user-experience 15

Creating user friendly 404 pages.

The 10 Laws of Simplicity.

Packaging can make a huge difference to products. It really hit me when I saw this bottle of Heinz’s ketchup. My two big problems with normal ketchup bottles are: (a) the sauce spills to the side of the bottle and sticks to the cap, and (b) it’s tough to pour the last bits of sauce – you have to hit the bottle a lot. Now, I didn’t know I had these problems. But when I saw this bottle, it hit me. You keep the bottle upside down – so it’s easy to pour the last bits of sauce. And they way the nozzle valve is designed, the sauce doesn’t stick to the cap. Perfect! Since then, I don’t buy any other ketchup bottle. Even if I WANT ketchup, I don’t buy it unless I get this bottle. Packaging made be brand loyal. (Caveat: I’m not REALLY brand loyal. I’d buy any ketchup with this packaging. But only Heinz has it right now.) ...

I switched to Google Reader as my blog reader (I was using Mozilla so far). The reason was simple: speed. Thanks to the Google site’s speed and keyboard navigation, I can read blog entries 10 times faster. Now there’s a unique proposition for Google that a lot of people are missing: that their site loads a whole lot faster than others. It makes a huge difference to the whole browsing experience. ...

I met Leonard Payne, The Priest, Andrea Casalotti and Scott Caplan at the London Marketing Soiree. Quite a diverse bunch of people. Leonard quoted Seth Godin on something neither he nor I will never forget. They say, if a website is well designed, people will find what they want. That’s not true. Think of the visitors as monkeys, wearing a ‘Big Red Fez’, going itchy on the keyboard. What’s the one thing on the monkey’s mind? ...

What do you do when your computer crashes? Hit it? Yell? Sweet talk to it? Deep fry it? Take a break?

Droogle. Drink recipes. Comments Jetru 24 Mar 2005 5:04 pm: Doesnt look like the XML feed is working… Deshi 24 Mar 2005 6:17 pm: This is one lousy blog! Genmys 25 Mar 2005 1:49 am: Lassi features as South Indian drink. Obscure results for Butter Milk ritzkini 25 Mar 2005 8:13 am: Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.droogle.ca Port 80(25/03/2005-at 1:45 PM IST) Shamit 26 Mar 2005 4:41 am: It is getting a bit cluttered … S Anand 28 Mar 2005 3:20 am: Yes, it is, rather. Will see what I can do about that. S Anand 30 Mar 2005 7:23 am: Fixed the XML feed.

10 best intranets of 2005 according to Jakob Nielsen.

Southwest Airline’s effort to be humourous. Southwest … have [my business] because of low fares, and force-marching their employees through comic routines will do little to affect my choice of carrier. They are, however, wasting their “research” dollars and undoubtedly humiliating their employees. I suggest they stop. While the phrases themselves were well-crafted specimens of humor, delivered with carefully practiced inflection of the voice, the eyes of the pressganged comedians were cold and dead. ...

Spotted this ad on Business Standard. It was at the bottom of the page, and initially, I thought it really was an ant crawling across my laptop. Incidentally, catching the ant is not all that easy. Took me a minute. But once you catch it, it stays put. Business Standard no longer has an ad with an ant crawling across the bottom of the page.

Rant on HP’s customer service. Long, but interesting. I read it end-to-end. It’s curious, how impersonal a big company can get. via Metafilter

Programmers: learn from this. Laymen want documentation they understand. (Wish someone told me 5 years ago.)

It’s true. The Web is boring. I am increasingly bored. Can’t somebody come up with new paradigms?

Web usability. About interface design on the Web.

AdReady has a neat idea: pop up advertisements near the mouse pointer, when the mouse is sitting idle. Cool. But I don’t want anything popping up when I’m reading! Besides, since this is an easy idea to copy, I doubt they should have it as their USP.