We’ve all seen it by now: the ubiquitous three-lined icon known as “the hamburger” (or, to a jocular few, “Mr. Liney“). Increasingly, we are all coming to know what it means, too: click for menu.
Usability studies continue to show that the hamburger image has still not crossed the familiarity tipping point, however. So gurus in the field wisely recommend that the word “menu” accompany the icon whenever and wherever possible.
Some of these gurus go a step further. Since menus are so critical not only for navigation, but also for orientation, signifying important information about a site to users, they oppose any convention that conceals them. To this way of thinking, the hamburger is a symbol of lazy design, of letting a desire for cleanliness trump usability.
And when sites start taking this once-mobile convention and applying it to desktop? Watch out. Continue reading →
File under Nerd Alert. But I basically turned back into a 10-year old when I read this:
Netflix is said to be working on a new series that uses Nintendo’s beloved ‘Legend of Zelda’ games as their source material. The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s in the early stages of development, and that it will follow the basic premise of familiar hero Link being tasked with rescuing Zelda in the kingdom of Hyrule. This could be the greatest thing ever, or the worst thing ever.
As an adult, and even as a teenager, I wasn’t much into video games. But in my early days I was into the original NES pretty heavy. Contra, Mario 2, Summer Games (with the Power Pad, obviously). And Legend of Zelda, which was far and away my favorite. Something about moving through that 2-D landscape, finding new swords, power bracelets, getting advice and buying medicine from old people, gambling with goblins — it just captured my imagination.
The series is reportedly live-action, and is undoubtedly going to be terrible. But it’s still fun to have a chance to reminisce about that weird little universe I was once so obsessed with.
A new look and added functionality for the Bates homepage.
On Monday we rolled out a host of changes to the Bates website. The overriding goal was to make the site work well on all screen sizes and devices, and the changes touched the global navigation, search, and homepage design — all big and consequential things for users.
We have been working on this project for six months. I’m happy with the final product, but I’m happiest with the process we followed to get there.
In our case, that began with understanding our users. In the year leading up to this project, a group of about 10 of us met with 16 different offices on campus who communicate to external audiences. Through those conversations we got a much better sense of who exactly the college needs to reach through the website, and we used that insight to develop a dozen personas that helped guide our efforts. The rest of the process — including the testing we did with over 50 students and alumni — is detailed in this BatesNews story on the roll-out.
The new site also resolves a variety of challenges the old design had created for users. For one thing, it reduces the number of links in the menu from 135 to 30 in order to serve as a more readily navigable portal for all users. It also expands the capacity for us to communicate directly with key audiences on the homepage — something we were unable to do effectively with the previous full-page image layout that left room for nothing but stories.The old site was striking, to be sure, but feedback and data showed us that it did not serve users well as an entry point.
As with any big web change, we’ve heard a range of feedback. Some very positive reactions from alumni and other public users, a small handful of less enthusiastic initial responses from campus users. Despite a focused internal strategy to communicate about the project, some campus users have been accustomed to finding content through certain pathways, and those paths have now changed. Wherever we can, we work with them to make the path to their content more intuitive. In other cases, I’m optimistic the new pathways will make sense and become habit after a short transition period. Regardless, we respond to all inquiries and record the input as we consider future improvements.
The first public review of the site was published today. It’s a thoughtful and largely positive analysis that puts these changes in the context of the site’s evolution over the past six years. Here are some highlights:
Most of us love beautiful websites with huge images, but they tend to load slowly, and that real estate could probably be used for better things–like enrolling students.
Bates seems to agree. They made a move to large images in 2012 but scaled back in 2014.
Most college and universities are just now making the move to large images, and they should be asking, “What does Bates know that we don’t?” (This. They know this.)
Never sacrifice design for function when it comes to your primary business asset.
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Bates gets it: parents pay the tuition, and parents want to know how your institution (at least institutions as expensive as Bates) are going to help their children succeed after graduation. At this point, every enrollment marketer working with 17- to 19-year-olds should know that parents matter nearly as much as students.
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Bates definitely doesn’t have all the answers. They’re clearly listening to their audience, but they’re still finding new tools and conducting new experiments, and they’re still making mistakes (like everyone).
What Bates seems to strive to do is to give website visitors the information they need and the experience they expect. And that is something to emulate.
The greatest challenge for a college website, I think, is making it work well for the incredibly wide array of audiences it serves and their spectacularly diverse needs and goals. In the end, it can’t be all things to all users.
For this latest project, we’ve focused on our public, off-campus audiences. They are by far the vast majority of our users, and above all else bates.edu must serve them. But next on the docket is a new site — The Quad (you can see an initial, bare bones effort here) — focused entirely on the highly targeted needs of our internal audiences of current students, faculty, and staff. Lots of good work still left to do.
Park knows the problem is systemic—a mindset that locks federal IT into obsolete practices—“a lot of people in government are, like, suspended in amber,” he said to the crowd at Mozilla. In the rest of the tech world, nimbleness, speed, risk-taking and relentless testing are second nature, essential to surviving in a competitive landscape that works to the benefit of consumers. But the federal government’s IT mentality is still rooted in caution, as if the digital transformation that has changed our lives is to be regarded with the utmost suspicion. It favors security over experimentation and adherence to bureaucratic procedure over agile problem-solving. That has led to an inherently sclerotic and corruptible system that doesn’t just hamper innovation, it leaves government IT permanently lagging, unable to perform even the most basic functions we expect.
