Andy Boyd

User experience is something we, as web designers, should consider. For example, I use Wordpress because I love the experience of using it. It is extremely pleasant and intuitive.

The “Ambient Signifiers” article by Ross Howard (on BoxesandArrows.com) is very interesting, and provides some great insights. The long and short of it… use low-frequency (subtle) cues to notify your visitor of changes, where they are, etc… instead of icons, text, etc…

Read the entire article here: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ambient_signifi

by Ross Howard

I found the following points most interesting:

“For large-scale websites, the number of users may even be similar to large transport networks, and any efficiency improvement can have a positive impact on both user experience and overheads such as bandwidth and server load. This approach also has business benefits: users will make fewer mistakes; there will be fewer customer support issues; and fewer repair and maintenance. Websites may need to demonstrate, for example, a change in status, a change in content, or a change in context. They may want to encourage a user to pause on a certain page or to bypass another. They may need to demonstrate progress or to signify an alert. The obvious way to do these things has been to use overt (high-frequency) signifiers, such as iconography and language. What I’ve learned from Tokyo, however, leads me to believe that using ambient (low-frequency) signifiers may be another important—and sometimes more successful—approach. Web users are already being exposed to emerging rudimentary implementations of ambient signifiers. For example, if you visit a secure site in Mozilla Firefox, you will see the location field in the navigation bar turn yellow.

Using some common scenarios, we can explore how ambient signifiers can offer a new implicit level of communication—implicit in that they are not designed to be relied upon without prior knowledge (such as breadcrumbs, core navigation, and headings), but rather to indicate context, status, and location through suggestive cues that may be only be received subconsciously and enhanced through experience.

One obvious signifier is the use of change of status. Change in status may be an indication of whether a user is logged in or not, whether he or she is in a mode such as an editing mode or workflow situation, or is interacting with a secure page. For these situations, we would typically employ overt signifiers such as text saying “you are logged in” or perhaps a padlock icon. But these “on” or “off” indicators can also be implied through the use of ambient visual cues: the background color of the page can be changed to a darker hue or become subtly textured. With experience, these subtle cues will allow users to “feel” when they are logged in or when they are using a secure page. Without these cues, they will feel uncertain and will check the standard high-frequency interface elements for verification, such as the text that says “You are currently logged in.” As such, ambient signifiers can promote sensitivity and awareness, which in turn makes the user more responsive and responsible. The user may double-check whether she is in fact logged into a secure page before submitting her details because she senses something is not quite right.

In cases like those presented above, current web designs tend to communicate using overt signifiers such as icons and text. These small, high-frequency elements—much like the signage at Tokyo stations—require active seeking on the user’s part. Ambient signifiers, on the other hand, are more constant and low-frequency in nature, working on a more passive and subconscious level without any effort from the user. Because of their low frequency, they can communicate effectively irrespective of the competing high frequency “sensory noise” present in today’s rich and complex web interfaces. Users don’t have to look anywhere—ambient signifiers are felt everywhere.”

pedantic: A pedant is a person who is a formalist or precisionist in teaching or scholarship. The term comes from the Latin word paedagogare, meaning “to teach”, derived from Greek terms for “child” and “to lead.” The term is typically used in a negative connotation, indicating someone overly concerned with minutiae and detail and whose tone is perceived as condescending.

See also http://no-www.org/

To learn how to prenvent EMail injection, take a look at the following article:

http://www.securephpwiki.com/index.php/Email_Injection

This is an interesting article with ‘real-world’ statistics regarding what size the ‘average’ person’s browser is set at when visting/viewing a web site:

http://www.baekdal.com/articles/usability/actual-browser-size-preliminary/

If you are interested in learning about converting the casual visitor into a subscriber/customer, this is a great article:
http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/turning-visitors-into-users