25 Mar 2011
by eviltwinin Design, thoughts Tags: UX, web design
After a discussion (quite) a while back about whether we should have an FAQ page on a site we were working on, I starting wondering ‘do we really need them?’.
In my own experience I will quite often try to find FAQs to get a quick answer rather than having to read a lot of information on a page, but is there a way we can design layout and content to ensure that a user can quickly find the information they’ll need?
I guess for me at the moment I’m not convinced we can preempt when someone will decide to look for a specific answer to a question, and as long as the FAQs really are questions that a customer will ask then I’m still for them.
Anyway – I did find this article that has a few FAQ best practices.
18 May 2010
by eviltwinin code, Design, thoughts
Well, apparently WordPress 3.0 should be released in the next few weeks. For someone who is firstly a designer, then after that a pretty sub standard developer it’s great news. It offers new opportunities to make better CMS driven websites with quite a few of it’s excellent new features.
Custom post types
In the past I’ve found it a little hard to manage different types of content when you are limited to only pages or posts. Now you can make your own custom post types. Excellent.
Menu management
Previously I’d found a plug-in that helped organise the menu items, but the new menu management feature means you can change the order and destination of the links, as well as manage all the sub pages.
Well, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff you can find out about here: WordPress 3.0: The 5 Most Important New Features
18 May 2010
by eviltwinin artists, Design, shop, thoughts Tags: crafts
I can’t help it, I just love useless cute stuff.
Cute sock monsters and stuff by @NickyGibson.
Handmade plush….um….toys? But what would you do with them?
And me….
Well, I’ve only made the sock monkey toy for my nephew, but these things have inspired me to make more useless adorable things…and maybe even get out my sewing machine…
More adorable things
Rebecca Danger
Sushi or Death – Knitted Sushi
14 May 2010
by eviltwinin Design, thoughts
I’ve always been happy using my browser bookmarks to store useful or interesting websites; efficiently organising them into folders. Then I started using Digg. Digg was a good way to remember blog posts and tutorials I found useful, keeping them separate from the sites I liked, as well as being a nice way of letting the author know that I liked what they’d written.
Since then I’ve been recommended a few others, here’s what I think of them all anyway.
I found Delicious to incredibly irritating to use – the tags might make it flexible, but you can’t put anything in to folders, or keep sections separated. It’s also far too blue so becomes a really tedious site to look at after a while.
It’s good at
- Tagging your links with topics so they are easy to find
It’s bad at
- Showing screenshots - appear to be some on the home page, but none of the links I’ve added seem to have them
- Exploring new things – I find the whole tag structure quite awkward personally
- Being interesting – every time I’m on the site that blue makes me want to kill myself
Best for
- Argh……..driving you mad with the same blue over and over again!!!!
I’ve been using Digg for a long time – I found it to be quite a friendly, nice site to use. Seems to be a good community, and it’s easy to search categories to find something you are interested in.
It’s good at
- Adding blog posts and tutorials
- Telling you how popular the link is
- Find interesting articles – Digg feels quite like a news hub – it shows you latest headlines and has good main category sections.
It’s bad at
- Organising and finding your links – everything is just in chronological order
Best for
- Finding and adding interesting news articles and blog posts
StumbleUpon I quite like – it’s especially easy to add sites you like, but the content other users have added seems to be a lot more juvenile compared the the articles and blog posts in Digg.
It’s good at
- The StumbleUpon tool bar – Its excellent at just quickly adding a site you like, or even one you don’t – you don’t even have to leave the site you are on
- As well as that you can just view random websites with the ‘Stumble!’ button
- Lets you know if you are the first person to add something, and shows you how popular a link is
It’s bad at
- Part of the problem with the ‘StumbleUpon!’ button is that a lot of people add a lot of rubbish, so you can see an awful lot of rubbish, as well as ‘work unsafe’ stuff before you see something good
Best for
- Finding and adding interesting, cool and weird sites and images
So…
StumbleUpon and Digg are both sites I like, with nice features, but Delicious? I really think I might just be biased against that blue.
Anyway, to be honest I’m not massively interested in the social aspect of the bookmarking sites. I like having somewhere where I can keep the things I want to remember, so I think I’m going to stick to the handy Xmarks plugin so I can view my favourite bookmarked sites on any computer, then continue to add interesting posts and things I like to Digg.
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