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First 2 Words in Subject Lines

Posted April 6th, 2009. Filed under tipps usability

Today Jakob Nielsen posted an article about the first 2 words in a link on webpages. His researched showed that many people can guess the content of good links within 11 characters. While that doesn’t mean that we should now limit all links to that length, I think there is a good hint in the results. Make most of what is important understandable quickly.

From reading many articles about e-mail usability lately I think these results can also give good tipps for e-mail subject lines. If you want people to understand your e-mail in an overview list quickly, create subject lines that can communicate the meaning in a quick way. You can still add additional info in the subject line, but have the first words explain the important part.

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Delete your account on wordpress.com, and maybe other web2.0 apps

Posted April 1st, 2007. Filed under applications design usability

Over the last months and even years I have registered with a lot of sites. Most of them I just try to check out because they are pretty new and are apps that seem to be worth using. However, I assume 90% of sites I register with I don’t use more than 2 – 3 times. Then I would really like to delete my account. Most of the time it’s hard to find how to delete your account, but sometimes it’s just impossible.

Today I wanted to delete my wordpress.com account. Why? I just don’t use it. I searched for a way and found a faq-page which told me something I just couldn’t understand.
Can't delete wordpress.com account
Why would the software or database crash if an account is deleted? If you write your app code properly that won’t ever happen.

This question is a very important question, especially if someone thinks about OpenID. Can I unregister from a webpage. What happens to my data? Any suggestions?

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“Getting Real” online for free

Posted October 25th, 2006. Filed under applications design inspiration tipps usability

One of the best books I read this year is free for everybody now. It’s 37signals “Getting Real”. After reading their weblog for more than 3 years now, using almost all of their products (except Ta-Da lists) I have become a big fan of theirs.

The insights and opinions in their book are amazing, groundbreaking and helpful. I have been struggling with same problems when programming and after using some of their techniques it makes a lot more fun.

But be aware, after reading this book you might get big problems with the old-habbit people that don’t want to change.

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iTunes vs Media Player

Posted February 15th, 2005. Filed under technology usability
Everybody has learned to use a stereo with these symbols:
> , « , », [] (stop/pause). Even children could understand that scheme very fast. So, when you use a computer now to listen to music, what would you do?iTunes: Apple chose to use those keys that would come to mind very easily. Right arrow, left arrow, for skipping to the next or the previous track. Changing the volume of the music, you use arrow up and down. If you want to play or pause you hit the space. Everthing is very easy.

Windows Media Player: Ctrl + P for play, Ctrl + F for next, Ctrl + B for previous track. Volume up is F10, down is F9. Nice way to learn where your keys are on the keyboard, but not very useful if you want to skip through the songs or have to change the volume. You always have to look where the key is.Why does Microsoft have to reinvent the wheel again. It would have been so easy to use Apples layout. This has the advantage that it is the same for each language, Microsoft has to change the key assignments for each country. Even in English it’s not very straigtforward. Instead of using the text label Forward for Ctrl – F they use Next (or Ctrl – N, to make it even better).