Oct 11

Usability Review: OldNavy.com

There are only a few examples of top-notch ecommerce websites, but Old Navy.com hits the nail on the head.  Here are a few of the key elements that separate them from the rest of the pack.

Cross-Site Header Bar

OldNavy.com Header Bar

It is clear that OldNavy is only one of 4 websites operated by The Gap.  They promote cross selling between the sites by offering a simple centralized checkout for all 4 stores.

I really dig the reversed tab effect which shows which site you are currently on. Each of the 4 sites has its own background which makes it easily distinguishable.

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Jul 21

How To Use Status to Style a List

As computer programmers we often get stuck thinking in binary.  Things are either true or false, black or white, on or off, good or bad, pass or fail.  Although computers think this way, the people who use the software typically do not.    We can use our skills as human beings to create a better user experience for our customers.

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Jul 02

Why we need another CMS

Every design agency needs a content management system. They are a solid business need. But, does every agency really need a custom solution? Especially when it comes to small business, the CMS is causing more problems than it’s solving.

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Jun 23

Can a Great Product Trump Bad Customer Service?

I will be the first to admit that I am an Apple addict.  It is probably an unhealthy obsession at some times, just ask my wife.  In other words, I am a typical Apple customer.  I own more Apple gear than most high schools (but less than Al Gore).  My MacPro, MacBook Pro and iPhone make me especially happy and productive.

However, I cannot quite understand how a company like Apple, who can successfully focus so much time and energy on the User Experience, can fail so miserably at servicing their customers.

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May 29

Blurry, Colorblind and Brilliant

“Design is in the details.”  - We hear it every day and it is absolutely true.  However, details without a blueprint to tie things together can lead to problems.   We are passionate about details, perfect grid alignment, perfect color combinations, gradients, reflections and textures.   These visual details have a major aesthetic impact on the website, but they can’t replace the content – The reason the website exists in the first place.

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May 08

Why We Are Not Hiring

Designing Interactive has grown up a lot over the last 6 years. It has grown from a small freelancing company into a web application development house. We have done a good job of keeping ourselves busy with paid work throughout the years, but this past year was particularly successful.

However, our profitability has started to plateau this year and we need to make some changes to continue growth.

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May 04

Sharing the Grid

When it comes to design, I’m a firm believer in simplicity. Occasionally I’m criticized for being overly simple, but I take that as a compliment. In my design, typography, grids, color, imagery and especially whitespace all stand for themselves. They don’t need any fancy treatment or “web 2.0″ effects. They work because they are simple and beautiful in their natural state.

Grids are foundational to all my designs. I always sketch out ideas on a Behance Dot-Grid Book, (thanks to Garrett Dimon for sharing this a few months ago). While these square grids are perfect for sketching idea’s and concepts, they don’t work for fine-tuning your design.

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May 01

Fixing Disappearing Cursors in Firefox

The past few days I have been debugging the User Interface for Simpli5. Today I wrestled with a particularly frustrating issue in which cursors were completely vanishing from inputs in Firefox. While it did not affect the interaction of the input, I could still manipulate the text, it did cause quite an annoyance.

Here is a quick example which demonstrates the problem:

The problem is caused by the change in Firefox’s current rending frame. Setting overflow:scroll on our #Container div causes Firefox to use that div as it’s current rending frame. Thus, the cursor is being rendered on the #Container, not on the #Dialog div, which contains the input. Effectively, the input is covering its own cursor.

The fix is a simple change in CSS inheritance. Without setting an overflow setting on the #Dialog div, we are inheriting the overflow:scroll from #Container. By setting the #Dialog div’s overflow setting back to it’s default overflow:auto we are changing Firefox’s rendering frame to the #Dialog div, thus bringing back our cursor.

Here is the fixed example:

Thankfully, Mozilla has fixed this problem in Firefox 3.

Apr 18

Google Chart’s Resolution

A few days ago I posted my frustrations with Google’s charting API security. While I still believe there are some issues that would plague banks, government and other institutions that have highly sensitive data, I have found a solution to our problem.

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