Always on the lookout for new, relevant blogs from thought leaders, I stumbled upon the 52 Weeks of UX blog today.
For those not in the Web Design business, UX is a two-letter acronym for User Experience. The ease of which your prospects navigate your site is a task often arrived at by developers and graphic designers, but hardly ever a concentration or specialty of one individual for most of us on modest-sized teams.
I had high hopes for discovering this blog that were quickly dashed by – of all things – difficulty in navigation. Talk about the cobbler’s kids needing new shoes!
- “Pointing hand” graphics that are not navigation elements:
It was the first thing I tried to navigate to the previous and next posts. I was angered when they were merely decorative. - Dark gray on black, even darker gray for unpublished links:
When viewed on an LCD screen, these become difficult to read. Contrast in font colors relative to background colors is key to legibility - The biggest problem: Comments disabled?
What possible justification could the authors have for not fostering community by enabling comments? Even a quick dive into the posts touts its importance for social media. Don’t agree? Well, ahem, leave me a comment below.
I’m optimistic that in spite of these issues, there is a lot of content that will prove thought-provoking and I have added a subscription to my Google Reader where the posts display nicely. One of the authors has written “Designing for Social Web“, which is on my short list of summer reading.
Finally, I suggest “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug, because 52 Weeks of UX did make me think, only not the way I wanted.