Photo by striatic (CC license).

When it comes to new projects (for me, a new blog or a website), you could say that I’m commitment phobic. For a long time I was more interested in the ideas behind a new project than the execution, leading to a long trail of half-finished projects — and some that never made it out of my notebook.

I found my mind wandering as I was trying to sleep a few days ago and hit upon a project idea that excited me. I could run it alongside Skelliewag. It would only be a hobby thing — nothing serious. My neurons started firing as I began to plan what I’d do when I woke up (ensuring it would be another hour or so before I finally drifted off).

One moderating influence I’m grateful for — in hindsight — was being unable to get online the next day. When I finally sat down to think about this new project, I noticed that something had changed since I started working with this blog.

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Photo by kalandraka.

Making your site more usable is really the art of making it easy for visitors to do what you want them to do.

Whether that’s coming to grips with what your site is about, commenting, subscribing, contacting you or buying your product, usability gets results.

“Usability” can seem like a pretty abstract term, though. What does it really mean? What does it involve? How do I get it? Do I have it already?

In this post, I want to discuss just how useful it is to think of your site’s usability as conversational.

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One question I get a lot is: “Where do you find the time?” It’s a good question, but it’s the wrong one. Few of us have vast reserves of free time lying around, waiting to be found. If you want to do something, you have to make the time.

Making time is like budgeting money. You need to work out we’re you’re spending your time and cut out unnecessary expenses.

One hour less television a week is one extra hour to work on your magnum opus: whatever that may be.

(This post is an attempt to practice the Little Words, Big Meaning principle.)

Yesterday popular self-improvement blog Zen Habits launched its first redesign. It’s a blog I read regularly and one I know many Skelliewag.org readers also enjoy. The redesign was crafted by one of my favorite blog designers and an all-around nice guy, Collis Ta’eed.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to do something I’ve been waiting to do for a while: a published simplicity review. A simplicity review is a web design review with an emphasis on simplicity and usability.

Rather than simply making recommendations, I want to show you how I approach simplicity reviews: the kinds of questions I ask and the things I look for.

The aim of this post isn’t just to give some suggestions and feedback to Collis, but to give you a toolbox you can use to evaluate the simplicity of the designs you create or customize.

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Readers only have so much attention to give, and this variable will expand and contract depending on factors you can’t control: whether they are rushed for time, whether they have had your site recommended to them or have simply stumbled across it, and so on.

Reader attention doesn’t expand depending on how much information your site communicates to them. More elements does not mean they will devote more attention to compensate.

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