ned23 - 'done and dusted'

well, this blog is finished as at 4.00pm EST today, the 25th May 2007, so I am just signing off officially... I am on to ned24 next study period, and I hope that I enjoy that unit as much as this one...I actually dont have a clue at this stage what it is about... I had a great bunch of classmates this time around, and a good tutor that kept it fun...and interesting at the same time...so Ciao for now...

Keith has left the building...

Should links be Underlined

An interesting article by Beth Martin can be found at http://www.usability.gov/pubs/052007news.html regarding 'Should Links be Underlined... her conclusion is:

'Links should be organized and presented in such a way that users should be able to intuit "clickability." The specific solution, underlined or not, is less important than consistently using one or the other. For example, if no underlining is preferred, this can be accomplished with (unlinked) bulleted text below a title with blue text.' (Martin, B.2007)

Now that makes perfect sense to me...Usability is Consistency...

Improve Usability with Friendly URL'S

More research - a good idea, which I will incorporate into my ned23A4...can be found at http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-6183568.html

As a gateway to everything on the Web, URLs form an important part of the user experience. One of the many issues bandied about by Web developers is providing user-friendly URLs that are both friendly to the eyes and the fingers while typing. This article explores the issues surrounding this subject and some possible solutions. (Patton,T. 2007)

However, methinks someone should have addressed their own url first,... what's up with '... com.com/whole bunch of no's and hyphen, underscore, hyphen ... or am I being nitpicky...

Google Search Rankings

hmmm...interesting,.. on a whim, whilst waiting for a download, I decided to google 'ned23' and... as of today's date, I appeared at positions 1, 2, 6 & 9 on the first page of results. A little scary really when you have the responsibility of potentially being read by just about anyone... I continually post under the illusion that only the course tutor and classmates will have access... but of course that is not the case. All the more reason to edit my own posts, I suppose...

Alternate Plans

I have had to make alternate plans for the screenrecording - after the failure of certain software...luckily, would you believe good ol' Woolies had Canon video camera's on special for $396.00... yes only VHS, but still...it gets the job done. Also a package arrived from software author today,..it is the installation cd for the errant software,.. but I will muck around with that little problem later.
When my 'lappy' started playing up after downloading new software, I could connect certain other issues to this problem... but when my perfectly good lappy battery went out all of a sudden, I mistakenly tried to connect it to the other problems... just shows you can learn something from all those medical dramas, like 'House' (good show)... and it was not another symptom at all...it was completely unrelated... so new battery is charging up, vhs tape is loaded, and shooting tests tomorrow...better late than never...

Software Failure & System Crashes

I have had a torturous few days trying to get my software to 'play nice'... but it just aint happening... my screen recording software with which I intended to do my usability testing just went haywire... then, almost as if in sympathy, my normally fairly stable PC decided to crash & burn, (well the burn part was me)... at this point, and for the sake of brevity, my best guess, is that I have downloaded some corrupted system files... and the software company tends to agree with me... so now I have to wait for the cd to arrive, and then remove and re-install... my PC behaviour is like a virus, but two scans have revealed nothing... it is crashing repeatedly, and I have several programs being disabled, including my D:drive and my cd & dvd burning software, I have error messages I have never even seen before, and I thought I had seen them all... I have been able to edit some messy files of usability testing that I did manage to get done, and I have spliced it together and saved as an MS .avi file and am currently trying to upload to my ned23 website... please stay tuned...

Usability is Design

Still kicking on with A3 and usability testing, it is a very time consuming process complicated by other people's timetables and un/reliability... throw in the mix, finding the time to navigate new software needed for screentesting and trying to come up with something even slightly professional... never enuff time...
However, I came across a short blog entry titled, "Usability is Design"...from Mike Cherim, and a lot of it made sense... I think he has a site called the Green Beast or something... great slogan for a T-shirt too... so here is the link, http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=169