Web browsers have …

Websites are tools, and the tools that endure are the tools that serve a purpose.  Shovels are good at making holes, cars are good at moving people from one place to another.  If you want people to use your website, it must serve a purpose.  However, it is not sufficient for the site to serve a purpose for you, it must serve a purpose for whomever you want to use it.

What Purpose Should Your Website Serve?
And Whom Does it Serve?

There are any number of purposes a website might serve, but let’s take a look at some of the more common …

I’d like to thank Debbie Fried (@DebbieFried) for pointing me towards this video of Don McMillan’s “How Not to do PowerPowerpoint” stand-up routine. It was fun to watch and reminded me of the conversations I had with our own Scott Stiefvater as he was preparing for MB/I’s “Avoid Causing Death by PowerPoint” class.

If That’s Bad, What’s Good?

Well, whenever someone asks me what I think a PowerPoint presentation should look like, I can’t help …

Redesigning a website is like building a new one:

Start with a purpose.

If you know you need a change, but can’t put the reason into words, try answering these questions:

“What do I want my new website to do that the old one couldn’t?”

“What do I want my new website to do better than my old website?”

Maybe you want your new site to reflect a new identity, perhaps you want to start selling products online, or you want to start an online community, or improve online customer communication, or reduce the turn around time between when you decide …

As I mentioned last time, I’m updating my web site. And, as I mentioned last time, it’s slow going.

For those of us with existing web sites, it can be tough to find time to update it. It’s there; it exists. With other demands on our time and energy, we put effort into things that are urgent. That’s perhaps not a wise …

You’ve been there… eyelids growing heavy, mind wandering, sitting through another boring business presentation. And what happens when it’s your turn to speak? Chances are you are committing some of the same presentations sins as everyone else. One of the greatest of these sins is the misuse of presentation software like PowerPoint.

Slides laden with bulleted text are not ingredients for a powerful presentation. But many of us don’t know any better. The templates provided by the software seem to beg for bullets and text and slide titles and logos and clipart. What were meant as tools to make …

White space is a term of art referring to any portion of a physical or digital page that is left unmarked.  This includes margins, gutters, paragraph breaks, column divisions, and the space around and between graphics and illustrations.

These areas are not necessarily white, but they are traditionally left empty.  Because white space is characterized by the lack of content, it is sometimes known as negative space.

Why Should a Website Have White …

There are so many web sites that it is overwhelming to try and decide the best business to hire. Web sites have become really generic because businesses are trying to design them on their own using cheap and uninteresting templates and stock photography.

I am a professional portrait photographer and have the opportunity to work for web site designers that know the difference between a generic site and a personalized site that will set your business apart from the hundreds of other sites selling the same service or product.

The first way to set yourself apart from all the sites that are difficult to navigate …

Ontology is a fancy word for thinking about the universe, sorting it into categories, and determining how those categories relate to each other.

It is especially important to people who are trying to develop “smart” search engines that can formulate answers instead of just presenting relevant web pages.  This is because different types of information should be handled and interpreted different ways (which is why Wolfram | Alpha will frequently ask you for clarification).

For an example, just try a Wolfram Search for “internet” (just remember to hit the back button in your web browser to return to us).

Wolfram …

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture on game design led by James Ernst, founder of the award winning Cheapass Games. Though there are certainly differences between game and website design, the similarities were telling.

Have a Process

James Ernst, like Marissa Berger, holds that one of the most important rules for practical design, is to make sure that you adhere to a process.

Selecting Your Audience

If you do not know who you want to use your product, you’re going to have a hard time evaluating if it appeals to their interests …