Paintings & blog by Chris Gibbins

It seems a little ridiculous that 467 local authority web departments are all struggling to resolve many of the same issues. And unfortunately so many of these sites are hard to use and have substantial usability problems. Couldn’t resources be better spent by resolving the issues at a Governmental level instead of repeating the difficult process of developing accessible easy to use web sites over and over again?

Continue Reading »

A strange observation I made when carrying out user testing was how some users viewed certain navigation links as unnecessary and even confusing, if they also appeared in the page content. “Which one should I click” they would say. This really surprised me and more recently even a member of a “Web Department” made a similar observation when reviewing a wire-frame for some Intranet pages; “why is that link in two places? Shouldn’t we take out the link from the navigation if it’s already in the main body of content?”.
Continue Reading »

I have used Writely.com’s Rich Internet Application for a while now, and have been really impressed with how Ajax apps like this one can simulate the functionality of desktop software. However, I have just found another one:
AjaxWrite looks identical to word and includes tabbed browsing of documents rather than many pop up windows, disrupting your desktop. So I will give it a go for a little while. Maybe one day all tools will be online. The major draw back is that the user has no online space to store any documents, unlike Writely. In which case it would be more beneficial to use an open source desktop solution like Open Office.

The company I am currently working for has been battling now for some time to improve it’s web sites look and level of accessibility. And the main reason for this “battle” as far as I can see, is because they have got tied into using a very expensive Content Management System, which they cannot afford to upgrade.

This is one of the biggest dangers of such a solution. CMS’s can be really expensive. Why do Consultants advise them to buy expensive cms’s when there are so many great open source equivalents out there like Drupal and Plone? It makes me wonder whether consultants get commission to promote such systems.

Just came across this interesting website discussing Usability.

The name of the website is a clue to the author’s view on the subject: Usability Must Die.

Have a look at the Usability expert profiles.

It still amazes me how many well known web sites have general usability problems that effect their ease of use. The latest I came across was ironically the London Design Museum website.

The index page looks quite nice, as you would expect from a site exhibiting and promoting good design, but it’s when you actually get beyond this that things start to go wrong. The main problem on both flash and html versions is the menu that appears when you rollover the shaded bar on the bottom of the new popup window interface. It seems to work sometimes and disappear on other occasions creating a frustrating environment for the user.

Another issue that may be more of a personal dislike is the switching between several browser windows whilst interacting with the site.

Recently came across Amy Hoy’s Blog about Ruby on Rails. Apart from the clear, fun writing style, she has such a talent for describing quite difficult concepts in an understandable way.

Check out her Cheat Sheets: What’s Ajax? Cheat Sheet, Form Helpers Cheat Sheet.