Make the page obvious and self explanatory. You don’t want users to get confused and ultimately bored enough to leave your site. Making navigation and information easy to understand and as intuitive as possible.

Prevent users from being overwhelmed and locked in choice paralysis. Having too much information and options can leave the user confused and frustrated and deter them from going any further on the page. It’s okay to give options, but help steer them towards the most popular product. Or, you might help them differentiate through visuals as much as possible.

Show the product in some form or capacity. If it’s a service and you can show off a screenshot, it will go a long way. I personally wouldn’t purchase something that I couldn’t see or demo, software included. If I can’t see the interface of a piece of software, how would I have any idea whether it is a good fit for me or not? I would not even consider looking any further at the page if this were the case.

Provide clear and directions/guidance and next actions. Show the user where you want them to go with arrows, buttons, etc. Draw their attention to where you want them to go. Once they are there, use a easily recognizable, obvious next step action whether it be a button or whatever. Don’t make the user hunt for it, make it readily available and easy to find.

These are just a few tips to consider. There are others of course, but these seem like a good place to start. Next time you land on a business’ landing page, take a look around and assess whether they make it easy for you to navigate and take an action.

Both HTML5 & CSS3 will help make the web experience better and pages more semantic. This makes it a lot easier for search engines to navigate pages, and improves the web experience for everyone. Also, HTML 5 includes new APIs for drawing graphics on screen, storing data offline, dragging and dropping, and much more. We’ll look at a few more elements more in depth.

HTML5 has been getting a great deal of attention thanks in large part to the video feature. The video is built right into the page rather than having to rely on other technologies like Flash or Silverlight that require plugins and possibly bog down your computer. The video feature gained a good bit of attention earlier this year when Apple basically said that it will support HTML5 and not Flash on the iPhone.

HTML5 and CSS3 also helps make for more attractive sites. HTML5 has new features which make building web apps much easier and more tailored. Some examples are more color and gradient support, rounded corners, and shadowing. Also, there are several new capabilities included in HTML5 forms that are pretty impressive including new input types, autocomplete, and more.

If you already have a site up and didn’t consider accessibility in the design and development, there are a few things that you can do right off the bat that will go along way towards making it available to all users.

When using images, be sure to include alt tags to describe the visual function. Otherwise, the visually impaired would have no way of knowing what the image is supposed to be.

Also related to visual impairment, when hyperlinking, using text that makes sense when read out of context is good practice. For example, avoid “click here” and provide a description of what the link actually is for.

When including audio and video in a site, consider the hearing impaired. Providing captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video will make it more accessible for all.

Those are just a few simple things that can be done. There are plenty of resources available on the web regarding accessibility and what you should do to make your sites and designs accessible. One of the best places to start is the W3C site. Another handy resource is Six Revisionspost about tools for evaluating web design accessibility.

Besides just choosing a hot new font, there are some fundamentals to keep in mind when considering your options for typography and colors in the design of a site. First, keep enough white space in your site so that the user is not overwhelmed with content. It helps focus attention on the text and what is important. Right in line with that is having smaller blocks of text so users can scan and read it quickly.

Keep contrast in mind. You want to make sure that there is a good contrast between your font color with the background. If your beautiful font is legible, then you’ve defeated the purpose.

Font size kind of goes right along with that. Choosing a size that is legible and easy for the user to read should be considered when determining your typography. When in doubt, go for the larger size!

Finally, varying the font size helps break up and helps the user differentiate content. It gives them an idea of what’s important and can help them scan and pick up little tidbits. Instead of varying size, another strategy might be to apply different styles like italics, bold, or varying the font style.

Web Standards are guidance created by the W3C designed to help ensure that everyone has access to the information being provided, and also making the web.

Complying with web standards can give your web pages greater visibility in web searches. The structural information present in documents that adhere to standards makes it easy for search engines to access and scan the information in those documents. Thus, they get indexed more accurately and potentially rank higher.

Standards are designed so that old browsers will still understand the structure of your documents. Even if they don’t recognize or understand some of the newer elements, they’ll still be able to display your site’s content. Even if you are using old versions of the standards, it will continue to work in new browsers, and data using new versions of the standards will “gracefully degrade” to produce an acceptable result in older browsers.

Finally, documents that comply with Web Standards can be easily converted to other formats. This allows for more versatile use of the information within documents on the web and simplified integration and migration to new systems.

