racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Early last December, I started to redesign my alternate blog (for the non-tech oriented stuf–usually, at least), the J Spotter.  I embarked on an idealistic shift towards web usability.  Yes, I wasn’t–am still not–as well-versed with the technical aspects of web design as many of my colleagues and contemporaries are.  But I want to focus on design and usability in its most practical sense.

I was inspired by similar moves by software author Joel Spolsky and fellow Filipino usability advocate Greg Moreno. The design shift I’m moving towards is mainly involved in making the new user experience more comfortable. I want my readers–especially the first time readers, who were most likely brought to the site by search engines–to be as familiar with navigating the site as possible. Basically, I want the site to be dummy-proof.

Not that first-time blog readers are inept, but I simply consider user interface as a very important factor in whether a person will continue reading your site or not. I tend to think that people lose interest all to quickly if a site loads too slowly, the visual stimulus is too overwhelming, or the site is not easily navigable.

So I’ve come up with short, narrative type helptext on every article, every static page, and every aspect of the J Spotter, notably on the sidebar. The text basically says, Hi, I’m Angelo. This is my weblog, and you’re particularly reading this article. If you want more, you can check out the archives, some featured posts or my other sites. If you need anything, get in touch with me through my contact info.

Hence, if you’re a casual web browser and you happened to chance by the J Spotter via a search engine referral, then you would at least know where the heck you were, and what the heck you’re reading. Perhaps you’ll also be able to more easily guess why you were brought to my site and what else you can do while you’re there.

Not everyone is familiar with blogs and blogging. All right, people nowadays encounter blogs in their daily browsing, but I’d bet most are still unaware WTF blogs are. And I’d reckon even a great majority of bloggers are not familiar with tagging and folksonomy, which is one thing I heavily implement on the J Spotter.

Why help sentences, and not just bullets? Well, I know it’s best to be brief, but sometimes it helps to be in sort of a conversation with your reader. It’s better to say “Why not try visit my 2005 archives” rather than just blatantly put a “2005″ link in a bullet. With the former, a user would be more inclined to try out your suggestion. With the latter, the thought is not likely to cross a reader’s mind unless he/she’s really looking for something.

I just recently checked out an article authored by design guru Jeffrey Zeldman a while back where he expounds on the difference of style and design. The gist is that style is but an aspect of design; design is all about communication. And the best web design is the most usable one.

I believe that I had been able to make my site more usable with the little changes that I had implemented, and am still continuing to implement, little by little. I haven’t actually come up with metrics that can help study the results of the redesign, but qualitatively, I think the site is more intuitively navigable.

I’m not for snazzy animations and artsy styling. I just want something readable and easy to use. And by the site’s being easy to use and navigable, I hope it will encourage readers to further explore.  Hopefully, this will bring in relevant ad clickthroughs, which will help monetize my blogging.

I’ve been actually doing similar optimizations here at the J Spot. I made a similar “about this site” area at the left sidebar. I’ve also removed some sidebar objects, to speed up loading on slow connections. But this being a hosted service (by i.PH), there’s only so much I can modify and manipulate, even though I know how to control areas of my i.PH site site that probably 99.5% of the i.PH userbase is not even aware of (like the stylesheets, blog objects, skins, templates, etc.).  Hence, I’m initially testing on my self-hosted site.

Why do I call this an experiment?  Well, I’m still not a hundred percent sure as to what I will use the results on. Heck, I don’t even have an adequate methodology for testing if what I’d done indeed meets my expectations. But fresh perspectives would be very much helpful.

At this point, I guess it would be good to solicit advice and comments from my readers. Check out the J Spotter, and tell me what you think.

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