Category: User Experience

Categories: Social Media, User Experience Posted on

Yahoo’s New HomePage Integrates Applications –and Dabbles with Social

Summary: Yahoo’s new homepage is more like a feedreader and application platform for users to do more without leaving Yahoo.com.  It’s a much needed update as Yahoo keeps up with the modern web, but think of it as evolution –not a revolution. Last week, a handful of Forrester analysts were briefed and given a demo of Yahoo’s much needed homepage redesign –here are my observations from the demo and conversation. Outdated Yahoo.com in need of redesign The old version of Yahoo is in serious need of a refresher as the main page navigation hampers users with two sections of tabs with even more content and links.  For the most part, the content not as personalized, and no integration of social. … Continue readingYahoo’s New HomePage Integrates Applications –and Dabbles with Social

Categories: User Experience Posted on

Is Your Website SNOWED? (Stakeholders’ Needs Overwhelm Web Experience Design)

Having too many stakeholders on your website results in forcing your users to trudge through a confusing experience, where each laborious step results in frustration then abandonment. Like poor Jack N on the left, you have frozen your own users, your website is SNOWED. Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen Result in Mush I’m sure you’ve seen it, websites where there’s such a jumbled mess of content on a webpage, you know it’s a battle from internal stakeholders. Typically, you see this jumble of information on large corporate websites, in particular, large tech companies with HW and SW products. (I know this as I used to do it) Being SNOWED is far worse than Avinash’s acronym of HiPPO (Highest Paid … Continue readingIs Your Website SNOWED? (Stakeholders’ Needs Overwhelm Web Experience Design)

Categories: Feedback, User Experience Posted on

Do I need a blog redesign?

I’ve had this blog redesign for a few years now, and it may start to show its cracks. For some, they like the simple layout and design, easy to scroll, for others, they may want a more updated look and feel. I’ve noticed quite a few blogs have been changing their designs lately, they are more media centric, have more of a front page newspaper look, esp for high volume blogs. Who’s done it? Techcrunch, Scoble, Teresa Valdez Klein, Shel Israel, I think I first noticed this a few months ago from Ars Technica. In fact last night I was evaluating quite a few premium wordpress themes that are available for purchase. Curt Monash of Network World reviewed a few … Continue readingDo I need a blog redesign?

Categories: User Experience Posted on

What’s on my mind?

New to reading me and want a hundred word summary? Sam Lawrence of Jive Software has compiled tag clouds of 10 bloggers he reads and has done a quick and dirty analysis of what we frequently talk about. What’s a tag cloud? It’s a collection of terms or keywords found in content or vernacular. It looks like he’s using IBM’s many eyes software to compile the cloud, which shows the heavier weighted or frequent terms in larger font. The cloud is comprised of words that aren’t necessarily in my wordpress categories, so it appears to be crawling and analyzing text. While tag clouds certainly are interesting, not everyone agrees they are helpful such as expert Thomas Vanderwal, Brian has the … Continue readingWhat’s on my mind?

Categories: User Experience, Web Marketing Posted on

Demographics, Psychographics, and Technographics

The job of a Marketer is to connect products with customers. While it’s often native for marketers to know their products, they often fail at truly understanding their customers. Today, customers are much more than just recipients of messages, they create their own messages, share with their peers, and in some cases, are working very hard to keep marketers out of the picture. Demographics In business school, I learned about understanding your customer, we learned about the concepts of Demographics (people’s lifestyles, habits, population movements, spending, age, social grade, employment). The goal was to create a model to understand who these people were, where they live, and what they do. Psychographics We also learned that beyond understanding the who, we … Continue readingDemographics, Psychographics, and Technographics

Categories: Enterprise Web, Intranet, User Experience Posted on

The Challenges, Evolution, and Success Factors of the Enterprise Intranet

Enterprise Intranets are an often overlooked corporate asset. These powerful tools represent the knowledge, relationships, and processes of a company, yet for the most part they go under-resources, under-appreciated, and given third-class citizenship to the public site and customer or partner extranet. We know they are important as they are a direct reflection of your corporate culture. If a company’s competitive strength is it’s employees and how they work together, the intranet is a valuable tool. Secondly, with many baby boomers in the United States retiring in the near future a great deal of corporate knowledge will be lost, how will you capture and distribute this tacit knowledge? The Challenges of the Enterprise Intranet: There’s a few major reasons why … Continue readingThe Challenges, Evolution, and Success Factors of the Enterprise Intranet