Here’s a step by step list of how you can successfully carry out user tests on a budget and achieve great results.

Example of case study

• Usability test start off with user being asked to find individual item..
• The user/tester is normally paid for this, a real user would not take as much time to look for item.

The Comparison of costs betweeen traditional and remote testing:

• Traditional - testing lab required, specialist equipment, travel costs, user incentives.
• Remote tests - online meeting, recruitment, user incentives, better on budget.

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I’ve found some time and only gone and added extra functionality to Jayonline.

1/ AJAX functionality - to show the blog feed on the homepage which is in HTML format.

Partly due to Jeremy Keith writing ‘Bulletproof AJAX‘, a book which I have read recently. He has some examples of the code online, which is a great place to start playing around and seeing how the functionality can work for you.

The beauty of progressive enhancement. (more…)

So the Times Online redesign went live last week.

It was an exciting project to work on, I was based in Canary Wharf working with 2 other developers, 4 Information Architects, 3 Designers, a Content Management team, and countless management types.

I was involved at a early stage in the project life cycle in August 2006. My role was to take the illustrator designs and code them into templates showing the individual modules for each element in the design. Of course, validating and browser testing went along side this. And each module was given a timescale score depending on its complexity.

I was with the team for a month during which time I completed the front end build for all the main sections of the site: news, sport, fashion, motoring.. The job became quicker once the initial elements were built as they could be reused in other sections of the sites pages.

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There are two major ways to improve your flash code for SEO purposes:

1. Add descriptive metadata to the Flash presentation.

   Although metadata might not be as important as a couple of years ago, skipping it for Flash sites is not recommended.

2. Provide alternative pages that describe the contents of the Flash presentation.

   If your site uses more than just a flash advert, or rollover effect, you should consider using alternative html pages. This is not only because they are text that can be indexed by search engines, but also because there are users who might not be willing to see the Flash movie.

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IIS Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
• Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.
• Enter the redirection page
• Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”
• Click on ‘Apply’ (more…)