Reading the full description brought me right back to my time at GAO, navigating wary and skeptical bureaucrats (mostly attorneys) to the point that it took us two years to create a *Facebook page.*
The article also outlines great opportunities that are coming about for government to actually learn to innovate. It’s inspiring, but more than that — it’s necessary, if government stands a chance of being useful to all of us citizens who need it to work.
Today, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) joined representatives from the Town of Rockport, Maine Media Workshops + College, Network Maine, and internet service provider GWI to announce the official launch of Maine’s first municipally-owned, ultra-fast fiber optic internet network in Rockport. The “High Tech Harbor” project, which is now in its final phases, delivers internet up to 100 times faster than a regular broadband connection to area homes and businesses.
Sen. King’s quotes are grandiose but inspiring:
“This project is so important because for the first time in human history people can work where they live rather than having to live where they work. Effectively, they have been freed of geography.”
The network is the result of a partnership with the municipal government, private industry and educational institutions. A great example of public-private partnerships getting important things done for citizens. I really, really hope this model is replicated across the state. Hopefully one day in Bowdoinham.
My daughter is two and a half years old. Whenever she passes gas, she absolutely busts up laughing. Despite occasional sidelong glances from family and strangers alike, she just thinks farts are the funniest things that have ever happened. And you know what? She’s right.
Flatulence is objectively hilarious. It is also an important indicator of healthy digestion. But it is very much frowned upon in our decent society, especially — and this is the kicker — when it comes to women and girls.
It’s not that I’m particularly enamored of farts. In addition to being funny, they’re also objectively pretty gross. What I am enamored of is the prospect of my daughter growing up with a complete and honest understanding of and appreciation for her body — how it works, why it looks the way it does, and what it can do.
That means more than learning how fast she can run or how high she can jump. It also means learning about the “grosser” aspects of bodily functioning, and loving them, too.
The importance of this point was driven home for me again recently when I saw a creative ad for a new, ridiculous product called “PooPourri.” The video has been making the rounds on Facebook. Have a look:
This is a clever and funny way to pitch a unique product. I actually really like the marketing. What I really don’t like is the tagline: “Girls Don’t Poop.” It’s tongue-in-cheek, but I think it reinforces a negative message we send to girls and women over and over.
It’s also a message we do not send to boys in the same way. It’s the message that these natural functions are something to be ashamed of — even that women and girls need to help perpetuate the myth that they do not happen. It’s a message of pressure to participate in the fantasy.
But they do happen. They doo.
When my daughter is old enough to think a little more critically about this, we’ll talk about what’s “appropriate.” We’ll discuss the times when it’s appropriate to make a scene about farts, as well as the times when it’s not, such as at school or the dinner table. I’m confident we’ll find a healthy balance.
Until then, farts will continue to be a regular source of amusement for us…as they should for everyone who doesn’t have a stick up their butt.
Take a look. A citizenry without sound, reliable, speedy web service will be less informed and less competitive than it needs to be. Every day, web access is less of a luxury and more of a need. I expect one day we may consider it a right. In any vision of success for Maine, ubiquitous, quality internet access must be at the center of it.
The author is president of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank that I typically find pretty unpersuasive. But the piece is worth reading. One of his targets is social media — an easy target, and one that often frustrates me because going after it seems so predictable. And I find being preached at about the evils of Facebook so tiring. But I think he is fairly on point with this:
What do you post to Facebook? Pictures of yourself yelling at your kids, or having a hard time at work? No, you post smiling photos of a hiking trip with friends. You build a fake life — or at least an incomplete one — and share it. Furthermore, you consume almost exclusively the fake lives of your social media “friends.”
Jacob, a prospective student persona, wants to learn enough to know whether he can see himself here.
As much as we understand this to be the case, and treat it accordingly, there is the potential there for that to shape our outlook in problematic ways. I get it.
What I liked most about the post, though, was a mantra he spells out, and how I think it fits in with the ethos of usability: “Love people, use things.”
We just unveiled a library of 12 personas at Bates — fake people who represent real user groups, complete with bios, a quote, top tasks, goals, attributes, and preferences. Our own mantra has been: “If you want users to love your design, fall in love with your users.”
Helpful to remember that we build websites — things — for people to use. But it’s the people we love!
A List Apart has this fantastic article on how to handle the inevitable feedback from a client that they “don’t like” an aspect of your design. One gem:
Aesthetics are a matter of taste. Design is not just aesthetics. I’m always saying it, but it’s worth repeating: there are aesthetic decisions in design, but they are meant to contribute to the design as a whole. The design as a whole is created for an audience, and with goals in mind, so objectivity is required and should be encouraged.
A good reminder that, like real estate, the three most important elements of a design project are: Audience, audience, audience.
Apparently this is a largely symbolic victory for those of us who would like to see the team’s name change to something slightly less…racist. The team can still go after people who use the name or branding, and the financial impact is likely to be minimal. They also get to maintain their registration through the appeal process, which they’ve said they will pursue.
Still, it’s a step in the right direction, and those are rare enough that they should be celebrated when they happen.
My football education and appreciation took place in Washington, DC, including about a half-dozen trips to see the Washington Football Team. I wear an RGIII jersey all season and consider them “my team.” But the name is a stain on them and all who root for them, and I really hope this news moves them closer to a change.
We’ve all seen it by now: the ubiquitous three-lined icon known as “the hamburger” (or, to a jocular few, “Mr. Liney“). Increasingly, we are all coming to know what it means, too: click for menu.