It is great to design a beautiful cutting edge site, but if it’s not usable then it’s not successful. I’m sure you’ve been on a site like this – you know, the kind with a beautiful interactive, animated landing page. But once the novelty wears off and you try to figure out where to go next, you have no idea what to click. That is a site that misses the mark in my mind. The goal should be to combine both the pop of the design with a highly usable and navigable site.

The only way to have a successful and usable site, is to draft up a blueprint and plan out the site well before you lay the first brick. There needs to be a planning and analysis process in place from the start. Once you have thought about and planned for most scenarios, then you can begin building. As opposed to trying to create a Jackson Pollack version of a website that looks interesting, but once the user snaps out of their haze, they have no idea what to do next.

You aren’t always going to have all of the answers before you undertake a project. New requirements come up and curveballs are thrown all the time out of no where. Having a solid plan provides a good foundation and will help you better adapt to the changing environment versus building a site by the seat of your pants and going with what feels good.

There are a number of factors that should be considered related to online user experience. Let’s look at just a few:

When users read on the web, generally speaking, they aren’t doing it at the kitchen table over their morning cup of joe. They are scanning at best, trying to get to the meat of the content. Keeping relevant information at the beginning of the content is very important.

Websites are not linear. You have no idea where a user is going to go once they hit your site. You can’t define a beginning, middle, and end. You have to make sure that the user can figure out what they are looking at and how to navigate the site.

Websites should strike a balance between user goals and business objectives. In other words, you need to provide, clear, concise information and direction to satisfy the user needs. On the other hand, you have to get across what the company wants customers to know and do. Finding that happy medium is the challenge.

You’ve surely come across sites that you thought had terrible writing and content organization. Likewise you’ve probably also encountered sites with great content and writing. So what makes it good anyway? Providing the user with clear, useful, findable information is key. You want your reader to be engaged and get out of the site what they were looking for.

Of course, it’s all easier said than done. But, next time you are surfing the web, pay attention to the content and notice what you like and what you don’t. Those audits can help you the next time you are charged with writing content for the web. Until next time!

ITIL started as a collection books, each one covering a different IT management topic. The emphasis of ITIL is service quality, and it also focuses on how IT services can be efficiently and cost-effectively provided and supported. IT activities are broken down into process and divided up into levels – strategic, operational, and tactical. Here is an image that may help get your arms around what ITIL is:

A key component of ITIL is the Service Desk. The Service Desk function describes best practices for establishing and managing a central point of contact for users. By having a central point of contact it streamlines communications , thus making it easier for users, and also helps ensure data integrity. Two of the Service Desk’s most important responsibilities are monitoring incidents and communicating with users. The Service Desk function can be filed under a few names – call center, help desk, service desk, etc. They all perform the same basic activity that ITIL calls the service desk. Here is an image depicting the Service Desk aspect of ITIL:

There are a number of companies out there whose specialty is ITIL consulting. One such company is Evergreen Systems. Their pitch is that they can help your IT company implement ITIL, thereby maximizing operations, avoiding excessive costs and improving customer service and bringing measureable value to the business. And they will provide you with the metrics to back it up. They provide a ‘No Risk’ guarantee – the results are guaranteed and ROI on assignments or the client doesn’t pay. Their services include ITIL Assessment and ITIL Consulting. They have a case study on their site for Cleveland-based KeyBank. They are one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $93 billion. They worked to develop and IT Asset Management (ITAM) program for the bank. They were successful in the task with the results being:
* Clear governance for ITAM.
* Increased efficiency in business operations.
* Proactive management of IT assets.
* Introduction of continuous improvement processes.
* Increased fiscal responsibility.
* Introduction of operational metrics and measurements.
* Better employee focus and enhanced productivity.

There is a plethora of software available that is designed to enhance the service desk function of ITIL. ProcessWorx is a company that provides several pieces of software in this vein. The ProcessWorx CMDB provides a way for IT organizations to improve their core operational processes by establishing a standard, centralized information repository. This solution helps IT organizations record, maintain and report on infrastructure configuration items, including applications/software, devices/peripherals, servers, databases and related IT documentation. A few of the benefits listed includeL Record and maintain CI attributes & IT service dependencies; Establish & track CI ownership and accountability; Track CIs by type, owner, dept., environment, status and vendor; etc. All of these benfits, of course, fall right in line with the core functionality of the service desk. They also have a few other software solutions geared towards ITIL and the Service Desk.

