Marty June 27th, 2008
I just got done a great book on building usable forms - Luke Wroblewski’s “Web Form Design - Filling in the Blanks”. It was a really well-done, interesting book on a less than interesting topic (well, to most people) - in fact, it’s one of the best usability books I’ve read in terms of giving quick, easy-to-read, usable information. From my review on Goodreads.com:
“Good or bad, there aren’t many books that I can use for my job that I go through quickly. There’s just something about a limit to my absorption of information from these books that makes me take my time to get through them. However, that was not a problem with this book. Chock full of good information, Wroblewski manages to make it a quick, easy and yet informative read that only took me 2 days cover-to-cover.”
You can see more on Luke’s website, to get a feel for the book.
Marty November 7th, 2007
Well, I finally feel like I’ve gotten somewhere with the projects that I have been working on, both at my ‘real’ job and the side projects. A big shout out to VanK, Man of JavaScript Mystery for his work on my UPenn project, aka the Polls from the 7th Level of Hell. Now, I just have to put to bed the Project That Shall Not Be Named, Continue Reading »
Marty October 17th, 2007
I was doing some research for a Usability/Accessibility Guidelines document I’m developing at work, when I stumbled across a peculiar piece of information while searching for reference sources. In general, the body of work that is presented on the Usability.gov website is pretty good; getting a little dated in spots, but overall very good. Continue Reading »
Marty August 31st, 2007
It’s been another crazy week at work - both the day job and the side job I’m working on with Van. I can’t seem to get caught up, and I’m exhausted. But there’s a lot more to do - I’ll be working on the UPenn stuff all weekend. It’s a bit depressing how much I’ve forgotten code- and CSS-wise since I have been doing so little of it. I feel like a rank amateur trying to code these pages to make them look nice… *sigh*. Hopefully I’ll have something worthwhile to show on Monday Tuesday.
The Next Signs of the Apocalypse
Marty May 4th, 2007
Recently, a project came up which had a particularly difficult requirement included. Pharma industry sites have a pretty tight set of restrictions to start with but some things take it to a new level. One of these is the so-called “Black Box Warning†that some drugs must display. Continue Reading »
Marty February 14th, 2007
I’m currently working on a project for a hemophilia product from a major pharmaceutical company. In the midst of working on it, there is a reference to another product that triggered a memory of a past project - one that I did when I was working for Waresoft. Back then, it was a project coming up with a combination of Flash, HTML and JavaScript tools for Humate-P, made by ZLB Behring.
In this project, I was tasked to do three things:
- Update a flash animation comparing Humate-P and other products
- Create a dosing calculator that allowed a user to put in their weight and the amount of Van Willebrand factor (VWF) they wanted in the bloodstream
- Create handy chart for the doctors to see a complete list of comparable weight and VWF levels
Well, since I was thinking about the old project, I went to see how it was looking - and it’s up and running on their site. It works pretty well, too. You can see the different aspects of it here:
Humate-P Densitometric Analysis - click on the “Click here” link at the top of the page to launch Flash.
Dosage Calculator
Complete Dosage Chart
Granted, I only adapted and improved the first, and got a TON of help from Van in creating the JavaScript for the Dosage Calculator, but I think it turned out pretty well. I remember that trying to sync up the voice and animation in Flash was a major nightmare; ironically, knowing Flash 8 a little better now, I realize that there was a much easier way to do it than I did. Oh well, stuff happens.
Aahhh, the salad days…
Marty February 6th, 2007
Wow, Wal-Mart really screwed the pooch on this one. If you visit their new Video Download beta site, you get a somewhat nice experience - not great, but not too bad - provided you are using Internet Explorer:
If, however, you are using a modern browser such as say, Firefox, your experience is somewhat … shall we say, different?
Notice anything wrong? Obviously, no one mentioned that over 10% of the country uses Firefox, including what might be a disproportionate number of the users who might use a download service like this. Of course, we are talking about Wal-Mart customers…
I sure hope that someone loses their job over this - this is sloppy and a REALLY poor example of what happens when you don’t do proper QA (or use qualified designers). I could go to town on the code itself, but could I really do worse than what they already show here?
Marty July 14th, 2006
Jazz Coding jăz • cod’-ing(v) -
1. Interpretive and often highly improvisational code development that doesn’t match spec or supplied codebase, and usually doesn’t work.
2. Rewriting functional or base code with non-standard and/or irregular code that is better understood, regardless of its validity.
While highly entertaining if viewed correctly, unappreciated by most. Doesn’t follow standard conventions, often putting completely disparate elements into the expected structure, causing unexpected results.
WIKI addendum: Jazz Coding is often performed by less-informed developers who are unable to understand or modified newer and more compliant code structures. Rather than adhere to the level of code requested/supplied, they rewrite code to include more basic constructs that are better understood, such as <font> tags, incorrect/unmatched tags or structurally invalid code.
See Also jazz code (n); jazz coded (v, adj.), What the hell is this crap? (phrase)
Marty June 28th, 2006
While working on a website we are redesigning, I was seeing some minor usability/accessibility issues that I was concerned about. I brought up those issues, mentioning that the site would be significantly less functional in some cases to those with disabilities, such as the vision-impaired and physically handicapped persons for whom using a mouse is difficult. That was when someone asked, “Do blind people actually buy sporting goods?”.
In their defense, the speaker asked the question in good faith, and they were thinking of snowboards, golf clubs and footballs when they said it. It took me only a second to respond perhaps not, and to ask if they had considered sweatpants, baseball caps, knee braces and more. Suddenly, it was more pertinent, and I decided to look into the question - do the disabled really buy sporting goods, or more specifically, do they buy them online? Continue Reading »
Marty June 16th, 2006
We were doing a usability test recently on a site that I’ve been working on for a major sports retailer. In the tests, we were testing a hover functionality which would prompt the user to click for more information about that product. Continue Reading »
