Contrast between text and background

Even though the background of your blog is not distractingly photo-realistic but all in nice single color, it doesn't mean the text is easy to read if the contrast between text and background is not sufficient enough. In this example the text is in black and background is darkish green, which made reading this blog felt like reading a book in candlelight, that there was not enough light in the room, i.e. tiresome. If you want to give your blog a personal touch and feel like black text in white background is too boring or somehow beneath your artistic merits, use light colors as background colors. If the user has to click and mark a portion of text with mouse to be able to read the text properly, you have a problem. In that case you may as well write On the Origin of Species 2.0 and have nobody bothering to read it beyond the first phrase. So remember the good contrast between text and background, and make reading easier for users!

Yet another distracting blog background

I was again randomly browsing the vast blogosphere to find some interesting blogs (there are many good usability blogs around and of course blogs about nearly anything and then some more), to compare writing styles and to find some bad usability to point fingers at. Lo and behold! Among the first couple of specimens was yet another example of nice but distracting blog background to add to previous examples. Sunset and trees look really nice and moody, but the scenery really grabs your attention from the text even when you try hard to concentrate to read the posts. And reading isn't helped with the fact that the white text on dark background is not really ideal for reading from screen (though it is good for presentations) and in some places there is not really enough contrast between text and bacground for easy reading in the first place. Try not to overlap photo-realistic background and text, and make sure there is enough contrast between text and background to not make reading too difficult and tiresome.

Reducing the blog loading time

As mentioned in the original web usability mistakes commentary, users will not give your blog too many seconds to load before they start giving up and moving elsewhere. Even a small extra waiting time can frustrate some users enough that they decide not to become your regular followers. Blogger help gives some easy steps to make sure that you Blogger blog will load as fast as possible, like reducing the number and size of images, hosting full-sized images in different service, putting custom css on top of the page and the number of posts displayed on the blogs main page. By some experimentation, and using Stopwatch (a nice service to measure loading times of web pages), I found out that trimming the posts displayed in Usability Spot main page from 7 posts to 5 posts decreased the loading time from 5-6 seconds to 3-4 seconds. It may not sound like much, but trimming two seconds from average page loading time can make all the difference between a happy user with good user experience and unhappy user with bad user experience. Google also has a good collection of articles and tools about web performance, loading time related issues and generally about making the web faster.

Distracting background was not an isolated case

Speaking of the devil, after I posted yesterday about background images that distract from the content, it seems that many of the blog I have come across today has been suffering from this particular problem. Either make the text surround your stunning visuals or the other way around, but don't overlap them! And when considering the background decoration for your blog or website, please keep in mind that photo-realistic image is more distracting than non-photo-realistic image and that repeating patterns can be very distracting whether they are big or small.

When the background makes the text unreadable

Some time ago I came across with blog that had very nice visual look with a beautiful floral background. Unfortunately the text was completely hidden by the beautiful background, so actually reading the blog was not possible without considerable effort. It is not uncommon to see so distracting visuals on the background of blogs and website that it makes users abandon all hope of reading the content and wanting to leave as soon as possible. Flashing advertisements may try to steal your attention but at least they don't (usually) hinder you from reading the content of the site. So if you want to put some nice visuals on the background of your blog or website, please make sure that decorations and text don't overlap.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - epilogue

Commentary on the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is now coming to an end and I want to give my own personal opinions on which blog usability mistakes you must avoid (important), which mistakes are not as critical but go against good usability practice (recommended) and which you can ignore from usability point of view (ignore):

1. No author biographies: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
   
2. No author photo: ignore - you can safely ignore also this from usability point of view.
   
3. Nondescript posting titles: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
   
4. Links don't say where they go: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
5. Classic hits are buried: recommended - try to avoid making this mistake.
   
6. The calendar is the only navigation: important - you must avoid making this mistake.
   
7. Irregular publishing frequency: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view if you post "on hiatus until" messages when necessary and encourage users to subscribe feeds.
   
8. Mixing topics: recommended - try to avoid making this mistake.
   
9. Forgetting that you write for your future boss: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.
   
10. Having a domain name owned by weblog service: ignore - you can safely ignore this from usability point of view.

When we take important and recommended items from that list we come up with my personal condensed list of "Top 5 Blog Usability Mistakes That Are Really Related To Usability And That You Really Should Avoid" or T5BUMTARRTUATYRSA for short (and yes, capitalizing every word in the sentence is not good practice) in order of importance:

1. Links don't say where they go
2. Nondescript posting titles
   
3. The calendar is the only navigation
4. Classic hits are buried
   
5. Mixing topics
   

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - is usabilityspot usable?

Now that we have gone through all of the top 10 blog usability mistakes list by Jakob Nielsen (2005) it is time for the mandatory "how would this usability blog do when evaluated using this list of usability criterion" -evaluation. So without further ado, lets see how does this usabilityspot blog do when compared against these blog usability mistakes, salted with some commentary to add flavor:

1. No author biographies: No author biography here. Not really because author identity would be very big secret but because I don't think advertising my usability experience or publications in this blog would contribute very much to the actual posts.
   
