SOME RANDOM DUDE

I had the fortune of being invited as a judge for Standards Reboot, a standards-centric web design event. The deadline is May 1 and I thought it would be appropriate to “reboot” my site to go along with the event. Let me clarify a bit, the reboot will be less visually oriented and more user-experience oriented. These change (which hopefully will occur) are tied to the moves I have been talking about for quite a while. I was lucky enough to have had an online buddy help with some changes that I have yet to institute due to a lack of time. I feel pretty confident that a few serious sit-down sessions could end up being quite fruitful. Life has finally started to slow down and so I feel right now is as good of a time as ever. Still, this project needs to be very focused and pragmatic. No significant changes can be implemented within the 2 weeks before May 1, so I really would like to tackle two or three areas in a very simple, yet effective manner. As the title suggests, these are short term goals, but they are all directed towards much larger ideas.

Here are the topics I am considering - I would love to hear your thoughts on what you see as the more important to you.

• Increased Comment Love functionality
• Improved load times
• Improved commenting experience
• Basic user participation elements
• Cleanup/refinement on homepage UI elements
• Easier access to less noticeable areas of the site
• Work on branding and visual language - only where it improves user-experience throughout the site

This site has continued to grow much more quickly than I would have ever imagined. Nonetheless, the actual site has not progressed significantly for nearly 6 months. There is no way that a large-scale redesign could happen, nor do I think it should occur. Still, I really want to make this site more enjoyable to come to as well as come back to. Your feedback would be amazingly helpful.

design, experience design, feedback, judge, layout, loading times, short term goals, some random dude, standardsreboot, ui web design

For many, the internet symbolizes innovation, creativity and unique expression. Why then is internet advertising so unoriginal, uninspired and uninterested in the people it is targeting? Online advertising symbolizes all that is wrong with the current state of the web. The basic model of advertising bombardment and sensory overload can ruin a site’s reputation while rarely giving the financial return expected. Why have site creators and online advertisers settled for such an unbecoming system? For many site creators, the allure of making income from their site outweighs the needs of their audience. This approach can ultimately cause much more bad than good.

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about online advertising. This article will focus on what is currently wrong with the most common advertising model used online, the second will discuss my opinions on a better alternative and the third will flush out those ideas into pragmatic examples.

(more…)ad, ad revenue, advertising, article, catering to the user, click throughs, cnn, ESPN, internet, long term goals, marketing, money, online, opinion, revenue, short term goals, traffic, user experience web