Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Charles Goodman

Charles Goodman — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:30:43 GMT

At Plaudit Design (www.plauditdesign.com) we start the planning process with a site map and wireframes which are almost like rough blue prints for every page.

This helps us go through and make sure we hit every feature, all the pages link together, etc.

If you need to capture the pages, you can just print screen, and paste it form the clipboard into Adobe Acrobat Pro. It’s an easy solution.

The biggest thing is to catalog the features and make sure the design company hit them all.

Best of luck!

Charles Goodman — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:31:34 GMT

We use a custom built CMS system at Plaudit Design (www.plauditdesign.com). However, much of the concerns you have expressed are very similar.

First of all, we try to figure out what sections of the design will need to be easily editable. If the client has three call out buttons, we can set them up as images. If the client needs to change those buttons, we run into different problems such as what font to use, the layout, and assigning the fields, etc.

I would say knowledge of Content Management Systems make us better designers because it puts us into our clients perspectives, helps us focus on their changing business objectives, and separates our concerns from design (does it look good?) to usability (is it easy to use?).

Charles Goodman — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:38:13 GMT

At Plaudit Design (www.plaudtdesign.com) we are experimenting with ClickTale. Pretty crazy stuff!

It shows everything from hot and cold zones (what people could see on opening, to what they had to scroll down to see).

We’ve also had some luck implementing it into our client’s e-commerce sites. It plays like a video and shows what people did with their mouse when the page was loading.

We are still experimenting with it, but I see promising results especially with sites that have a multistep checkout or registration system.

Charles Goodman — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:41:36 GMT

At Plaudit Design (www.plauditdesign.com) we use a variety of analytical tools such as Google Analytics to keep track of site visitors, bounce rates (whether or not they left immediately) and what pages the site visitor looked at or left from.

Another program we’ve been using is ClickTale. This program replays the users experience much like a video and shows what the person did even when the pages have been loaded.

Best of luck! There are a lot of analytical tools out there, the trick is finding out how to sift through all of the information in order to gain a solid grasp of what the user wants!

Charles Goodman — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:29:53 GMT

The biggest way this new generation will influence what we do is based on its simplicity. I work for Plaudit Design, www.plauditdesign.com, and we make a lot of websites catered to the user experience. It’s one thing if a site looks good, but it’s another thing entirely as to whether or not it works.

I am an avid iPhone owner, but have a T-Mobile smart phone at work. One thing that we have all discovered is that Apple is far superior, not in programming but in the user experience. Apple’s products work based on how the user thinks, not on how the user should figure out how the product work.

We’ve implemented these strategies in sites such as www.phi.com whereby the site visitor can search based on product, applications, or techniques. Why should we make the site visitor search based on how we want them to search? It’s better to think like Apple and set up sites and programs based on how THEY search.

I hope this helps. It is a brave new world!

Charles Goodman
www.plauditdesign.com