Loading...
Start a new Travel Blog! Blogabond Home Maps People Photos My Stuff

Usability

Pasadena, United States


Things have been moving fast these last few days. We finally pushed our first build live on Saturday, and have been getting lots of good usability feedback.

Lesson One: Nobody Reads Instructions!
This was our first real mistake. Our screens were easy enough to use, but you really needed to read the little block of text up top to know what you were supposed to do. Even the fact that the "Countries In View" list next to the map could be scrolled off the screen caused a few users to wonder why they couldn't pick Thailand off the list when they were zoomed in on Central America.

Lucky for us, the changes we needed to make were pretty minor. The big explanatory paragraphs are all either gone, or moved down out of the way, in favor of big simple taglines. Gone are the references to Travel Journals, Trip Reports and Diaries. Now it's all Travel Blogs and Blog entries.

Lesson Two: If it looks clickable, it better work!
We have big ideas here. There are plenty of new features on the way, so we mock up all our screens to incorporate those features. The only problem is that users see a link saying "0 photos", and expect to be able to click on it to get to the page where they can view those zero photos. It never would have occurred to me to do that!

So this was another easy fix. We went through and lopped off anything that's not fully built. And in a few cases, we just cranked overnight and made those features work. So now, if you click on something, you can be assured you'll go somewhere.


permalink written by  Jason Kester on October 17, 2005 from Pasadena, United States
from the travel blog: Building Blogabond
tagged Blogabond

Send a Compliment


comment on this...
Previous: The Flaky VC Next: Are there really Mexican cities in Africa?

Jason Kester Jason Kester
14 Trips
250 Photos

Hey! I wrote Blogabond so I guess that makes me your host. Welcome!

I spend about 9 months a year on the road, chasing the sun around the world in search of good climbing and surfing. I carry a laptop along with me, and take on small programming contracts to take care of expenses.
...

trip feed
author feed
trip kml
author kml

   

Blogabond v2.40.58.80 © 2024 Expat Software Consulting Services about : press : rss : privacy
View as Map View as Satellite Imagery View as Map with Satellite Imagery Show/Hide Info Labels Zoom Out Zoom In Zoom Out Zoom In
find city: