Humanising Technology

Blog posts

Three rules for creating accessible forms

23rd August 2010

Filed under Web development

As part of my role at Nomensa I have spent a significant amount of time evaluating the accessibility conformance on a range of websites. When auditing these websites I have been consistently surprised at the way in which web forms have been implemented. Forms can be a source of confusion for everyone, not least for people with cognitive disabilities and visual impairments.

BBC questions HTML5

18th August 2010

Filed under Industry news

The BBC joined the HTML5 discussions recently when Erik Huggers’ posted on the BBC Internet Blog: HTML5, open standards, and the BBC. People have been asking the BBC throw its weight behind HTML5, and its use of Flash seems to show reticence, is that justified?

Designing accessible icons (Part 2 of 2)

23rd July 2010

Filed under Design

If you remember back, I set myself a short brief for creating icons for our Content Managent System. They had to be Accessible, Web-based and designed for our CMS.

In the first part, we looked at sensory characteristics and cultural differences that can affect an icon design. Today we’ll be looking at the more visual design aspect of creating icons.

Designing accessible icons (Part 1 of 2)

16th July 2010

Filed under Design

I love icons. Someone once described them to me as mini works of art – and that’s not far off. They can be miniature designs representing something huge, all to be understood within a blink of an eye.

Not too long ago I was tasked with creating a brand new interface for our Content Management System (CMS) Defacto. With the new interface came a new family of icons and I thought I’d share some insight as to the process of designing these icons.

Designing simple tools for complex messages

16th July 2010

Filed under Usability

Recently every news article seems to refer to budget cuts as a result of the global financial meltdown. I have read 20 different articles and still do not feel like I fully understand the problem. How can I begin to understand such a complicated subject? How can the internet help me understand? Tools allow us to understand a subject through exploration and rehearsal without any risk if we go wrong. We all know the best way to learn something is to do it yourself! This engaged risk-free learning, I believe, is the secret strength of online tools. They persuade learning through a subtle and passive process.

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Why are sites that should know better still making the same old mistakes with their checkout process?

2nd July 2010

Filed under Nomensa thinks

Why are big-name pure play sites like Amazon, Very and ASOS losing up to £420 million a month in lost sales?

According to a recent report by Moneybookers, some popular online stores have painfully slow checkouts. Reportedly, some of the worst offenders were “pure play” sites such as Very.co.uk (with a checkout time of 6 minutes 45 seconds), Amazon (5 minutes, 38 seconds) and ASOS (4 minutes, 36 seconds). By Moneybookers’ calculation, this potentially translates into £420 million a month in lost sales.

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eAccessibility Forum meeting

2nd July 2010

Filed under Accessibility

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) held the second meeting of the Digital Economy eAccessibility Forum yesterday. The forum is a platform for exploring eInclusion issues, and developing and sharing best practice solutions across all sectors.

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4 rules for displaying error messages from a user experience perspective

1st July 2010

Filed under Usability

In order to display error messages on forms, you need to consider the following four basic rules:

1. The error message needs to be short and meaningful

2. The placement of the message needs to be associated with the field

3. The message style needs to be separated from the style of the field labels and instructions

4. The style of the error field needs to be different than the normal field

By combining these four rules, it is possible to provide the necessary information to users where they have made mistakes on filling in forms and how to rectify them quickly and easily. This will encourage and help users to continue with their journey on the site, reducing the number of basket abandonment, not registering on a site, making enquiries about an application form and so forth.