by Sue Horner | Oct 17, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
In the latest of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox newsletters, I ran across this terrific phrase: voodoo usability. As Nielsen explains it, “Most sites employ horribly misguided methodologies that do not assess real usability. Sometimes the methods are simply worthless; other...
by Sue Horner | Oct 16, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Fellow independent Joanna Turlej pointed me to Trendwatching, an interesting site about – what else – trends. As you can imagine, the spotters at Trendwatching come up with new words all the time to describe the trends they see. They credit Faith Popcorn, probably...
by Sue Horner | Oct 11, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I was catching up on my Bloglines feeds and came across some great advice from Seth Godin on building great web sites. I particularly liked this one, which mirrors how I feel about sites that use fancy Flash bits for no apparent reason other than they can do it and...
by Sue Horner | Aug 23, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Son #1 was absolutely stunned this morning when I read to him a piece that one of his favourite bands was going to be playing in Toronto in October. His shock came from the fact that the newspaper scooped the Internet. That’s right, he had not yet heard of the...
by Sue Horner | Jul 24, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The latest Alertbox from Jakob Nielsen refers to Amazon.com’s e-commerce design (more detailed analysis here), saying: “Amazon.com continues with outstanding use of confirmation email to sustain customer relationships and long-term loyalty. A week ago, I...
by Sue Horner | Jun 19, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I ran across a couple of instances this week where the writer chose words that didn’t quite hit the mark, in my opinion: “Church for people who like church” (seen on a notice board outside a church). It appears to be out there as a selling feature,...
by Sue Horner | Apr 27, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
There’s a horrible ad airing on the radio these days for the Toronto Rhinoplasty Clinic (they do nose jobs). The ad starts off talking about how many friends you have, how you’re the favourite child and how good you feel about yourself, or words to that effect —...
by Sue Horner | Feb 18, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
My 20-year-old son is home from university for reading week, and I notice that every time he takes the car out, he changes the radio to CD mode. He says it’s because he has no patience for radio. Two reasons: The stations don’t often play what he wants to...