Software engineering and design in particular has been influenced by the idea of design patterns. Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham, two of the fathers of extreme programming, applied design patterns to programming in 1987. Design patterns in software engineering gained more popularity and exposure after the book by the Gang of Four, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software was published. In the book, the authors discuss the trials and tribulations of object oriented programming, as well as the capabilities. They go on to discuss 23 classic design patterns in software engineering. The book was revolutionary and sold several hundred thousand copies and is a staple for software engineers everywhere.

What is a design pattern anyway? It is a reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. It is not an out of the box, finished design that can be transformed directly into code. Instead it’s a template for how to solve a problem that can be used in a variety of circumstances and situations. When applied to object-oriented programming, they show the relationships between objects and classes. Again, these ideas and concepts were brought about by examining patterns in traditional architecture, but anyone who has spent any amount of time programming can see how it can be applied to software design.

Design patterns can speed up the development process by providing proven development paradigms. This is accomplished by reusing patterns to prevent minor issues that can cause major problems. It also improves code clarity and readability for programmers and architects who are familiar with the patterns.

There are several different design patterns identified in software engineering. Model-View-Controller (MVC) is perhaps the most well known. It’s actually been argued that MVC predates the concept of design patterns. In addition, there is Model-View-Presenter (MVP) and Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM). I’m going to take a closer look at the MVVM design pattern and where it began. First let’s take a look at a diagram depicting MVVM:

The MVVM pattern originated from Microsoft as a specialization of the Presentation Model design pattern. For the most part, it’s based upon the MVC pattern, MVVM is most often used by Silverlight, .Net, WPF, and C# developers. It was designed to make use of specific functions in WPF to better facilitate the separation of View layer development from the rest of the pattern by removing almost all of the code behind from the View layer. Instead of requiring Interactive Designers to write View code, they can use the native WPF markup language XAML. The separation of roles allows Interactive Designers to focus on user experience needs rather than programming or business logic.

Let’s take a look at the elements of the pattern. The Model refers to one of two things, depending upon the approach – either an object model that represents the real state content (an object-oriented approach), or the data access layer that represents that content (a data-centric approach). The View refers to all elements displayed by the UI such as buttons, windows, graphics, and other controls. Finally, the ViewModel is a data abstraction of your view. This is where your View (aka UserControl) get’s its data. So if you view needs to get data, the ViewModel is where it gets it from. Also if values need to be converted or formatted, this is where it happens.

I suppose the biggest reason that one would consider buying an iPad is because is sits somewhere in the zone between a netbook, e-reader, and iPhone. It is an entertainment device that allows you to surf the web (sort of), check email, read books and magazines, and watch your favorite television shows or movies. If you don’t have any of those devices, or maybe even just one of them, you’d probably look at the iPad as a viable option. It’s also highly portable and will be easy to travel with.

But, I have to go back to surfing the web…70% of the content on the web will not be accessible with the iPad. Why you might wonder? Flash, would be my reply. And so the battle of egos continues. Apple won’t support a “buggy” platform. Adobe puts the ball in Apple’s court and says it’s their fault. Who cares? The point is that iPad users are missing out on much of the rich media content the web has to offer. In my opinion, that is one of the biggest drawbacks to the iPad.

What about iPad being the salvation of the print industry? There are exciting digital editions of popular magazines that have been developed for the iPad. Wired magazine has a demonstration of their tablet app that is really pretty impressive. But, is it going to do for magazines and newspapers what the iPod did for the music and entertainment industry? Who can say for certain, but I have a hard time believing that will be the case, at least not immediately. I believe the transition will take much longer. It may end up being the format of the future, but don’t expect it to happen overnight.

Let’s look at the iPad’s price tag, starting at $499. That doesn’t sound too bad in comparison to the prices for MacBooks. But why would you pay $499, when you can buy a Netbook that let’s you access all of the content the iPad can’t for under $350? Let’s also look at the e-reader market. You have Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader, and B&N’s Nook as the most popular on the market, all with prices less than $250. Then, of course, you have the iPhone. That iPad Nano (ha!) can be all yours for the price of $199 – and you can even make phone calls on it!

If you love Apple, as legions of people do, getting your hands on the latest, greatest gadget that Steve Jobs has to offer is not something you want, it’s something you NEED. The Master of Apple Ceremonies has a way like no one else with stirring up the bees nest with excitement when he introduces a new product. Heck, I think I sometimes fall into this category myself. However, I can look at the iPad with an objective eye and say, for me, and I would venture to guess, most people, I simply won’t buy it when I have three other devices that can do the same thing if not more.