I didn’t set a reminder, despite my appreciation of the design.

A straightforward, well-argued, well-illustrated reference book, Web Form Design tackles the obvious subject in all its details. I’ve been involved with more web forms in the past 13 years than I care to remember. Still, data collected in one place and well presented provide a useful reminder. This book doesn’t always end arguments, but it’s a helpful reference for anyone building websites.

Note: Wroblewski has mercy on all typists and uses LukeW.com as his personal domain. You can follow further developments there, including his own book page.

Mental models are simply affinity diagrams of behaviors made from ethnographic data gathered from audience representatives. [page 2]

I’m more familiar with personas. Young positions personas as an output of mental models; see this chart showing the “constellation…of user-centered design steps.” Makes sense, although I’ve used personas as an input to make sure we’re framing the customers’ problems in their words.

The book walks through the realistic example of addressing the needs of movie-goers. Different motives and interests bring very different segments to the movies. The example’s breadth helps make the point. I’ll admit that I zoned out through some of my reading, but I’m in 100% agreement with this core philosophy.

Talking to real people is the most important part of creating the mental model. [page 36]

I’d be surprised to work on a project where this entire process would fit into preconceived notions about how to proceed. Yet any support for talking to customers is welcome, and Young provides tips and evidence throughout for ways to make those conversations useful and how to refine and present the models. In flipping through this book now, I’m more positive on it than when I was reading it! I suppose it’s better as a reference than a straight-through textbook.

On a meta note… I am a sucker for the mixed-media offering from Rosenfeld Media. You can buy a DRM-free PDF for $19. But if you order the paperback book for $39, the PDF is included — and available immediately, of course. When I ordered, I opened the PDF and poked around, but waited for the book for a complete take. Also, all the illustrations are public on Flickr: note the link to a chart above. Nice touch, and the book homepage serves as an anchor for follow-up information and blog posts continuing the conversation.

I’m impressed by the deliberate, public nature of the changes, and the aesthetic is fine, if not as iconic as yellow and green.

One design quibble: I find the lowercasing of “news” and “download.com” to be affected, especially given that text references continue to capitalize, but whatever. But I’m grateful the unnecessary reflection on the sub-brands of CNET News and Download.com was dropped from the design. News uses the CNET favicon, as it has forever. I noticed that Download.com got to keep its favicon, a slightly smaller version of this:

One navigation quibble: the tour pop-up should have its own visible, linkable URL. It’s found at http://www.cnet.com/html/cnet/tour/tour1.html. Works well on its own, without need for scrolling.

I am still waiting, however, for the change of News.com to its broader CBS usage. That team must still be hard at work, not yet enjoying pizza and beer.

My previous comments hold. The body of the home page looks fine, with no complaints. However, I find the reflection in the sub-brands of “News” and “Download.com” quite distracting, and hard to read. The Web 2.0 reflection will be very dated in the near future, too.

Download.com new logo design

CNET News new logo design…without the .com

Larger question highlighted by these sub-brand treatments: how long until CBS Interactive puts the domain news.com in the service of general news?

Today’s preview includes a .com for the download design, but it’s notably absent for news. Also, www.news.com redirects to news.cnet.com now. For too long, news.com redirected to the never-beloved news.com.com (long story…not now). For a few brief weeks earlier this year, before the CBS deal, the tech news site reclaimed its original 1996 home at www.news.com. It was quickly switched over to news.cnet.com. The pendulum of parent brands vs. individual brands swings back and forth at CNET, but it’s clear this time news.com is being prepped for bigger things.

This change makes sense, since News.com is just too tempting a domain name to limit to tech news, especially given the broader portfolio of the new CBS Interactive. But stop dribbling this change out. Get the team working on the new News.com in higher gear before these design changes dampen the, well, news.

My comments are as a fan and former employee, but no inside information.

CNET’s decision to announce a coming redesign ahead of time is admirable. It shows a new respect for how disruptive change can be to an existing audience.

Current CNET logo, in context

New CNET logo, in context (proposed)

I have a few comments, but IANAD (I am not a designer).

• New logo drops the pipe ( | ) between the letters c and n: +1
  About time! Few things confused the brand more than that pipe.
• Sticking with all lower-case letters in logo, as cnet: -1
  I appreciate the nod to the original (and current) logo, but grab the chance to change to all caps, CNET, like every single text reference in the last several years.
• Logo is updated, making the red ball more obviously a ball: +1
  I wasn’t sure about this change, but when I went back to compare, I realized how flat and dated the existing red ball logo looks… and the glow behind the current red ball isn’t fantastic.
• Color scheme drops yellow and green: -1
  Yellow and green are signature, just like the red ball. Both colors have been toned down, appropriately, over the years. Dropping them altogether? Well, if it weren’t in favor of a color scheme straight out of Axe body care products, I’d probably find it more acceptable.
• Header is taller: -1
  Only reason is to fit a leaderboard advertisement. That’s the business, of course, but… sigh.

The best news? These are just opinions about the skin. That matters, but the content inside the skin still decides whether I read or not. And I continue to, mostly via the News.com RSS feeds (choose one) and occasional email newsletters (subscribe).

Note: as someone who’s led previous site redesigns at CNET, I’m not throwing stones from afar. I can only imagine the internal discussions. I hope the transition goes well, whether with the demonstrated changes or some additional nips and tucks.

