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

Christian Montoya posts on the top ten ways to “uglify” your blog. It’s basically a collection of the top things not to do if you want your blog not only to be aesthetically-pleasing, but also accessible and usable. I think the keyword here is usability. I believe in designing blogs and websites with usability in mind.

While I do agree with fellow problogger Dave that not everything in the list is helpful, let me highlight some points I find worth following–actually design points worth avoiding, that is.

* Long blogrolls. I used to have a moderately long blogroll at the old J Spot (jangelo.i.ph), which kept on growing as I got to know more people in the blogosphere and got to read more interesting sites. Actually, my blogroll is automatically generated from my bloglines subscriptions, so this means each and every blog I publicly bookmark keeps getting added to the point that the blogroll got too long that it ate up a space longer than the front page of blog posts. I eventually relegated my blogroll to a static page, so it’s unobtrusive, while still serving the purpose of telling readers what other sites I read, and adding to that SEO factor (passing on the linklove).

* Social bookmarking buttons. I think these just clutter the design of a blog. If readers were already users of any of these social bookmarking sites, they would know better and are likely to have their own easy-subscribe or easy-tag buttons for bookmarking sites of interest. Besides, not everyone is into all of these social bookmarkers. I, myself, only use del.icio.us actively. The others I only get to stumble upon (hey, that’s another social bookmarking site!) every now and then.

* Feedreader buttons. Same as the bookmarking buttons, there’s no sense in putting in all of the available feedreaders out there when your readers are likely to be using only one or even none at all. I’ve included only the more popular feed readers, and these buttons are only present on my “about this site” page.

* 80 x 15 buttons. More ways to clutter your site even more. If you must include links to affiliate sites, I think they’re best relegated to your “about this site” or “about me” page, and not plastered on every page at your sidebar. I do have some of these buttons, but only to a limited extent–and I plan to move them sometime.

* Tag clouds. These are all right, if kept to a minimum. But if you’re like me, you’ll be bound to be attaching all sorts of tags onto your posts, and the tag list could get unweildy at some point. Just like an ever-growing blogroll. Now my tag cloud is on a separate page.

* Ads. Well, this is subjective, but I’ve opted against ads on the J Spot, at least for the foreseeable future. I’m earning enough from my other problogging and freelancing activities that I prefer not to be pressured in writing at this blog. Also, I don’t want to divert the attention of my readers to other things, especially as clicking ads will lead readers outside of my site.

What else?

Of course, there are other design no-no’s, such as those atrocious auto-playing music, crappy color schemes and even crappier fonts. But we’ve had enough of things to avoid for now.

What do you think? Are there any other blog elements that irk you? What about ugly dogs?

I’m not very fond of Nokias, but I’ve been posting about them like there was no tomorrow. My primary motivation: usability.

My most recent posts on ForeverGeek involve mobile phones and mobile technology (and how they also apply to design concepts outside of mobile telephony). I basically rave about how, no matter how high-tech my mobile goes, I would always go back to using it just as that–a mobile telephone–for calling, texting, and the occasional alarm clock needs.

First, on ForeverGeek, I find it funny how mobile phone junkies (like myself) always have this urge to buy the latest gadget, but end up using the phone’s basic features after the novelty wears off.

Here’s what I think about designing for usability. Design your product / service / software / website with the stupid person in mind. I assure you then, that your site will be the ultimate in usability!

Of course by design, I do not mean only style, which only pertains to the aesthetic aspects of design. Design is everything about the functionality, aesthetics, and concept behind any creation.

Make things as simple as possble. Make things as usable, intuitive, and uncluttered as possible, with the stupidest of people possible in your mind. That’s unless you’re designing an aircraft control panel–but still, you have to remember that your pilot should be comfortable with controls lest you want him to crash the plane.
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It takes more effort to design with usability in mind than just putting in all the bells and whistles in one place. For one, you may have to trim down your work reasonably–in some cases, you may have to hold off on that cool feature you’d been working on for months. And in most cases, it boils down to only keeping the basic stuff (or at least reserving/hiding the snazzy stuff only for advanced users to explore). What’s important, after all, is that your creation works the way it’s intended to, and that your user won’t have to read hundreds of pages of instructions to learn how to work things.

I’m of the opinion that if something is well-designed (hopefully elegantly-designed, too), then there should be no reason for the user to RTFM.

Check it out at ForeverGeek. I do hope you usability advocates out there would agree with me on this one!

Blogs are so cluttered! This is one realization you’ll end up with when you’re in the business of reading (and writing) blogs. Most blogs around are simply too cluttered to be any useful. Many bloggers, quite unfortunately, fall under the mistaken assumption that more information is better. Well, in most cases, it is my opinion that less is more.

Fact is, most users won’t give a damn about most stuff on your blog, anyway. What matters is that you lead them to where they would most likely find the information they might want.

Last September, I wrote about how crappy local auction site Bidshot’s word filtering was, to the extent that even words that include any word that spells out any number, such as phone (one) or network (two), the spelled-out number would be truncated and replaced with Xs or not displayed at all.

So you can imagine you’re selling your mobile phone and it would display in the description as cellph for sale, or cellphxXx for sale. Or your network router would be nerk router or nexXxrk router!

Just yesterday afternoon, I successfully sold an item through auction and I just realized how crappy the service has become. You don’t get adequate notifications on how to get in touch with the winning bidder (or the seller) after a successful bidding (or outright purchase, if it’s the case). The site forces you to transact through SMS, which I believe shouldn’t be the case with online auction sites!

I got the following message through my mobile:

BIDSHOT: Hi (username), your Ad (ad title) has been bought by (username)

And then another message:

BIDSHOT: You can now leave feedback to (username) for Ad (ad title) by replying BIDSHOT FEEDBACK (username)/(item code)/(FEEDBACK) to 2954 …

I got this via email:

Hi (username),

Greetings! You have successfully sold (item code) (item title).

Pls. do not reply to this email message. If you want to contact the seller you may refer and reply to the SMS message you received after you bought the item.

You may now also leave feedback to the person you’ve dealt with.
You have two options:
a. via SMS send BIDSHOT FEEDBACK (username)/(item)/(feedback) to 2954.
b. Via Web,(link here)

Best regards,
Bidshot Customer Support

This is downright stupid. I am a user who has access to web and email. Why don’t they let me contact the winning bidder over email or the web? Why is their first option always SMS? Do I really have to go through their SMS system to transact? I guess I’d rather go to eBay.ph (where I do have an account). Bidshot has good brand recognition here in the country. But if things go on as it is, then people might be better off elsewhere.