In the last few years I’ve witnessed the rise and rise of design and particularly usability/user experience design as a professional area. In the mid-90s, when I was conducting wireframe-based user testing, observing user behaviour in applications and asking users which functionality was most important to them before building websites, there was low awareness in…
On Friday the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes, at the Australian Human Rights Commission released a media statement, Climate change secretariat excludes people with disabilities, indicating the Commmision was prepared to ‘out’ government publishers who did not meet Australia’s mandatory accessibility requirements for online material. “I recently said that, if things did not start to…
It’s still unclear to me whether a national version of Fuelwatch will be launched due to the political discussions underway (the WA version is at www.fuelwatch.com.au), however a US site named Fuelly has turned the concept on its head to create a useful user-centric site, which would lend itself effectively to extending a Fuelwatch-style approach.Fuelly,…
The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US is investigating the legalities of website linking, putting forward a policy proposal stating that companies should be held liable for linking to other sites containing information related to their share value. Basically, if a link from a company’s website pointed to false or misleading information about the…
Forrester Research has released a report critiquing the navigation of the websites of John McCain and Barack Obama, claiming that both fail basic navigation tests by potential voters. Nextgov reported in the article, Web sites of both presidential candidates fail to connect with users, that, Forrester used five criteria in its evaluation: clear labels and…
I’ve spent about four hours putting Google Chrome through the wringer and overall are impressed with the browser, despite some rather large functional gaps. In checking a range of Australian government sites I did not observe any significant usability or display issues – none more than users of Safari (which uses the same renderer, WebKit)…
Google is releasing the beta of its first web browser on Tuesday 2 September – US time, and if the media information Google has released is accurate, the product could reshape the face of web browsing over the next few years.Google Chrome is the company’s first foray into the web browsing market – but represents…
My team’s web designer forwarded me the article Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign from A List Apart earlier this week. It looks at the justification behind design decisions – whether to change the design, layout and information architecture of a website or product – dividing it into two camps. Redesigners – who base their…
Next Monday (25 August) I’ll be speaking at the Ark Group’s conference on Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment in Brisbane on the topic of Driving ongoing improvements in online services provision. If you’re attending, please come and introduce yourself at some stage through the conference. If you won’t be there, I’ll be making my…
I’m one of those quirky people who finds forms intensely interesting. I’ve had a great deal of past involvement with market reseach and online transaction sites which has emphasised to me how important effective and usable form design is in order to ensure that forms achieve the goals set. In my current role I’ve guided…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
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