这个困境，也因此告诉我们许多如何将商务与用户体验结合起来。

Rhodes, John S. uiGarden (2006). (Chinese) Articles>Web Design>Ethics>Search

Governing Good Web Site Design

Looking for a means to judge the quality of a web design? A good place to start is with the US Federal Government, which provides more than 175 research-based guidelines.

Janisch, Troy. Icon Interactive (2004). Articles>Internet>Web Design>Standards

Group Dynamics: Building a Dynamic Web Team

As a team you need to consider: Which tasks will you do together as a group? How will you divide the tasks among yourselves?

University of California San Diego (2003). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration

Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First

Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Guerilla Upgrades: Start with Your Newsletter

Persuading your managers to allow some testing in the tone and voice of a newsletter isn’t half as hard as persuading them to make changes to your site’s homepage.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2003). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Guide to Buying Traffic

While many niches depend on PPC search traffic, there’s a wide group of sites that benifit from bought traffic from individual sites. Often times you can get very high quality traffic that converts very well from niches that tend to deal in a more direct site to site type traffic deal, rather than 3rd party ad networks. This guide is mostly to be used when buying traffic from forums, from individual websites, and from “plug” type packages, yet there are many things that transfer over to more traditional PPC outlets.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce

Guided Surfing: A Multimethod Assessment of a Layered Hypermap WWW Interface  

A multi-level hypermap interface was created for the display of world wide web pages relevant to an undergraduate class in Sensation and Perception. Assessment of the interface consisted of two experiments. Results indicated that the guides encourage students to broaden the focus of their search. Further, the guides do not appear to be particularly effective for enhancing the acquisition of detailed-factual knowledge. Over all, students subjective reactions to the guides were positive. In particular, they perceived the guides as making the search project more efficient, and providing the learner with 'big picture', conceptual knowledge.

Hall, Richard H. and Eric L. Stocks. University of Missouri-Rolla (1998). Articles>Web Design>Education

Guided Surfing: Development and Assessment of a World Wide Web Interface for an Undergraduate Psychology Class  

Although the World Wide Web has great potential as an educational tool, and many educational practitioners have begun utilizing the Web in many ways (e.g., Dodge, 1995; Logan, 1996; Mounts, 1996; Weiler, 1996), as yet, there has not been much systematic, theory based, research aimed at examining these methods. The principal purpose of this experiment was to begin to address the issue of how best to structure an interface between learners and the vast jumble of resources at their disposal on the Web. The need for the development and investigation of such an interface is indicated by research, which has found that some degree of learner guidance is particularly important in effective web learning (Anderson & Joerg, 1996).

Hall, Richard H. University of Missouri-Rolla (1997). Articles>Web Design>Education>Usability

Guidelines for Designing and Evaluating the Display of Information on the Web    

These guidelines are intended to assist Web designers, authors, and editors in their efforts to create Web pages that effectively reveal—rather than obscure or confuse—the information they are trying to present. These guidelines are also intended to be used to assist in the evaluation of existing Web sites. Of course, the design of a Web site can, to some degree, be modified by the user or by the characteristics of the browser or monitor enlisted to display it. The guidelines, consequently, acknowledge that in a very real sense, users may also assume the role of designer. The guidelines, therefore, are also intended to help users make informed decisions about how to make a display easier to use.

Williams, Thomas R. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Visual Rhetoric

Guidelines for Medical and Health Information Sites on the Internet  

Access to medical information via the Internet has the potential to speed the transformation of the patient-physician relationship from that of physician authority ministering advice and treatment to that of shared decision making between patient and physician. However, barriers impeding this transformation include wide variations in quality of content on the Web, potential for commercial interests to influence online content, and uncertain preservation of personal privacy. To address these issues, the American Medical Association (AMA) has developed principles to guide development and posting of Web site content, govern acquisition and posting of online advertising and sponsorship, ensure site visitors' and patients' rights to privacy and confidentiality, and provide effective and secure means of e-commerce. While these guidelines were developed for the AMA Web sites and visitors to these sites, they also may be useful to other providers and users of medical information on the Web. These principles have been developed with the understanding that they will require frequent revision to keep pace with evolving technology and practices on the Internet. The AMA encourages review and feedback from readers, Web site visitors, policymakers, and all others interested in providing reliable quality information via the Web.

Winker, Margaret A., Annette Flanagin, Bonnie Chi-Lum, John White, Karen Andrews, Robert L. Kennett, Catherine D. DeAngelis and Robert A. Musacchio. JAMA (2000). Articles>Web Design>Biomedical

Guidelines for Web Data Collection: Understanding and Interacting with Your Users    

The global growth of the World Wide Web challenges technical communicators to reconsider the methods we use to create designs that meet the goals and needs of our users. This article focuses on taking advantage of the Web's potential for interactivity between designers and users. It offers strategies for getting data from users of Web sites and using it for two main purposes: (1) analyzing audience and patterns of use to support continuous redesign, and (2) building a relationship or sense of community on a Web site.

Ramey, Judith A. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Log Analysis

Guiding Principles for Providing "Remember Me" Personalization

As we set out to enhance personalization on Marriott.com, we realized we needed guidelines to inform our thinking and shape our decisions, particularly decisions related to customer privacy. Our earlier user research revealed the need for greater personalization and helped us understand customer attitudes towards privacy. From there, we sought to build customer trust and loyalty by addressing concerns about privacy and security in every aspect of the user experience. In creating the Guiding Principles outlined here, we conducted a thorough analysis of eight major websites and then merged the findings with what we already knew. These principles apply specifically to 'remember me' personalization.

Peters, Meg. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Privacy>Personalization

Review: Hacking Google Maps

A new book in the popular O'Reilly 'Hacks' series shows you how to find and create your own mashups, overlaying all kinds of interesting information on Google maps.

Sherman, Chris. Search Engine Watch (2006). Articles>Reviews>Web Design>Geography

“Hand It To Them On A Silver Platter: Meeting Researchers Needs In The Electronic Age”  

This paper describes the Electronic Resource Library (ERL) at http://plutonium-erl.actx.edu. This is a web-based, subject-oriented digital library on the topic of plutonium and its ancillary disciplines. Previous research analyzing differences in the information-seeking behavior of scientists and engineers is reviewed and lessons learned applied to this digital library model. Special consideration has been given to recommendations in the SATCOM report from the National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering Committee on Scientific and Technical Communication. This report strongly advocated the development of “specialized need-groupservices” to support the work of the engineer and practitioner.

Ruddy, Karen. OSTI (1999). Articles>Content Management>Web Design