In this series of blog posts, I’m going to summarize articles and tutorials I read during the week. If you don’t have the time to scour the web for blog posts about web related news, technology, and techniques, then come back here every week for a summary of my most interesting finds!

The Small Print: Writing User Interface Instructions
http://understandinggraphics.com/design/writing-user-interface-instructions/

• People assume certain things about the functionality of a website.  Generally, these can be noted as common interface elements (button rollovers, selected states, etc…)
• Mental models are “general ideas about how things work.”  Think of them like muscle memory in sports only with interactions on a webpage.
• Following common mental models prevents user frustration.
• Know your audience and tailor the user experience accordingly.
• Be precise without loosing anything important.
• Descriptive words on call-to-actions improve user experience.
• Avoid passive wet noodle writing.  State what should be done don’t ask.
• Margins and padding help define content grouping
• Be a font nerd.  Don’t deviate from your site guidelines.  Make fonts readable.
• A picture is worth a thousand words to the less savvy (illustrate how to’s in less obvious situations).
• Whenever possible make calls to action “personal” targeting your user directly.  When possible I would also use personal information that you have available.  Example: “Hey [username], welcome back”.
• Instructions should be freely accessible to anyone (508 compliance?).
• Always test your instructions with those who haven’t used your product.  Do they make sense?

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

• Google is the web’s leading search engine, but they’re still making improvements to stay ahead of competition.
• Bing capitalized on Google’s shortcomings by getting access to things not directly crawlable by spiders (example: Flights by Faircast).
• Google is remains at the top for “public search.”
• Google has ability of contextual search and recognizes patterns (example: mike siwek lawyer mi).
• Google is more than just pagerank and includes: new algorithm, local connectivity analysis, constantly updating indexes, personalized results, updated web crawling, image/news/book/universal search, and real time searching.
• Pagerank is the process of establishing authority based on inbound and outbound linking.
• Holy grail is matching meaning and understanding the question being asked not just keyword combinations.
• Google is massive and hard to compete with due to scale and technical hurtles involved with search engines.

Tags: algorithm, Google, user interface

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Weekly Redux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.