Talking the blue underlined link talk. Again.

Do we make links blue and underlined? What do we do with the visited links. And do we have to take Jacob Nielsen litterally?

Of course we do not. Nielsen already quit claiming blue underlined links as the only right way some time ago, but some of the designers Cameron Moll has asked about their views still act as if Nielsen wishes to limit their artistic freedom.

A lot of familiar arguments, and some subtle remarks as well. Interesting though nothing revolutionary.
CollyLogic: Question Time: Visited Links

On my way to valid xhtml

Well, I’ve been reading that book for some time now, and discovered that I already used a lot of xhtml transitional methods.
So here is my first try in achieving something that passes the test. No, don’t validate, cause it won’t pass. It seems that my version of WordPress doesn’t spit out standards complient characters for the &, and it also generates a lot of unnecessary code.

There are though, no more markup tags in my code, and exept for the container table, everything is done with css. I’ve tried to keep it as clean as possible, but this site will be a work in progress.

But hey, aren’t they always? And now I’m off for the soccermatch! Netherlands vs Portugal.

Integrating parts of user experience

Peter Morville – co-author of the ‘Polar Bear book’ Information Architecture for the WWW- has broadened his vision and has also come to the conclusion that not a single part of the user experience can be seen seperate from the others, but he views it from the user point of view.

He calls it the honeycomb in which the Useful, Usable, Desirable, Findable, Accessible, Credible together lead to something Valuable.

It is this kind of meta-vision that professionals in the field of user experience need and that make our work a bit more understandable towards customers and co-workers in the business.

For me it was as revealing as was reading The Elements of User Experience. It is the Diagram that integrated the seperate pieces of our profession into one, and it is this beehive diagram that takes it all into the subjective realm of what the user experiences. Very useful and interesting!

Dealing with Stakeholders

Usability experts sometimes tend to put the user a bit too central, thereby running the risk of irritating stakeholders – people who’se support they are going to need to finish the project successful. Boxes and Arrows focuses on this issues, and explains the need for stakeholder support for the usability professional. Boxes and Arrows: Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success

(Via Langemarks Cafe)