Google News finally answers some of publishers’ questions, and promises more information in the future. Wow…I spent a fair bit of time trying to deconstruct this for News.com 3-4 years ago.

Academic PDF, which I have not yet read, but plan to: “The User Experience of Software-as-a-Service Applications” (link is to HTML abstract)

Jon Udell goes LazyWeb with “Parsing human-written date and time information, and the commenters come through, especially with DateJS.com. Not the only solution, though. I’d never heard of GATE, but looks useful. I’ve used solid implementations of this type of parsing at I Want Sandy, 30boxes.com and a few other places. Wonder how many rolled their own, or started with DateJS, GATE or similar utilities, and built from there?

Ken Norton makes his Scoble video debut in Google Announces Offline Docs. Ken, good job, but the laptop in hand was a bit tough. And now we know where this tweet came from.

During the last year or so I was at CNET, I pinged the legal team a few times about a corporate policy on blogging by employees. Didn’t happen while I was there. I realize it’s not so simple when you’re a media company — but it didn’t have to be that hard, either. So I noted the BBC’s Guidance -
Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites, including the section on blogging. Good for them: more media organizations should follow this lead.

Speaking of British media companies, the Guardian impressed me in two ways last week. First, by creating the position of head of the Guardian’s development network with the goal of “offer[ing] data and tools for external developers.” Second, by hiring
Matt McAlister to inaugurate the role. Good luck and have fun.

Brief notes on Charlene Li’s 2008 SXSW presentation, “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries.”

Stefanie Olsen talks with John Battelle a couple of weeks ago. For when you can’t keep up with his blog, a distillation of some of the topics he covers and thinks about for FM.

I know storage isn’t free, and photos add up, but still surprised to get an email from BrightRoom telling me it’s the last chance to order some race pictures. I’ve bought a few before… wouldn’t you at least keep shots of customers, even if you dump all the other finish line photos? Of course, the email is remarkably promotional, and short on details: “Your Run Wild 5k/10k photos are going into retirement: SALE details below!” Will the photos disappear, or will you simply charge me more in the future to “retrieve” them? If you’re keeping them at all, then retrieval is almost without cost, so this feels like forced urgency. And I’m not interested or impressed.

I’ve set up my FriendFeed, but not using it yet. Definitely finding Twitter more and more interesting, and I’m now including my tweets on clock, on the home page.

Watched only one of Barry Pilling’s videos so far, but worth a link and a look.

2005 article someone (Ken?) recently reminded me about: “Wheels and Deals in Silicon Valley” I did my first racing in January, at the Early Bird, and I’m putting in some miles now in preparation for a mid-May century. Been mostly solo, though…guess I’m missing out on the deals! Any San Francisco-based riders reading?

I’ve read much Wallace Stegner, but not his Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil (scroll to the bottom). A future read, certainly.

I don’t need Adventures in $40 eyeglasses right now, but for the future…

Haven’t watched The Kingdom, but the opening credits sequence is nifty. (via)

The best 10 books of the year? So says The New York Times in its 2007 list. Despite my reading, I never even came close to one of this group, and had only heard of two.

I don’t pour myself into Twitter, but I recognize that’s its very open-endedness is a strength. What caught my eye about this analysis was simply its method: pictures and diagrams, in lieu of many words. My education continues.

Who has time to read Draft Business Model Innovation Manual (beta version)? Not me, and I haven’t even downloaded the PDF, but I love the audacity of someone creating a manual for innovation. Clayton Christensen has described innovation and its consequences on businesses wonderfully. But a “manual” implies prescription, which is much, much harder.

Among the least surprising headlines of the year, from December 4, 2007: “Hybrid Vehicle Owners are Wealthy, Active, Educated and Overwhelmingly Democratic, According to Scarborough Research” (PDF available from press page)

Domains are interesting to me. I have seven of my own, though I only use one. DomainTools introduced “Registrant Search,” with an offer of a free self-search. Yup…found them all. But I don’t try and hide.

I’m a sucker for things like this: “human history in 60 seconds.

Joe Jackson is starting another tour and will be in Redwood City in May 2008.

Scott McCloud has made a name for himself over the last decade. Less for his actual art, though, and more for his examination and popularization of comics as an art form in English. Word has spread to the usability community, perhaps because he’s been a digital artist for some time. I came across McCloud’s work a few years ago, but Making Comics is his first book I’ve bought and read.

It’s done as a comic book, and the visual pointers are critical. Lead by example, and all that. It’s a quick read, at least for me, since I didn’t pore over the images and try any of the exercises suggested at the end of each chapter. I simply wanted to think differently about how stories are told, and perhaps find ways to apply the ideas to my work.

I’m personally stuck with words as my outlet. But the more I do online, the greater appreciation I have for images which tell a story well. A picture is worth far more than 1000 words, since few people want to read that much!

The button has two states: one for OpenDNS users, one for those yet to become OpenDNS customers. This is one of the “fun with DNS” hacks we can pull off. And, yes, fun and DNS can go in the same sentence.

Go ahead and get your own. Aaron will announce more publicly very, very soon.

Oh, and for those of you who haven’t visited in a while, yes, it’s a new theme on clock.