OK now that I can at least post again, I'm returning to the task that lead me to break my site in the first place. Hopefully I won't regret it. Wish me luck....
Results from a study on how consumers evaluate the credibility of websites:
The data showed that the average consumer paid far more attention to the superficial aspects of a site, such as visual cues, than to its content. For example, nearly half of all consumers (or 46.1%) in the study assessed the credibility of sites based in part on the appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size and color schemes.
This is good for visual designers - an educated business owner is likely to appreciate this as proven value of our services. But, it's not so good for consumers who should be taking more care with who they trust online.
Related links:
http://captology.stanford.edu/
http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/index.html
I'm not one of those weblog zealots, you know, who thinks blogs are the most wonderful invention to ever hit the web. But this is why I like them: tonight I checked out Marginalia, and found several cool sites I didn't know existed, and a musician I otherwise wouldn't have come across. Basically, I like logs because they are filtered surfing.
Gerry McGovern has such great things to say. If you are interested in web design or writing I recommend you check out his site.
On the Web, the task is everything and you must focus
relentlessly on it. Your arch enemies are statements like: "They might be interested in this; Some people come to our website looking for information." Nobody that matters comes to your website looking for information. They come because they have a task they want to complete. All information must serve task completion. Websites that are full of aimless, vague information are a waste of time, effort and money. They should be shut down.
Perhaps this post is ironic on a weblog which doesn't have much in the way of tasks... I'm a woman of contradictions I guess :)
A user on the hifivebabble list posted an entry of interest to web designers and developers. He's written a book for your clients called How to Build a Website and Stay Sane. I don't know if you can get clients to read it in full, but it seems there's a lot of good stuff in there you might refer them to piece by piece. It's too bad the pdf doesn't have anchors throughout...
When I first became excited about the web, I was enthralled with superbad.com (now offline, the Internet Archive has some of it but it's so slow it sucks). It was full of eye candy: collages, animations, rollovers, etc. But it was completely non-linear - you just clicked on anything and went on a little Alice in Wonderland journey.
(I don't think much in terms of net-Art these days - I'm so focused on usable design...)
Anyway, zefrank.com made me think of superbad because it's chock full of artistic expression. This site just happens to have some structured navigation as well. Possibly the best bit on his site is this one: http://zefrank.com/punc.
As an artist, and having done my share of collage, I'm pretty interested in issues of copyright and appropriation. There's some cool art at Illegal-art.org that crosses the line... depending how you draw the line :) It's an American site but there's some Canucks listed there as well.
Oh, this looks really interesting: Agent-Agent Interaction: Human-Computer Interaction and Beyond
Well, maybe it only looks really interesting if you're a geek. I accept that.