November 2006 Archives

I just ran across a research report from usability guru Jakob Nielsen on e-mail newsletters. Nielsen's latest study provides insight into how users read e-mail newsletters, manage their e-mail, and react to RSS feeds. A few interesting findings from the research study:

• Participants scanned the newsletter instead of reading it fully. In fact, only 19% of newsletters tested were read.
• Participants in the study spent only an average of 51 seconds scanning/reading a newsletter after opening it.
• Participants tended to read only the first two words of a headline. This makes writing interesting, attention-grabbing headlines a must.

Read more about Nielsen's results by going to http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html.

It's 6:08 p.m. and our first MU World Usability Day has now passed into the "historic event" category. I am pleased to report that initial impressions indicate the activities were both well received and, more importantly, useful!

The first order of business is to acknowledge and thank the terrific speakers who contributed their time and talents today. There's no doubt that MU is blessed with many TRUE experts in the field. Thanks go to Sanda Erdelez, Jim Laffey, Mike Peplow, Borchulun Yadamsuren, Paul Turner, and Gary Westergren for their contributions. Last, but, not least, thanks to Niki Stanley in Web Communications for conceiving the idea for the conference at MU and planning the whole event. Although she wasn't able to be with us today due to unforeseen health problems, her fine planning and organization allowed the rest of us to continue delivery of our conference without skipping a beat.

I would be very interested in hearing from participants of the conference what things they found useful, favorite "aha" moments or simply comments that would invite continued conversation. Feel free to respond to this posting as you like!

Thanks, everyone, who attended and made the day a success.

It's tough laying out forms and even tougher to make them pretty and accessible. With a little extra effort, and help with some nifty XHTML tags, you can get the results you want with less effort.

The tags I'm talking about are related to the <fieldset> tag. You can see an example of it on the directory page of the MU Homepage. Notice the borders around the forms? That's from the <fieldset> tag. It is a container for related information. Now, notice the labels for each one? These are defined with the <legend> tag. Add a <label> tag to all the form elements inside the fieldset and you're done. Not too shabby. Since these things are XHTML tags, you can easily style them with CSS and end up with something that looks great.

There is one problem that layout perfectionists may not like. It has to do with the <legend> tag. Web browsers do not display it exactly the same way. You're limited in the ways you can style margins and padding on this element, so you won't be able to get pixel perfect alignment or positioning. It's only a small difference and not worth pulling your hair out over.

If you're still a little unsure about fieldsets, A List Apart has a more in-depth article on the topic if you decide you need more info.

Now go forth and make those forms prettier and easier to use! Also, keep in mind that fieldsets aren't just limited to forms. They can go around any kind of grouped content.

From time to time I find that I need to take a few steps back and look at the big picture. It's very easy to focus on a few large projects and lose sight of some very important and strategic details. I noticed that while we were very busy taking care of www.missouri.edu, the Chancellor's site, Admissions, Development, Undergraduate Research, etc., that our own Web Communications site hadn't even appeared on the project radar. How could we take care of everyone else and allow our own Web site to lag behind? Yikes!

This is, unfortunately, a very common problem for Web staff who serve many people and departments. It's also why project management is a very important element in what we do. While it's good for us to focus on our current projects, we also need to have a strategic plan for the continuing maintenance and evolution of our other sites. The management part becomes even more important when we have content that needs to be reviewed and freshened on a regular basis. I find we do a pretty good job of taking care of those things that need attention daily or even weekly. However, we aren't so great about remembering all of the details that need minding monthly or less frequently.

Content management will become a more and more important resource for this and many other reasons. Instead of tying a string around my finger or cluttering my Outlook calendar or task list with lists that are too long, I will be able to set reminders that will prompt me to tend to my content responsibilities.

As for the Web Communications site getting a redesign and migrating into the CMS? Well, maybe next year...