I recently read an article from UX Magazine about some of the most common mistakes made on the web, and one jumped out at me in particular: usability. The mistake wasn’t ignoring usability—although there are plenty of sites on the web that have poor usability—but rather the pitfalls of focusing on being  usable without first figuring out how to be useful. In other words, the best user interface in the world can’t save a site with a poorly defined purpose.

I’d never seen this particular point articulated so bluntly, but it reinforced a philosophy that we’ve always worked hard to embody in our client work. We partner closely with our clients to help them understand that the “why” of a project is just as (if not more) important than the “how.” To that end, our approach includes a few steps that, while not necessarily difficult to execute, are often overlooked and can lead to underwhelming results.

In order to better understand the distinction between usefulness and usability, let’s explore a hypothetical website project for Lassie’s Dog Walking Company. Continue Reading →

The following is an excerpt from an email between myself and a client. The client was experiencing type display issues while testing a site we provided design and front-end development for. The affected fonts were being served by TypeKit. We are huge supporters of TypeKit, but as with any new technologies, there are going to be kinks to work out. I thought this info may be of use to other TypeKit users.

The Symptom

Text on the site is rendering with very jagged edges and incorrect letter spacing. (The technical term for this is ‘aliasing’.) This makes certain text more difficult to read and/or affects alignment. You’ve observed this problem on multiple computers running Windows 7 and using the IE 8 browser.

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We recently completed our first ever app for the hottest gadget of the year: the Apple iPad. We’ve been wanting to build something for iPhone/iPod/iPad for a while now, but finally got our chance.  And while we’re proud of our first app, the process was not without its challenges. Here are five quick lessons that we learned by entering the world of iPad:

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Earlier today, Google unveiled the next evolution of its search engine. Considering that Google searches account for about 85% of the worlds search engine traffic, even small tweaks are headline news.  But Google is calling this latest development “… a quantum leap for search.” So the buzz surrounding this is going to be massive. But some of the doomsday SEO people are getting a little bit nuts.

What is Google Instant?

With the ‘old’ Google, you typed a search query and then clicked the ‘search’ button to begin returning results. Refining your search meant performing a series of individual queries to narrow the results. Google did prompt users with hints, but each query still resulted in its own unique results.

With Instant, Google tries to predict what you are searching for before you even finish typing. The search page is refreshed with dynamic results in real time based on the characters you’ve typed so far. So instead of browsing pages of results, you know in a fraction of a second if your search is on-target. (Google claims to save its users 11 hours every second with the new service.) The effect is almost instant feedback that seemingly reads your mind.

How does it work?

Google has apparently reworked their entire search mechanism to facilitate this feature. A combination of indexed pages and cached searches allows Google to predict what you’re searching for and selectively narrow and prioritize results. Then these results are updated in real time using AJAX.

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Everyone knows that print journalism is in a death rattle, and it’s tempting to wax nostalgic as paper after paper bites the dust. But when you hear comments like those of Tribune Chairman Sam Zell, it’s tough to have a lot of sympathy.

During an interview with CNBC, Zell was asked about the future of the newspaper business. What is his visionary prediction? PDFs. That’s right–the staggering problem of remaining profitable in the newspaper industry could be solved if only we could figure out a way to deliver PDF versions of publications.

“going forward, it’s going to require all kinds of different approaches, including probably most significant, the elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it by PDFs.”

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Q&A is our chance to get inside the head of some of our industry’s movers and shakers. In this installment, I interview Kyle Smitley, founder of environmentally-friendly childrens clothing company barley&birch. Her designs can be seen on the children of celebrity moms like Jessica Alba and Sheryl Crow.

PM: So in the interest of full disclosure…you’re a perfect interview for what you’re doing with b&b, but it doesn’t hurt that we’ve known each other for a long time. (Kyle and I are from the same small town in rural Ohio.) Do you want to sort of start out with the Reader’s Digest version of your background and what you’ve been up to in the time leading up to starting b&b?

KS: Well, I graduated from DePauw University with degrees in Philosophy and Environmental Geoscience and minors in Spanish and Chemistry. While there I was lucky enough to travel the world and work with a lot of great organizations helping others. After graduation, I took the LSAT while working in Washington D.C. and then got out to San Diego, where I surfed all day and dreamed up a business where I sold childrens clothing in order to fund the dozens of good causes with which I’d worked in Haiti and Central America.

The business was born as barley&birch and we opened our doors in February of 2009, in some of the darkest moments of the recession and right int he middle of my first year of law school. We had no money whatsoever, so we worked hard to get all the free press we could. I didn’t sleep for about 8 months of my life, I believe.

In November, I was named one of Inc. Magazines Top 30 Under 30, and by our first anniversary, we were selling in 30 retail stores, moving into larger office space, and revamping the website we’d quickly outgrown. We have funded 3 schools and a clinic in Haiti and El Salvador. We hope to see upwards of $1.5million in sales for 2010. We will be announcing a plethora of great partnerships and undertakings.

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Tonight our beloved Blackhawks take to the ice to face Nashville, beginning a month-long bid to bring Lord Stanley’s Cup back to Chicago for the first time in 50 years. (The very idea of the Music City having a hockey team is, of course, preposterous.. but that’s another post.) So here at Manning, we’ve spent the last few weeks scraping the bottom of the creative barrel trying to think up a way to show our support.

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As someone who has grown up using the internet, I always favor services that allow me to conduct business over the web. I do things like shop, pay bills, and bank online whenever possible. In addition to being convenient, I always feel a little better about not wasting paper and other resources required to facilitate these processes. So each year at this time, I’m always grateful for the ability to file my taxes online. And to do this, I’ve always used H&R Block…. that is until this year.
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We’ve posted a few times recently about one of our favorite projects, www.snowflakeworkshop.com. I stumbled across another similar site today: http://www.flurrious.com/. I’m not sure who is behind this site, but they took a very different visual and functional approach to making snowflakes. It’s pretty cool to see how someone else tackled a similar challenge. Additionally, they are claiming to donate to UNICEF for each shared flake– which if true is a really cool feature as well.

I thought Mitch’s recent post about his coffee making philosophy was a pretty interesting way to explore what he’s all about. So for the sake of comparison, I figured I’d also do a post that related my working style to food preparation. Suffice to say, there are some significant differences.

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