Taking inspiration from Gov.uk
I know there are more websites out there than Gov.uk, but I somehow feel the need to keep returning to it. It makes the news quite often for positive reasons, which is incredible for a government digital project. Fail…
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Reviews, lists, and responses to articles or resources we think are interesting or useful.
How students use smartphones, and when an app is (not) appropriate
This is how students actually use smartphones Gareth sent me this interesting infographic about how students use phones. A few interesting stats stood out for me: 29% of students say they use their phone for learning.…
Readability on the web
How users read Gov.uk have published their Service Design Manual, an amazingly comprehensive resource about digital service delivery. This particular section outlines the background to the Government Digital Service’s…
Microcopy and calls to action
There is a theme to this week’s selection – microcopy. Microcopy is the really short items of content – navigation labels, the wording of submit buttons, and so on. This can have a big effect on the success of a…
Carousels: advantages and disadvantages
This week, a series of articles about the advantages and disadvantages of carousels. We begin with a couple of articles from usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Auto-forwarding carousels and accordions annoy users and…
Smartphone search results; search usability; future-friendly content
Changes in rankings of smartphone search results Building mobile-optimised websites Google have announced changes they have made to the way they rank search results for users of smartphones. Google will penalise…
Keeping a lid on ever-growing web content
Anyone can add. It takes a professional to take away It is tempting to think that adding content to a website is harmless. After all, the marginal cost of adding another webpage is almost zero. Except that the more…
Learning lessons from public bodies’ websites
There is a bit of a theme to this week’s articles – how public bodies’ websites are performing. Here we see one organisation doing a fantastic job, and one organisation doing a terrible job. Then there is a report on…
The usability of photos and URLs
Usability mistakes to avoid when using photos in your website There is often a temptation to use photos to brighten up a page without giving much thought to whether it helps serve a real purpose, or whether it might…
Multiscreen; writing for the web
Windows on the web This article is about multiscreen, the increasingly common phenomenon whereby web users begin a task on one device and complete it on another. It is interesting to note that the most common device to…