Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:43 — 2.6MB)

Sometimes the littlest feature takes a disproportionate amount of thought.

Take for example the calls to action tabs at the bottom of this post. @AMcDermott recently asked me:

@boagworld Do you have any post or podcast about the decision to put comments behind a tab? Interested to see the thoughts on that one.

— Alastair McDermott(@AMcDermott) February 21, 2012

It was a good question. In fact it reveals two of the founding principles of my design approach; simplicity and prioritisation.

I made a decision early on that I wanted the new design for boagworld to focus on the content. I wanted to remove other distractions making it easier to read.

This involved making some tough choices about my user interface. Some elements had to go entirely, others fade back when the user stops interacting with them and others had to be hidden.

The toughest of these decisions was prioritising the next actions for those who finish reading a post.

Did I want to keep them on the site? Did I want them to share the post with their friends? Or did I want them to engage with me?

I had ways to achieve each:

• To encourage sharing I had the option to tweet or share on Facebook.
• To keep them on the site I had related articles.
• For engagement I offered the ability to add comments.

On the old site I offered all three. However, because of its physical size on the page commenting dominated. Was that really the right balance?

Making these tough decisions about prioritisation is painful. After all I wanted a user to do all three. However, in the end you have to make a choice. After all its impossible not to. Size, position, wording, imagery and a host of other factors will set the priority even if you try not to. Its almost impossible to make three calls to action equally important.

It also introduces the danger of choice paralysis where the user just decides not to decide. Instead they leave, which is obviously the worst decision of all.

In my case I introduced this tabbed approach. It helped with my goal of simplicity while also providing a clear indication of which my number one priority was. I wanted people to share the post. The other options were still available, but they didn’t clutter up the interface or leave people indecisive.

Admittedly I have seen a drop-off in the number of comments. However, I have seen sharing go through the roof, which was exactly what I wanted.

The question is; are you trying to put off prioritising your calls to action? Are you asking the user to do so many things they are being pulled in multiple directions? Most importantly, are you making a conscious decision about your priorities or are you allowing the UI to make those decisions for you.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:37 — 2.5MB)

Colour is not something I have spoken about before on my daily audio tips. However it is something I have blogged about in the past.

Colour is an amazingly controversial subjects and the causes many design projects to be delayed. The reason for this is that colour is so subjective. Our opinions about colour can be influenced by things such as:

• Childhood experiences.
• Cultural influences.
• How we physically perceive colour.
• The medium through which we are viewing colour.

In this audio tip I share some ways to deal with colour. I mention subjects like:

• Colour theory.
• Colour testing.
• Books on colour including the superb Colour image scale.
• Colour palette creators.

Making decisions about colour needs to be more than a personal opinion. Good colour choices are based on solid theory or/and tested thoroughly with the chosen target audience.

So many books so little time! One of the books at the top of my ‘must read’ list is Aaron Walter’s ‘Designing for Emotion’.

I finally got around to reading the sample chapter on A List Apart and it has only increased my desire to find the time to read the book. The whole thing really resonated with me.

A paragraph that particularly made me smile was:

If your website were a person, who would it be? Is it serious, buttoned up, all business, yet trustworthy and capable? Is it a wise-cracking buddy that makes even mundane tasks fun?

It made me smile because we ask every client that question and without fail it causes an interesting discussion. Our reason for asking this question is perfectly explained by Aaron:

Let’s think of our designs not as a facade for interaction, but as people with whom our audience can have an inspired conversation. Products are people, too.

Aaron takes the idea a step further and proposes we produce personas for our site. He gives a great example from his own experience with MailChimp and provides a template any of us can use.

Some worry about the idea of injecting personality into their sites. They fear it may alienate some of their audience. This is certainly possible but as Aaron says:

Keep in mind that when you emphasize personality in the user experience, some people won’t like it. That’s okay, though. Personalities clash, and in the case of businesses, it can actually be a good thing. If people don’t understand your personality, chances are they’re not the right customer for you.