2. No author photo: No author photo here either because I don't think it is necessary in other than consultant blogs.
   
3. Nondescript posting titles: This is hard one to evaluate but I try to keep the post titles descriptive though sometimes attempting to add some dry humor into appropriate titles.
   
4. Links don't say where they go: Shouldn't be a problem here since links have long descriptions.
5. Classic hits are buried: This is not quite yet applicable here since this blog is not very old and there really isn't yet any classical golden posts of infinite wisdom to be promoted. Lets wait one year and see if there are any particular posts that attract attention.
   
6. The calendar is the only navigation: Labels and search are also navigation aids here so this shouldn't be a problem here.
   
7. Irregular publishing frequency: So far it has been post per day, but o guarantees are given for that posting frequency. There are so many things in the field of usability to talk about and of course world is full of examples of bad usability to point fingers at, but there is also life outside blogging. There will be notification before expected longer hiatus.
   
8. Mixing topics: No topics are mixed here, though usability is wide and high field so you can expect posts ranging from theoretical papers to game usability and beyond. If it is about usability, it belongs here. But you will not likely find cookie recipes or lolcat pictures here, unless they can somehow be related to usability.
   
9. Forgetting that you write for your future boss: No big secrets here and an usability advocate writing about usability shouldn't be very shocking finding for any future boss.
   
10. Having a domain name owned by weblog service: Guilty as charged in this account, but using  Blogger as blogging service gives enough flexibility with relative ease of use (usability problems in Blogger are a topic of some other post) and building a dedicated blog of my own would not be worth the hassle.
    

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - having a domain name owned by weblog service

Tenth and final mistake in the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is having your blogs address pointing to blog service (Blogger, Typepad etc). Nielsen sees this as sign of naive beginner who shouldn't be taken too seriously. And again, in my opinion this mistake is not really usability mistake at all but rather a question about PR and image. If you are pro blogger by all means you can have your own domain and build your own blog as you like it, but I follow several professional blogs and v-logs (some in Blogger, some in other blog services), and the idea that blog service provider would somehow lessen the value or image of information or entertainment I get from that particular blog hasn't crossed my mind. I would argue that using a blog service lets you as blog writer concentrate better to the main attraction (i.e. your blog posts) and not worry about technical details, layouts and trying to get problems solved with sometimes quite unresponsive tech support especially when using cheap service provider.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - forgetting that you write for your future boss

Forgetting that you write for your future boss gets the ninth place in the Jakob Nielsens top 10 blog usability mistakes list from 2005. Write anything into internet and it can be found quite easily. Even if writing is modified the originals can sometimes be found from Google caches, archive.org archives or other similar sites. So in case you want to get name and fame or think that your current or future boss or colleagues might get curious, it is good idea to think carefully what and how you write into internet and perhaps make a search using your name to find out where your name pops up. Of course you can write anonymously, with pseudonym or just with fake name. While there is nothing wrong with this kind of advice and certainly blog writers would be fools not to think with what kind of things and issues they want their real names to be associated with, I have to again respectfully disagree here that this advice would have much to do with usability. So think what kind of image you want to give for those who google your name but it has more to do about creating a professional public image than about usability.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - mixing topics

Mixing different topic in one blog is the eighth mistake in the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005). One easy way to confuse your readers is to write posts from various topics into same blog. If the users don't know whether your blog is about political satire or family dilemmas, they have to live in permanent uncertainty not knowing which topic will the next post be about. Or more likely they just move along and find a blog that actually can stick to one topic and not meander aimlessly over all possible topics and then some more. In case you really have burning desire to blog about more than one issue, by all means make multiple separate blogs each with their own distinct topic. How this mistake is connected to usability may not be apparent at first, but letting your users know what they can expect is a good usability practice in general.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - irregular publishing frequency

Irregular publishing frequency is the seventh mistake in the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005). It is generally a good idea in all web publishing (blogs, webcomics, etc) to give your audience some vague idea when they can expect your next masterpiece. If users come back again and again time after time only to find that nothing new has been added, your faithful readers can soon become ex-readers. So have some kind of regular publishing frequency and stick to it. Or if you want to publish longer and more insightful articles with plenty of time between them, you might want to encourage your readers to subscribe to your RSS and/or Atom feeds, because feed subscriptions effectively negate the impact of readers dropping because of irregular publishing frequency.

