[thelist] design critique (long)

[aardvark]

> From: Madhu Menon <webguru at vsnl.net>
> 
> Ah, so you see, now you've got expertise that you're not selling.
> Write it up as a detailed case study and put it up there. If you don't
> tell 'em, they won't know :)

yeah yeah yeah... now i gotta talk to my marketing guy...

[...]
> IE6/Win2K. I realized that it might be my "Links" toolbar and my
> GoogleBar that might be taking up the extra screen space. With those
> on, the text from "inclusion in the Interactive 2000 edition" is cut
> off.
[...]

ooooh... i get it, you meant it didn't fit *horizontally*... ok, that i 
don't care so much about... i structed the page so that the most 
important info is at the top, with even the most restrictive 
resolutions and browser settings still showing the logo and, ideally, 
the nav...  thanks for the pics, though, took me a minute...

> >wanted to show the sites in various browsers, to show we're not
> >just IE/win-centric... lots of caps in NN as well as on MacOS, too...
> 
> Oops. I think it's so subtle that I missed it completely.

oddly, we started doing that because we got comments from some 
leads who were all Mac shops (ad agencies) and felt that since we 
had shots of IE/win, we couldn't do anything else... since then, we 
change it up, trying to mix IE/NN and win/mac...

> >doesn't come off as a featured service?
> 
> Um, not with the way it's positioned right now. More like, "we needed
> an even number of items for symmetry and we don't, so let's stick this
> in the middle of both columns."
[...]

gotcha

[...]
> make it stand out. I mean, what *is* this picture:
> http://algonquinstudios.com/files/as_images/screencaps/thumbs/pill_cob
> .gif ? Somebody's neck? (?!?)

erm, part of a flag and part of city hall... (http://www.city-
buffalo.com/)... although your imagination intrigues me...

[...]
> The words "implementation", "design", "E-commerce", etc. are not
> hyperlinked. Only the graphics are.

ahhh...

> Ever seen those "You have one message waiting for you" pop-up ads? I'm
> not saying you're doing that, but you're trying to "trick" people into
> reading your releases by putting them into articles. Well, I guess
[...]

actually, no trick, but given that as an option, they went there 
instead of other places... dunno why... renaming is certainly an 
option, got any ideas besides 'articles'?

> Categorise them by both industry and type if you must. Make one of
> them hyperlinked to a separate page if required.

we do that in our clients page, but it seems that isn't adequate...

[...]
> >that's what the icons are for... two kinds of links, two kinds of
> >icons... unless i messed up, there should be two kinds of links, with
> >each kind branded...
> 
> Established UI convention makes me think that icons are *separate*
> from the hyperlinks. When I see the site name, I think that it goes to
> site and that the "case study" icon goes to a case study of the site.

oh, i know, but nobody clicked on the icon -- no matter what size 
the icon was... they'd click on the text with a mag glass and get 
the site, because they didn't think they should have to click the 
icon...

> Consistency is a very important part of good interfaces. If elements
> work one way half the time and another way the other half, it ain't
> usable.
> 
> I'd suggest hyperlinking all text to the actual site and hyperlinking
> only the icons to the case studies.
> 
> Also, make the icons bigger. You know about Fitt's law, right? [1]

yeah, i'm intimately familiar Fitt's Law, and i'm always reminding 
the enterprise developers of it, too...  but if people don't do as you 
suggest (clicking the icon), then it's all kind of moot... they *really* 
don't, and i know this because i tried it the other way on the old 
site...