Re: UKNM: two launches and two funerals

[Tomski]

>Me, I'm waiting for the BBC News Online relaunch, who I know have been

>doing strenuous user-testing for *months* to tweak an already successful

>site and make it ready for the future.  They're lucky to have (and have

>had) such a great team, and the Playboy Matt Jones is as clued-up as UI

>designers get in the UK (and that's a drink he owes me).  But it's the

>process and user-testing that makes me confident to predict we'll be

>lavashing plaudits on the site in the coming weeks.


my prediction: don't expect anything too radical. people like what they

know, after all, and by and large the existing site works (biggest problem:

bringing attention to the sheer *depth* of content. check out some of the

insanely good stuff in http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/)


fear not matt, i promise i won't mention the n-dimensional cube of news....


>It's the *user-testing*, stupid.  It works, so do it.


only.

completely.

(and do your user testing *before* you do *any* photoshop mockups or HTML -

do it with scribbled sketches on paper and post-it notes for dropdown menus

etc, then use photoshop mockups for the next couple of iterations, then and

only then do HTML. If you make your first iteration of a UI in HTML - let

alone Flash - you're raising a conscious/subconscious barrier to making any

major changes, whatever issues the user testing might bring up. bet this

happened with boo.com - by the time someone had pointed out that it took a

newbie 30+ mins to buy a pair of trainers, it was just too much hassle to

rework all that beautiful code. )


- Double-Edged Loosemore


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