Jacob Nielsen knows web users. The Nielsen/Norman Group, which he co-founded, has tested thousands of sites. It’s watched more than 3,000 users try to perform tasks online, even following their eyes to see where they look. And he has some frightening news: Nobody looks at picture advertising. Nielsen, in a keynote address at the inaugural Web Experience Forum in Boston, Mass., said web design is doomed to failure unless we learn from end users. And one major lesson is that other than paid search, ads don’t work. “We call this banner blindness — people won’t see ads at all,” said Nielsen. “Ads might as well not exist as far as users are concerned, except for search ads.” The number of web users that so much as glance at banner ads, he added, is too small to even quantify. The findings are no secret to web usability professionals gathered here, who obsess over how consumers use the web. But they’re often ignored by ad buyers. “For the longest time, the web has been in collective denial of this phenomenon,” said Nielsen. “People still have this old media thinking: They think of the web being similar to TV because it’s on the screen and visual. The main distinction is whether it’s active or passive, not whether it’s on a screen or not.” Advertising revenues, which pay for much of the web, are having a rough year, with some analysts cutting their estimates for the entire sector. Nielsen pointed out that paid search still works — partly because it’s relevant, and partly because users aren’t tuning ads out. “We thought we’d find [paid search] box blindness the way we did banner blindness, but that’s not the case. Users are interested in search ads and actually look at them.” Less

Download MP3 (right-click, select Save Target As) Duration: 30 min. In this podcast, I talk with Theresa Putkey, a usability consultant in Vancouver, about how she transitioned from technical writing into usability. This is part II of the previous conversation with Theresa. Learn more about Theresa by reading her blog. You can also read Theresa’s articles on Boxes and Arrows. Topics in this Podcast In this podcast, we talk about the following: How to move into usability Designing user interfaces Contributing towards usability on project teams Compelling reasons to transition from technical writing into usability Whether applications can be so intuitive that they never need manuals Conjectures to the question — Will technical writers ever be extinct? Making content more findable in search Tagging topics with concept keywords to increase their search rating Harnessing related topics, concept keywords, and synonyms for search results Browsing in the table of contents versus relying on search to find content Making content findable in large projects (such as those with 3,000+ topics) Using card sorts to determine user terms for topic names Using focus groups to gather terminology and function lists from users Usability consultant versus technical writer — preferences, purposes, and job satisfaction Whether technical writing is only a transitional field Defining different categories within user experience: interaction design, graphic design, programming/web designer and programmer, information architecture (designing information spaces) Creating navigation that people can use to find information Expanding beyond user interface when it comes to usability The Information Architecture Institute (IA Institute) Content Management Professionals IXD, Interaction Designers Group Human Factors Group Vancouver User Experience Group (VanUE) Organizations and professional groups for usability Choosing your career — technical writing or usability? Teambuilding, including everyone, and communicating regularly Building relationships in your company (the key to success) Collaboration, teambuilding, and communication — breaking down silos across departments Techniques for bringing people together (the importance of the watercooler) The paradox of making friends and winning people to your side Note: Ever wonder why I make such an extensive list of topics covered? Audio doesn’t have keywords like blog posts, so people who search for them on Google never find the audio unless I saturate the show notes with relevant keywords. Podcast Sponsors MadCap Flare is the most versatile XML-based Help authoring tool on the market, with thousands of customers using MadCap products including Microsoft, Google, HP, GE, yahoo and the list goes on. Check out Flare version 3.1 and a host of other new tools at at madcapsoftware.com. Adobe – The Technical Communication Suite software offers a complete solution for authoring, managing, and publishing interactive instructional information from technical documents and books to online help systems, knowledge bases, interactive training, and eLearning content in multiple formats and languages. Learn more here. Intro music is Velveture by Ocean Alexander Upcoming Training on WordPress Are you interested in learning more about self-hosted WordPress blog sites? If so, let me know by sending me an email (tomjohnson1492@gmail.com). I’m planning to offer some training in the upcoming weeks. Training will cover everything from the basics, such as using posts, pages, categories, and tags, to PHP calls and CSS tweaks. Less

We’re moving right along in our five part series on project process. OK, so it’s more of a crawl really. Nevertheless, we’re onto discussing all of the wonderfully exciting elements of the design phase. As if that wasn’t enough of a good thing, the Tweak! site has received a bit of an upgrade. With a fresh new design in place, it’s the perfect way to kick off an episode dedicated to our favorite topic. Now, design isn’t all about lookin pretty. Below is a quick run down of this episode’s content: Establishing project scope Sketching & thumbnails Wireframes Elements of design Some helpful links: A Design Method (excellent article from A List Apart) The Layers of Design: the style layer (UX Magazine) Emotions of Color (how color affects emotions form Creative Behavior) Organizing design and process: Usability and Visual Hierarchy (Veprek.com) Typography Matters (another good one from A List Apart)   Less

