As a Web Designer turned Information Architect I appreciate good usability, and accessibility. So coming across the ubiquitous ‘click here’ as much as I do does tend to get the heckles up! And think of people who rely on screen readers - hearing those two words time after time must be more than just a mild annoyance?

So, to this end, I thought some opinionated suggestion wouldn’t hurt!

It doesn’t take a particularly seismic shift in content authoring to contextualise link copy. Simply describing what will happen or where the user will end up is an easy habit to adopt. And when you consider that a well designed style sheet will quickly highlight a link at a glance, then why not take advantage with link text that is unique as well as useful. A page full of ‘click here’ does not inspire the reader.

And you don’t have to take my word for it, as Mr. Jakob Nielsen agrees in his Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 (see section 2).

Further resources:
So, don’t click here, instead…

Find out more about how to use descriptive link text on www.universalusability.com and how this will also lead to Increased usability as shown on www.webcredible.co.uk

The same website also contains more information on Improving usability for screen reader users

I hope this has been useful? If you’ve any comments to add, please use the appropriately described links below..!

Hi guys

I bought my husband the iPod touch for his birthday and this is the most amazing piece of technology I have seen with my own eyes. Most of us here at the agency are Apple fanatics, but this device shows you again how technology can be presented in a beautiful shape and made so easy to use that even a 5 year old could figure out how it works!!

I read an interesting article today that made me think again about user experience. At Digerati Studio we pride ourselves on user centred design. That means when we design anything before picking up a pencil or clicking a mouse button, we think about the user journeys and the requirements that the user will have.

In contrast alot of shops and companies put a huge emphasis on customer service to maintain a good rappor with customers and a reputable company profile in their industry. However, in my experience I often find one or the other, or neither! Either companies focus on customer service by having a massive call centre available to all their customers 24 hours a day, for example. But neglect the user experience of having to wait half an hour before being able to speak to anyone!

In www.macobserver.com there is a great article that talks of a windows developer coding for the new Apple OS Leopard. This is still in Beta release and the developer experiences some errors. His past experience working with Microsoft Betas has educated him that if you submit your errors found to Microsoft - they disappear into the abyss never to be heard of again!

However, the developer sent his errors to Apple and received a call back explaining where he had gone wrong, what this had highlighted to them about their OS and also sent back his script with some amendments.

This article is a testimony of a company that employ user experience as a whole ethos in their company rather than just simply in their products.

I just read this article on zdnet: Usability on the web is a sham

I can kind of understand why he has written this and why he has this opinion but I must admit I feel he is being very shortsighted himself! Anyone who still thinks usability is going for the easy road and the lowest common denominator is obviously stuck in a time warp.

At Digerati Studio we focus heavily on usability, but our aim is still to push boundaries in design. We wholeheartedly believe it is possible to innovate in design while making things user friendly. It is pointless coming up with a great website or web application where only the top 10% of web users can figure out how to use it!!

Please feel free to let us know what you think. Is ‘usability’ and ‘usability testing’ killing design and innovation on the web?

At Digerati Studio Limited we value very highly User Centred Design. The design of a website, web application, mobile phone etc. should be centred around the user so that they can access what they want, and should they be new, it should be very clear to understand and use.

With this in mind, we ensure that we adopt the best technology to suit each individual project. However, not everybody has the same values as us. For example, www.msdewey.com is a new search engine made entirely in Flash. Flash is an excellent technology to incorporate specialist animation, video and audio. However, there are some things that get in the way when exploring a flash site.

In this example, the initial flaw is the loading time! When a user wants to search for something, they want instant information, they do not want to wait 30 seconds for the page to load before they submit their keywords for searching!

Secondly, once a search has been submitted, the user wants instant results in a layout that means they can instantly find what they are looking for, not watch a video sequence and then have a small window that only contains 3 results at any one time!

Finally, this site fails the WC3 outlines for accessibility, as non of the content in flash is accessible to screen readers!

Hopefully, this site is not pushing to be acknowledged as a serious search engine. But it is a great tool to help outline the errors in design that highlight why User Centred Design is so important!

I found this great website after watching a video of Seth Godin at a GEL conference. Great example of things that are broken and bad user experience.

ThisIsBroken.com

The instruction at “0×01872f2c” referenced memory at “0xc0000000″ The memory could not be “written”

Click on OK to terminate the program

Recently Robin and I were in Paddington Station and Robin noticed this error message on the screen of one of those information/email/phone thingys. It is unbelievable to see this for a number of reasons:

1. Why does anybody think that an error message like this is acceptable. It means nothing to the average user and worse it kinda freaks you out a bit with all the “0×01872fsc” referencing memory explanation.

2. Why would anyone put an operating system on one of these phone/info thingys that may throw up any error messages at all. I know thorough testing will not always eliminate all errors but there should be no chance of an error that doesn’t make any sense on an interface that is miles away from the company that owns it.

All in all it was quite unbelievable to see and we couldn’t resist taking out the camera phone and snapping it.

Enjoy.