Special note to all our clients. Thanks very much for another great year. 2005 was our best yet! This year, we're closing "The Lab" on Friday, the 23rd, and will re-open the 2nd of January. The scientists need a good, long break to keep the carpal tunnel from sticking, and to catch up with family and friends (yes, nerds have friends too). As usual, we can't completely tear ourselves away from computers, so you can probably reach us via email if necessary. Here's to 2006!
Nice tip o' the hat to the Industrial Design community from Forbes. They just published their "Taste Makers" feature online, and highlighted the "10 Most Influential Industrial Designers" of today. All the usual suspects, from BMW and Apple and IDEO, but my favorite example:
Martin Fisher, the visionary co-founder of San Francisco-based nonprofit KickStart International, has gone without pay for two of the past 15 years. But his low-tech, affordable tools--like the Super-MoneyMaker irrigation pump--have enabled the launch of 38,000 new small-scale enterprises in Africa, lifting 190,000 people from poverty to date. Although $3 million in pump sales since 1999 is puny by most standards, KickStart's impact is huge.
We call it "The Comatose Clicker." Others call it, "Navigation Blindness". The idea is that people really don't think, or care, about your website navigation. Sure, put your main tabs at the top of the page. People might click them. But don't obsess over rollovers and highlights and mouseovers and flash animation and sound and bread crumbs or sub navigation (or tertiary navigation).
Visitors are just scanning for keywords on your page "for that one thing I'm looking for." Imagine someone with their eyes crossed, tongue hanging out their mouth, mumbling incoherently, and drooling on his keyboard (that's the comatose clicker). Now design your site for that guy. Keywords need to be painfully obvious, and super-duper clickable. If you're a web designer, check out Jared Spool's "Designing for the Scent of Information" for even more tips. If you sell stuff on your website, be sure to get Call To Action.
Visitors are just scanning for keywords on your page "for that one thing I'm looking for." Imagine someone with their eyes crossed, tongue hanging out their mouth, mumbling incoherently, and drooling on his keyboard (that's the comatose clicker). Now design your site for that guy. Keywords need to be painfully obvious, and super-duper clickable. If you're a web designer, check out Jared Spool's "Designing for the Scent of Information" for even more tips. If you sell stuff on your website, be sure to get Call To Action.
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