When I was born in the Soviet Union, nobody had credit cards or mortgages or even loans. If you wanted anything, be it a TV or a house or a car (yes, we had those, you jerks), you hoarded your rubles under your mattress. Many moons and a country later, when I started my first [...]
Among my former employer Joel Spolky’s wisest words were these: “Users are lazy”. That means: don’t make them do stuff. Don’t ask them to enter info or register or download software.
You can help users be lazy in many ways; for instance, by ridding your site of browser-specific features, such as custom scroll bars, that may [...]
You stay up late one night, say, to do your taxes, and the next day at work is totally shot. You know that if you could only find someplace to nap for ten minutes, you would be back in working shape. In fact, statistics prove that napping boosts productivity. I highly recommend nagging your boss [...]
Continuing our experiment in Web 2.0 sustainability, Evolvist.com has re-launched with a new design, bug fixes galore, more Ajax features and Rails caching. Time permitting, I will follow up with tutorials on some nifty Rails techniques that came in handy during development. Check out the site, add some businesses in your town, and hook up [...]
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s common to switch up your site’s design a maximum of every two years now, and much more often if you’re hip and happening. There doesn’t need to be anything wrong with it, usability-wise. Facebook, for instance, had good usability in my opinion, and no need for a massive redesign. But [...]