Dear American Airlines

Thought I would share this entertaining (and informative) back and forth between a UX designer and American Airlines. The designer wrote an open letter to AA (here), born from frustration, suggesting a rework of the airlines website; going as far as mocking up some of his ideas. The experiment gets interesting when one of AA's own UX designers responds with a well composed explanation (here) of why their site, well, sucks.

Worth the read.

Miles

Launch a Business, Not a Side Project

I think we have a serious problem in our industry.

I believe it generally started when Basecamp became quite successful and 37signals started to talk about their theories on the subject. Their basic mantra was “Don’t quit your day job to build a web app. Build it in your free time and use your day job to pay the bills until your new app brings in enough money to quit your day job.”

I used to agree with this, but now I think I’ve come full circle. Read on...

How Fluff is Driving Away Your Viewers

Nice write-up here that discusses the importance of simplicity and clarity in web design. The article highlights the fact that by incorporating extraneous messaging, gimmicks, etc., you are not only standing in the way of the users experience but also driving them away from your site.

People hate your website, now what?

So there you are, site has been completely built and in your opinion it couldn’t be better. Then it happens…. BAM… someone complains that they can’t find something on the site. Then another complaint…. BLAMMO… they can’t see the site at all in their IE6 browser. Suddenly you realize that though your site looks beautiful in Firefox, and to you it makes total sense navigating your way around, your users aren’t having the same experience as you are. Read more...

9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design

Nice write-up here.

Via smashingmagazine

Cool new Lorem Ipsum generator

Love this new dummy text generator, geared for web use, that allows you to set column width, add p tags, select your font, color, size and even leading and tracking! Very cool tool indeed, bookmark it now!

Miles

Via swissmiss

Surfing for Seniors

Via swissmiss