Yuuguu allows you to share your screen and allow for real time calloboration.

You can link Yuuguu with Skype and other instant messaging networks. So you can collaborate on the document you are talking about.

See your skype contact in Yuuguu

Give the person you are sharing your screen with control over your screen so they can actually edit the document you are discussing. Using this makes much easier to cooperate on a document on a distance and keep the discussion about the document you have to deliver.

screensharing using yuuguu

yuuguu logo

www.yuuguu.com

Reading text online differs greatly from reading printed text. Most online readers want to get to the root of the content quickly and scan texts for the things of their interest.

Make sure your texts are well structured, concise and use the reverse pyramid of content (start with a summary and the conclusion, go into detail deeper in the text).

The inverted pyramid is used here, the article starts with a short summary and the deeper one dives into the article the more detail one gets.

A text starting with the summary on http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Users often scan pages for links. If you want to cater for efficiency providing descriptive link texts is very important. A “click here” or “more” link obliges a user to read the text surrounding the link to discover what they can expect from the link.

Providing visitors with a clear idea on what they can expect from an action is very important on the internet. Due to the large amount of available content users want to know what they will get before they click on a link.

Besides these arguments all interfaces that display link overviews, many small screen devices, screen readers,… would display lists like:

• click here
• click here
• more
• …

By making the heading clickable the user recognizes the link and knows what to expect on this news site.

Article titles are used as links on www.guardian.co.uk

Depending on our habits and the situation at hand we use different navigation strategies. Many users like the use of a (good) search function when they are looking for a very specific kind of content. Since visitors do not only enter a website via the homepage it is important to provide a search input box on every page.

For a positive use experience it is also very important that the search engine delivers the expected result.

The search results on this page do not comply with the user’s expectations searching for a “long raincoat”.

Music cd's as search result for "long raincoat" on www.wallmart.com

4. Be consistent in your design

Cluttered designs distract users and give a unprofessional impression. Besides that users are creatures of habit, we like things we know and we like to do things the way we are used to. If you use different indications for intext links users will get confused. If you use different labels for the same action will get the impression they are activating different things.

5. Provide clear feedback

Let the user know what is happening and why. Especially if something goes wrong. Errors can happen everybody knows that, recovering from errors is what’s crucial. A good error message has the following characteristics:

• Shows something went wrong
• Explains in human and polite phrasing what went wrong
• Explains to the user how the error can/will be resolved and/or how to avoid the error in the future

The website of this large furniture company tells the user what went wrong and how to recover from it in a clear and polite manner.

A good error message from www.ikea.be

6. Inspire confidence

Every relationship is based on trust, so are online relations with your visitors. For people to trust a website they want to be sure real people are behind it, whom they can contact if needed. Due to the large amount of pirates on the internet, people look for proof of the real existence of a company before they buy something or trust the given information.

Provide clear contact info (more than a contact form) and tell about the company. The parts “contact us” and “about us” are crucial in inspiring confidence in your website.

Contact page that shows an actual address and phone numbers on www.freshbooks.com

Treejack by Optimal Workshop offers a survey-tool to test your Information architecture. Getting feedback on the backbone of your website as early as possible is key for success and avoids unpleasant surprises at the end. Discovering that the Information Architecture you developed is not understood by your potential users after designing and developing your site causes much more trouble and costs than adjusting the IA before you start designing and developing.

How does it work?

1. Create a new survey and a survey url that you can distribute to your participants. You can even ad a password if you only want invited users to participate.
2. Then you can enter your tree, you can do this by copy-pasting from a spreadsheet or text document or by entering it directly into the text field. The copy-past function from excel (on a mac) does not work seamlessly but avoids a lot of typing. I still had to put my tabs/spaces wright. The preview function did not work since it only showed the first level. You can however go back easily to adjust your tree afterwards, so not really a big problem.
   

   Tree set-up in Treejack

3. Then you can enter search tasks for the test-participants, things like: “Find a coffee mug” or “Where is the article on swine flu”,…
4. You can ad special settings like:
   • randomize tasks and/or items in a tree branche
   • show only a part of the tasks to each participant
   • when results should be excluded
5. If you are finished you can set your survey life and distribute the survey url.

Treejack seems a tool that suits the purpose of testing a information architecture early in a project.

www.optimalworkshop.com/treejack.htm