Improving The Age site search field usability in 5 minutes
Jun 4, 06:53 AM | CommentDespite being someone who uses the web daily (and a regular reader of The Age) I find myself getting caught-out by the design of their site search every time. Here’s how I’d tweak the design to improve it’s usability in 5 minutes.
The Age website search field causes me to pause for a second every time I use it. It’s not a huge issue and the system works perfectly satisfactorily (the search results could do with some fine-tuning, but that’s another story) but for some reason the design of the search text-entry field defies convention and bears more of a resemblance to a ‘raised’ drop-down style form component than the usual ‘recessed’ text field. This, coupled with the fact that the button is joined to the text field, doesn’t look like any other buttons across the site and is all placed below the main navigation always seems to catch me out and make me have to think for a second before proceeding.
The existing Age search field is ‘raised’, and bears more of a resemblance to a drop-down style form component than the usual ‘recessed’ text field
Instead, I’d suggest The Age redesign their search field to look ‘recessed’, in alignment with the current convention for text fields. Leaving the standard formatting would be preferred, but if they really had to override this with an image, at least make it look similar and not like form elements with different functionality. In addition I’d recommend they move the button a little further to the right so that it does not appear to be a single element.
Thirst Studios
May 28, 10:25 AM | CommentIt’s a little bit old news now, but I’m very pleased to announce that I recently teamed-up with Andrew Gunstone to form Thirst Studios.
Andrew and I decided to join forces in order to offer a more complete end-to-end service to our clients, with me heading-up the strategy, IA, design and user-experience side and Andrew taking care of the back-end code and CMS development (but we both do a bit of everything in reality).
The Best Job In The World
Jan 15, 07:34 AM | Comment [1]As usual it’s been a busy few months here at BTD, having spent most of my time of late working with a fantastic team over at Cummins Nitro on a really interesting project – The Best Job In The World.
The site launched this week and has already had a phenomenal response, with a rush of dream job hopefuls causing the site to crash in just two days of it’s release.
My interview on spicy web designers
Sep 9, 06:17 PM | Comment [2]I was recently approached by Luc Arnold, founder of Spicy web designers to be interviewed for his new site.
In their own words:
Rearranging page code & advanced CSS techniques to improve SEO
Sep 8, 02:37 PM | Comment [1]I was conducting a review of some XHTML and CSS templates for a client recently when I came across an interesting SEO concept that I hadn’t heard of before. At first I was skeptical (and I still am a little), but upon closer inspection I started thinking that there could be something it it. Not only in terms of SEO, but accessibility too. The articles I found describing this technique date back to 2004/5 and the fact that I’ve not found anything more recent on the subject just further fuels my skepticism. Anyway – I thought I’d post my discovery here and see what the wider web design world had to comment…
So what is it? Well, the idea is this: Rather than structuring your HTML in the usual order of header/navigation, content and footer, you build the pages such that the main content appears first, with the navigation and footer underneath. Then, using CSS to style the page you pull the navigation/header back up to appear above the content when viewed in a browser.
Darebin libraries website
Jun 13, 03:35 PM CommentHaving experienced many online offerings from local governments and local councils in the past, as well as having worked for a few, I had pretty much resigned myself to accepting that most are going to be rubbish in terms of antiquated code using tables for layout and inline styles, bad interface design, little or no regard for usability or accessibility and, more often than not containing outdated content.
Whatever the reasons for this, be it that the website is perhaps considered a low priority, that there’s no dedicated resource allocated to the website or that it’s simply too hard to get people to agree to a redesign, the sites’ users seem destined to lose-out.
I Vote For Art
May 23, 01:31 PM | Comment [3]I’m really pleased to announce the launch of my latest website – I vote for art. It’s a new online gallery, where you can buy and sell art, as well as vote for your favourites.
Based in Melbourne, Australia the site showcases some fantastic contemporary work by local and international artists.
Judging the International Web Awards
May 20, 12:51 PM | Comment [3]I’m delighted to announce that I have been asked to be one of the judges in this years’ International Web Marketing Association WebAwards web design competition.
Now in its 12th year, the WebAwards is the premier annual website award competition that names the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.
Whereis products
May 15, 03:59 PM CommentI’m pleased to announce that the ‘mini’ site I built for Whereis has gone live. Whereis products explains some of the new features at the recently launched new whereis.com, as well as explaining how you can make use of whereis’ maps across a range of products including mobile and in-car GPS devices.
I built the site from scratch in (x)HTML and CSS to be as standards-compliant and accessible as the design would allow.
BTD quiz #2: Usability issues resulting from a staggered web application release
May 14, 12:14 PM | Comment [3]Here’s another little usability conundrum for all you user experience designers out there. This question was asked of me recently while designing an online transactional web application for a company here in Melbourne and I’d like to hear any suggestions you may have about how best to tackle this issue…
The client wanted to release their shiny new web app as soon as possible. The reasons for this from a business point of view were obvious, not least to get to market first ahead of the competition! In order to do this however, the plan meant releasing a basic version of the app with a limited feature-set first, with the intention of releasing updates over time, adding features within various sections of the application.