“There are only two enterprises that refer to their customers as users and one of them is illegal.” Michael Hammer

It’s a given that Internet design is all about the user. What choice do Web designers have in a medium where lost links can warrant flaming emails from irate users and poor navigational structures result in lost sales, directly impacting the bottom line? Whether you view this warp-speed feedback process as a blessing or a curse, it means that Web sites are constantly evolving, trying out new approaches to stay competitive and respond to user needs. The Web is both flexible and fickle, and as the medium evolves and redefines itself, it will find new strategies to make users happy, and a few million ways to aggravate them along the way. Continue reading Design for Interaction: Introduction →

If talk is cheap, email is a steal. Hastily-written email messages can be fired out to hundreds of people with the click of a button. Instead of spending time writing messages by hand or printing typed letters to paper, email allows users to send messages almost as quickly as they are composed. As a result, nearly anyone will tell you that most of the email we get is junk“from advertising messages that flood the emailboxes of anyone whose email address they can get their hands on to business correspondence dashed off, replete with misspellings, fragmented sentences, and incomplete thoughts to idle chit-chat and recycled jokes. Continue reading Design for Interaction: Sample Chapter →