Monthly Archive

I have often been asked by clients about the better order for the OK and Cancel buttons. Finally, Jakob Nielsen has published an 'official' answer To sum up:

• Either is perfectly fine.
• The question is not of great concern as neither poses a big threat to usability.
• If you need a tie-breaker, go with the platform convention that most of your users are known to use.
• Generally on the web, most users are on Windows, so "OK" then "Cancel" is the platform convention to follow.

Lastly, and perhaps, most importantly, he points out:

• There are questions in usability that are, perhaps, not worth the time spent debating them

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Have you ever read something that resonates so loud to your experience that you want to run around and share it with everyone you know? I found such a passage today in Jared M. Spools "UIEtips: 4 Design Lessons from the Flip".

"We want to make designs simple, but we don’t want to make them dumb. There’s a difference. The goal is to simplify the design by keeping only the most valuable bits, eliminating everything else.

This is not easy to do. You really have to know something about the users, what they are trying to do, and how they go about doing it. Just having that information will likely push the team to add more features, not less, so you then need a solid vision of how simplicity will make it better. Finally, you have to be ruthless and stubborn, cutting all the unnecessary bits out and sticking to your guns about keeping to the essentials." -- Jared M. Spool

Honestly, I have nothing really to add... Amen...read more...

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Check out Hugh MacLeod’s excellent post on being creative.

1. Ignore everybody.
The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.

3. Put the hours in.
Being good at anything is like figure skating- the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.

14. Dying young is overrated.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

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