If you know you will be publishing in irregular intervals, let your readers know that so they don't expect regular service. And if you know that for one reason or another you will not be posting for a while and the blog will start collecting dust, post "on hiatus until" message telling no new posts are to be expected until certain time. Keeping a regular publishing frequency is not easy, so it is good idea to keep some draft posts ready in case deadline approaches and you get the dreaded "writers block" (unless you want to write about that). Bottom line is, let your readers know when they can expect your next magnus opus and don't give promises of publishing frequency that you won't be able to keep.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - the calendar is the only navigation

Sixth usability mistake in the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is using the calendar as only navigation architecture for the blog posts. Fortunately nowadays blog publishing systems have labels, tags and/or search on by default so the users task of finding blog posts of certain topic gets much easier and they don't have to wade through zillions of historical posts trying to find posts of particular topic based on post titles. Don't go crazy with the tags/labels though, because it is easy just to slap every possible tag/label to every post and thus make the categorization of posts totally useless for the users. Most blog publishing systems let you edit tags/labels long after you have published the post so you can start with few tags/labels and add or modify them in your old posts when you know better which categorization works and which don't. And in case you don't use a blog publishing system (e.g. Blogger) with blog post labels and search ready, you should look at your blog from visitors point of view and think how visitors will be able to find your earlier posts easily without having to remember when you posted them. And when in doubt, why not ask your users if they think navigating in your blog is easy and intuitive?

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - classic hits are buried

Jakob Nielsen lists burying your classic hits as fifth common mistake in his top 10 blog usability mistakes list from 2005. Have you ever searched from a blog something that you knew was there but couldn't quite find it? Did you write a brilliant/insightful/funny piece of blogging with lasting value but the future generations won't be able to find it unless they know which year and month you posted it, know which labels it has or know that it exists in the first place? Usually blogs have labels, tags and/or search that will help users to find relevant posts from your blog but you might want to link back to your earlier posts when you write a new post on the same subject or highlight the most important posts (or as Nielsen calls them, evergreens) by placing links to them in prominent position on the page.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - links don't say where they go

Fourth usability mistake in to the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is having nondescript links in blog post, like this. This type of usability problem is also common in normal web pages where users have to guess where the links are going or try to find out the destinations with trial and error. There should also be clear difference between internal and external links so that user knows if clicking the link will take them into another post in the same blog or if it will take them in completely different site. Also there should be clear (usually color) difference between visited and unvisited links so that users don't have to remember which links they have already visited. Some authors have the external links to open in new browser window/tab but this cannot be recommended unless you tell the users somehow (e.g. with an icon) which links will open new windows/tabs. Expert web users know how to open every link in new tab when they want so opening new tabs without telling them will only irritate them, while novice users can get completely confused where they are and try to use the back button in browser to return to page they were while they are in new window, which of course doesn't work.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - nondescript posting titles

Jakob Nielsen presents nondescript posting titles as third common mistake in his top 10 blog usability mistakes list from 2005. This type of usability mistake is also common in graphical user interfaces where windows, dialogs or menus sometimes don't have informative titles and the user has to decipher from the content of the windows, dialogs or menus what it is all about. In the wonderful world of blogging the titles are important because they represent the blog and its posts in search engine results and feeds.Title of the blog post should not only describe the content of the post but also reflect its style. Unless you have clear idea what the posting is going to be like, it might be better to write the post first and add the title last when post is in its final form. When writing series of postings on particular topic (like this top 10 blog usability mistakes commentary) it is good to use the titles of the posts to bring some continuation between posts (in this case first name of the common theme and then the name of the individual usability mistake).

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - no author photo

Second usability mistake according to the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005) is not having an author photo in author biography, since an author photo will improve credibility, offer more personable impression and connect the virtual and physical world in case some of your readers have met you. In my humble opinion, again the credibility of any writing should come from presented facts, clear reasoning and well defined opinions, not from the authors own persona. And furthermore, having or not having an author photo has more to do about creating a professional public image and less to do about blog usability.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - no author biographies

According to the top 10 blog usability mistakes list by Jakob Nielsen (2005) the readers of the blog want to know who are they dealing with and not having an author biography is one of the top 10 blog usability mistakes. But is it really a matter of trust? According to Nielsen signed writings have more credibility than anonymous writings. In my humble opinion facts and opinions speak for themselves and person behind them is rather inconsequential. We could draw a weak analogy to double blind peer-reviewed conference and journal papers. No one in their right mind (at least if they have some experience in research and publishing) would suggest that authors of submitted papers would also submit a detailed resume about their past and present work and publications for the reviewers to see if the results in that particular paper should be considered credible. Every submitted conference and journal paper must convince its peer-reviewers on its own merits, rather than the merits of its authors. And overall, having an author biography or not having one doesn't have very much to do with how the blog can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use, i.e. usability.

Commentary on top 10 blog usability mistakes - prologue

When writing any blog about usability sooner or later you have to address the blog usability. Blogs as specific type of web medium should follow the same general web usability guidelines, like making the links obvious and using graphics for highlighting content and structure, not as decoration. Of course there are also some specific usability guidelines for blog usability but the maybe the most interesting one is by usability the advocate grand old man Jakob Nielsen himself. So the ten following posts will form an editorial commentary of the top 10 blog usability mistakes by Jakob Nielsen (2005):

1. No author biographies
2. No author photo
3. Nondescript posting titles
4. Links don't say where they go
5. Classic hits are buried
6. The calendar is the only navigation
7. Irregular publishing frequency
8. Mixing topics
9. Forgetting that you write for your future boss
10. Having a domain name owned by weblog service