For a lack of a better title, in this episode Drew McLellan and I had the chance to discuss the evolving technology of microformats along with quite a few of his other sites like Dreamweaver Fever and 24ways. Other than that, we discussed some of the latest news going on around the web such as Dan’s DOM Builder and William’s Firefox extension guide, and of course played another classic game of Pryamid 2.0 where I failed miserably (again). Download this Episode This podcast is 66 minutes. Download Episode 10: WSwI Podcast: Microformats, Drew, and beer Less

For a lack of a better title, in this episode Drew McLellan and I had the chance to discuss the evolving technology of microformats along with quite a few of his other sites like Dreamweaver Fever and 24ways. Other than that, we discussed some of the latest news going on around the web such as Dan’s DOM Builder and William’s Firefox extension guide, and of course played another classic game of Pryamid 2.0 where I failed miserably (again). Download this Episode This podcast is 66 minutes. Download Episode 10: WSwI Podcast: Microformats, Drew, and beer Less

Indiana Jones, Mashups, naked day, oh yea, Jeremy Keith and I talked about it all. And did you know he has a food blog? Nevermind the matter, this is a podcast you won’t want to miss and pass up the chance to listen to a published author and Task Force super hero. In this Episode We go into the typical news stuff such as the Gawker Stalker mashup. In particular George Clooney says he’s going to do something about… but I wouldn’t take that too seriously. Also in the news we talked about a Del.icio.us function list which allows you to see pretty much anything and everything that’s ever been done with their A.P.I.. And last but not least, everyone should know by now that today is naked day so don’t be shy to jump right on in with the rest of the world. JavaScript Stuff Of course this wouldn’t be right if we didn’t talk about JavaScript. We did in fact talk a bit about leaky scripts, window popping, and of course, the ever popular Hijax method of developing Rich Internet Applications. A good demo of Hijax in practice would be Jeremy’s Elsewhere subsite. Download this Episode This podcast is 59 minutes. Download Episode 09: WSwI Podcast: The Temple of DOM with Jeremy Keith Less

Indiana Jones, Mashups, naked day, oh yea, Jeremy Keith and I talked about it all. And did you know he has a food blog? Nevermind the matter, this is a podcast you won’t want to miss and pass up the chance to listen to a published author and Task Force super hero. In this Episode We go into the typical news stuff such as the Gawker Stalker mashup. In particular George Clooney says he’s going to do something about… but I wouldn’t take that too seriously. Also in the news we talked about a Del.icio.us function list which allows you to see pretty much anything and everything that’s ever been done with their A.P.I.. And last but not least, everyone should know by now that today is naked day so don’t be shy to jump right on in with the rest of the world. JavaScript Stuff Of course this wouldn’t be right if we didn’t talk about JavaScript. We did in fact talk a bit about leaky scripts, window popping, and of course, the ever popular Hijax method of developing Rich Internet Applications. A good demo of Hijax in practice would be Jeremy’s Elsewhere subsite. Download this Episode This podcast is 59 minutes. Download Episode 09: WSwI Podcast: The Temple of DOM with Jeremy Keith Less

First thing’s first; Nathan Smith is a funny guy, and today I had the pleasure of re-experiencing another podcast with him where we discussed CSS jargin like his CSS Hoverbox Image Gallery as well as some books like Andy’s CSS Mastery along with Cameron and Jame’s JavaScript Anthology. We then moved on our Web 2.0 Pyramid Gameshow which became quite a disaster and yet hilarious. Not In this episode Unfortunately Episode 08 was going to be hosted with the three lovely ladies Molly, Veerle, and Rachel, however we ran into some technical difficulties in the morning and were unable to get everything working correctly. So in the meantime, I still have all your questions (for those who submitted them), they’ll just have to be put on hold. In this episode Here are some random sites we mentioned: CSS Naked Day “Web Standard” is the new standard The You SuckSs Blog (not worthy of linking) The Hoverbox/Lightbox/Suckerfish Mashup Download this Episode This podcast is 32 minutes. Download Episode 08: WSwI Podcast: CSS Talk with Nathan Smith Less

First thing’s first; Nathan Smith is a funny guy, and today I had the pleasure of re-experiencing another podcast with him where we discussed CSS jargin like his CSS Hoverbox Image Gallery as well as some books like Andy’s CSS Mastery along with Cameron and Jame’s JavaScript Anthology. We then moved on our Web 2.0 Pyramid Gameshow which became quite a disaster and yet hilarious. Not In this episode Unfortunately Episode 08 was going to be hosted with the three lovely ladies Molly, Veerle, and Rachel, however we ran into some technical difficulties in the morning and were unable to get everything working correctly. So in the meantime, I still have all your questions (for those who submitted them), they’ll just have to be put on hold. In this episode Here are some random sites we mentioned: CSS Naked Day “Web Standard” is the new standard The You SuckSs Blog (not worthy of linking) The Hoverbox/Lightbox/Suckerfish Mashup Download this Episode This podcast is 32 minutes. Download Episode 08: WSwI Podcast: CSS Talk with Nathan Smith Less

Page scrolls forever, mutliple size text, multiple color text, HTML has 181 errors, horizontal rules, table borders, ugly background, animations, page goes on forever, 416Kb, and it’s just ugly. Less