Whitehouse & Company » Web http://www.wandco.com A small personal design firm Fri, 09 May 2008 22:11:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7-beta1-9525 en hourly 1 ASISTS Web Design http://www.wandco.com/133 http://www.wandco.com/133#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:30:06 +0000 Ben Whitehouse http://www.wandco.com/133 We have recently put the finishing touches on a web appliction for the New York State Department of Education. Developed in association with the Literacy Assistance Center in New York, the ASISTS site allows teachers to record the progress and history of students, and to be able to access this information and update it at any location. Being database driven, it can automatically prepare statistical analyses within any specified parameters, for reporting purposes.

Literacy Assistance Center ASISTS

For the technically minded, the site features:

  • XHTML Strict compliance
  • CSS Styled
  • Cross browser compatibility
  • Small bandwidth footprint

All of which means that it is state-of the-art, as well as having a clear graphic hierarchy to enable users to easily navigate and understand this otherwise complex and extensive site.

]]> http://www.wandco.com/133/feed Thinking Outside The Box http://www.wandco.com/46 http://www.wandco.com/46#comments Sun, 24 Jul 2005 23:32:48 +0000 Roger Whitehouse http://www.wandco.com/journal/2005/07/24/outside-the-box/ uline

After several hours mouse-wrestling on the web with increasing frustration, attempting to book a flight to the UK, hire a car, and order some Epson inks and paper, I was lacking in faith as I began a search for some cardboard packing boxes. Then I ended up on the Uline site. This is not a site to win trendy design awards, which is a pity, because functionally it is one of the best designed, everything-is-where-you-might-expect-to-find-it, exactly-the-information-you-are-looking-for, most intuitive sites I have ever had the pleasure to visit.

www.uline.com

The extent of information on the site, and the way it is presented, is exemplary. You can find boxes by dimension, item number, or just by browsing lists in order of ascending size. Finally, you arrive at an individual spec page for every box showing a photograph and every other kind of detail you need so there is no mistake about exactly what you are getting. The fact that information is presented visually as well as in tabular form is very helpful to that large section of the public that is right-brained like myself, and who can easily get lost in lists of numbers.

Within the understanding that this site really works well, I did come across what was a graphic problem for me. On the first page in the illustration, which is the header page for the boxes part of the site, I had trouble finding the regular corrugated box section, until I discovered it featured at the very top. The problem is, that elsewhere on the site all the specific navigation choices are images nicely silhouetted against white and I was looking for one of these. Subliminally, I had assumed the much more “noisy” trio of images at the top were specials or come-alongs of one kind or another. For me, this is an important example of how it is important to set up a graphic “language” for a site, and then stick to it. In this way, users “understand” the site by an underlying graphic structure rather than having to reason their way around. Picky, Picky, Picky.

]]> http://www.wandco.com/46/feed Usernames Are So 1996 http://www.wandco.com/31 http://www.wandco.com/31#comments Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:00:32 +0000 Ben Whitehouse http://www.wandco.com/?p=31 I’m sure it’s happened to you at some point, you visit a website that you registered with, maybe your company’s healthcare provider, but you’ve totally forgotten your username and password. If you’re anything like me, you have a few usernames you’ve used over the years and a few passwords you might have used, but which ones are they? A few minutes of trying and I usually give up and ask for my username and password to be e-mailed to me.

Usernames

This scenario happens to me over and over again and I never seem to get used to it. Is there another way? Are usernames really the best method for registering users?

This type of user registration is a bad idea and unnecessary.

  • Con: hassle to remember for users
  • Con: must be unique, so registering with a site where your ‘usual’ username is taken becomes a problem
  • Con: username nomenclature randomly varies from site to site, some allow spaces, some must contain a number, some must be 8 or more characters making it a problem to create a username that works for all sites
  • Con: Unless you have an ‘online community’ usernames add an additional level of complexity to any system

So smarty pants, if it were up to you, how would users register on a website?

By e-mail address.

  • Pro: totally individual
  • Pro: already remembered
  • Pro: serves as a way to verify registration

In essence we are all known by our e-mail addresses. Since everyone has one they serve as the perfect form of user verification.

So who is still using usernames in 2005?

  • Amtrak
  • American Express
  • Empire BlueCross BlueShield
  • eBay
  • Commerce Bank
  • HSBC
  • Roxio (although they have added e-mail option)
  • Network Solutions
  • GoDaddy
  • AIGA
  • Verizon
  • Adobe
  • Basecamp
  • Backpack

Shame, shame, shame!

So who should use usernames?

In essence, only e-mail hosting companies should use usernames, because in essence they are creating an e-mail address with their username. You couldn’t really have Yahoo expect an e-mail address to create an e-mail address, that would be akin to which came first the chicken or the egg?

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