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Websites that Sell: My newest course ensures your customers buy and buy a lot. For owners, designers, marketers, managers, and anyone else involved in websites that must attract and hold visitor's interest, then close the deal. Non-profits: You are selling yourselves and your cause: This course is designed for you, too.
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November 2007
Manufacturer Sites That Sell |
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The web offered manufacturers a great way to connect directly with their consumers, offering sales support at a time that retail sales professionalism was in retreat. How the good ones took advantage of the opportunity, how the bad squandered it, and what we all can learn from them. |
July 2007
The iPhone User Experience: A First Touch |
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The iPhone is a triumph, but there's still room for improvement in the user experience . Here's where Apple needs to start. |
May 2007
Slashing Subjective Time |
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We can greatly reduce a website user's sense of time-to-completion by eliminating "bordom points" and other user-time wasters |
January 2007
The iPhone User Experience: A First Look |
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Apple has unveiled what they claim is a revolutionary cell phone. Why it is; why it isn't, and where Apple needs to go from here.
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February 2006
The Scott Adams Meltdown: Anatomy of a Disaster |
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"Dilbert's" creator, Scott Adams, published 500 comments on his blog, then got rid of his draft. His 500 published comments disappeared with it. Here's what happened and why.
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See a full-color photo of the first documented bug and more in this rogue's gallery of the most notorious bugs in history.
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February 2005
10 Most Wanted Bugs |
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To make it on this list, a bug must either be serious and have lived for more than five years or be capable of causing death or destruction. These are the really bad guys.
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January 2005
120 Most Unpopular Bugs |
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Welcome to the Bughouse! Readers responded to a call for bugs with more than 120 most-reviled bugs. The Bughouse is open for business...
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December 2004
7 Most Persistent Design Bugs |
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This fledgling list has now been folded into the 10 Most Wanted Bugs.
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November 2004
The High Price of Not Listening |
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Thwarting the efforts of users who want to complain not only results in a lot of unhappy users, it can result in unhappy shareholders as companies lose massive amounts of sales without even knowing why.
Here's how to set up an effect feedback system that will not only result in happy customers, but could transform a two-year sales melt-down into a two-week minor glitch.
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October 2004
Panic! |
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Panic is far more pervasive than we assume. Your users or test subjects may exhibit unrecognized symptoms of panic, affecting the usability of your software and the results of your testing. Panic! How it Works and What To Do About It. Read chilling vignettes of real-life panic. Then, learn how to detect panic and, more importantly, learn how to prevent it.
Anatomy of a Panic: A Case Study. How "The Worst Interface Ever" (see next below) set off a slow-motion chain of panic-driven events that almost killed a whole bunch of people.
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September 2004
The Worst Interface Ever |
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Available now, a cute little switch to test your mental acumen. Mount it under your car's hood, where it can't be seen. Remember to flip it at just the right moment several times a week. Miss one single time and—blat!—lose a $5000 engine/transmission! What fun! Only $1500, at a dealer near you... |
August 2004
The SuperPalm! |
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Times and technology have changed in palmtop-land. The hardware is hot. A few other aspects need warming.
Check out two articles on this hot topic:
Holistic Design: PalmOne Tungsten T3 Case Study. Palmtop sales are sliding. Many industries suffer not because they have a bad product, but because of the surrounding experience.
Make Your Tungsten T3 Palm a Monster Machine. Here are software add-ins that make this hot piece of hardware sit up and bark.
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February 2004
Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop Online |
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Retail e-commerce is still usually a hostile, thoroughly-unpleasant experience. A lot of people have been getting away with murder, murder of their own companies. Here's how your company can stop throwing away money and customers with both hands.
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January 2004
The Mac is Back! |
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Panther, OS X version 10.3 is here and it is dynamite! Macintosh has finally released a high-speed version of its OS X, with some seriously cool innovations.
In this special issue, I cover where Panther stands, why the Dock (still) sucks, and how you can trick out your personal Macintosh today to turn it into a high-productivity machine.
Panther: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly An in-depth look at Apple's OS X 10.3 release. What's working, what's not, and what Apple needs to do about it. (more)
Top 9 Reasons Why the Dock Still Sucks The Dock is responsible for the Mac's first-ever decrease in human productivity. Here's what's wrong, why Apple hasn't fixed it, along with a solution—a shift in strategy—that could make everybody happy. (more)
Make Your Mac a Monster Machine
How you can equip your Mac today with a handful of simple, cheap shareware add-ons to give your supercomputer the super-interface it deserves.(more)
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December 2003
When Good Design => Bad Product |
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The prototypes looked great and tested well. The programmers did their usual competent job of implementation. The result was a disaster. What went wrong? Someone forgot the last, critical step. (more)
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November 2003
D'ohLT #2: Security D'ohLTs |
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No computer specialty is as populated by D'ohLTs as is security. From the day their professors begin a course of D'ohLTish instruction, through the day they manage to reveal the most intimate details of your financial or medical records to casual passersby, to the day their ham-handed efforts get you shot, D'ohLTism rules the day. (more)
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August 2003, Updated October 2003
Why We Get No Respect, and What We Can Do About It |
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It's time interface designers, or whatever we're calling ourselves, get some respect. After 25 years of whining about it, I've finally realized we have only ourselves to blame.
Take control. If you look at nothing else of mine this year, please read this, act on it, and pass it on. (more)
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July 2003
D'ohLT #1: Think Globally, Act Globally |
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While the interaction designer was distracted making the garden timer really easy to program, the engineers had made it even easier to lose the program.
D'oh! (more)
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June 2003
Multiple Mistakes Drown Interface
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A reader reports that the interface to GE's electronically controlled dishwasher is less than heavenly.
Here's where GE failed, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes. (more)
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1998-2002
Previous Columns |
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Click for a wide-range of columns covering subjects from the fatal interaction design decisions that led to John Denver's death, to what miniature golf has to teach us. (more)
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- Past Columns & Papers
The collected works of asktog.com
- Basics
Fundamentals of design
- Reader Mail
Interesting design quandaries posed by readers and Tog's solutions
- Resources
Offsite resources invaluable whether you are just learning, are a design professional, or are seeking the services of design and testing professionals.
- Starfire
Sun Microsystem's Starfire project predicted the World Wide Web.
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Bruce Tognazzini is a recognized leader in human/computer interaction design. As Chief Designer at Healtheon/WebMD, he helped establish WebMD as the premiere healthcare website. Before that, he was Distinguished Engineer for Strategic Technology at Sun where he led the Starfire Project that predicted the rise of the World Wide Web. During his 14 years at Apple Computer, he founded the Apple Human Interface Group and acted as Apple's Human Interface Evangelist. He has rejoined his long-time colleagues as a principal of the Nielsen Norman Group.
See About Bruce Tognazzini for more information.
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