Module One

So first up - the links in the module to Tipping Jakob's Lader and Wait for It don't work. No great surprise as this is a very common usability issue in WebCT.

I found Tipping Jakob's Ladder at http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/01/26/index1a.html?tw=commentary - I couldn't find the Wait For It article

Tipping Jakob's Ladder - I thought this was a great article having previously felt myself that Jakob Neilson was a bit out of touch with the realities of website design in modern times. Although myself often not a fan of flash sites the author does a great job refuting Neilson's claims that Flash is 99% bad by showing that it is really the designers - or the clients - who create bad design. Basically it seems as though Neilson hasn't an actual clue about Flash and so, other than the fact that he's Neilson, his opinions on the matter would probably have not been even considered as Flash developers would have dismissed them out of hand in the first place.

User Interface Engineering: I found a great article here which introduced me to the idea of 'Pogo Sticking' - "pogosticking is when the user jumps up and down in the hierarchy of the site, hoping they'll eventually hit the content they desire". Interestingly it said that %66 of purchases on ecommerce sites happened without pogo-sticking - and the more of this that was done, the less likely the person was likely to purchase.

Also, when given a list of items people generally automatically assume that the first is the most important.

Unfortunatly the article didn't give much in the way of suggestions for avoiding this.

10 Things I Hate About the Web

1. Links that don't work
2. Sites that are slow to load
3. Cluttered sites
4. Site searches which don't find what I'm looking for (even though it's there somewhere)
5. Store sites without prices.
6. Splash screens
7. Websites designed just to rank on Google that are just a list of links
8. Flouro colors
9. Resizing my browser window
10. Spam
    

5 Things I Love about the Web

1. Accessibility of information
2. Being able to keep in touch with friends/family around the web
3. Availability of programs & tools - often opensource and free
4. Ability to do university degree in Australia from Colorado :)
5. Being able to work from home