UX Chat

Rahul

09:09

@JohnGB go-tour.appspot.com

JohnGB

Very cool @Rahul

Will play with a bit

JohnGB

13:07

@PatrickMcElhaney: Where would you draw the line between microcopy and copywriting?

Ben Brocka

IMO everything done in design and UX seems to be microcopy, copywriting seems to be more when you're working with the actual content.

I'm glad it was brought up but for our purposes I think they're synonyms...though it's arguable which is the main/top level one

JohnGB

microcopy is copywriting, but copywriting isn't microcopy :)

subset issues

Ben Brocka

Exactly, but Microcopy is the more relevant term

JohnGB

But that doesn't preclude us from dealing with full copy

Ben Brocka

If it's purely copywriting and not microcopy it's quite likely off topic here IMO

JohnGB

13:13

the content of an email to a customer is copy

and within the bounds of what we should be dealing with

"how should I explain this to a customer so that it is as clear as possible that doins x will result in nuclear meltdown"

It's part of the experience of a product or service, and hence falls under UX to me

Ben Brocka

Depends what the email is I suppose, most copywriting in emails is for advertisements, newsletters, ect, which is advertising

JohnGB

sure, but not all

Ben Brocka

Email confirmations ect are different but that seems different from "full copy" still

JohnGB

Not just a confirmation

Go order a free sample from Moo.com

see what they send you

that is copywriting to me. Good copywriting.

Ben Brocka

True...but then the problem becomes 90% of people using the copywriting tag (because they know what it means) when they're really discussing microcopy, the more relevant but less known term

It's certainly the tag I was using before the meta question was posted

JohnGB

13:22

Fair point

Ben Brocka

I guess depending it might be fairer to favor the more general term, on SO I quickly found tagging things by versions vastly less helpful than tagging by the more general programming language/framework/ect

While they're separate the more I think about it I'm starting to think synonymizing them isn't the worst idea

JohnGB

Likewise

Rahul

Copywriting is relevant sometimes, microcopy is always relevant

JohnGB

why always?

Ben Brocka

I think he means microcopy is pretty much explicitly a UX thing, copywriting can often be more clearly marketing

marketing's a part of both though of course

Rahul

13:34

Yeah, what Ben said

JohnGB

I think if anything the discussion shows that there is enough confusion between us even that it justifies them being synonyms

Ben Brocka

Agreed

I had an idea for a question but wasn't sure if it really fit here..."When and why is an ugly layout acceptable?"

I mean, look at drudgereport.com

JohnGB

Well, we are about UX

is that site good UX or not?

Ben Brocka

It's hideous, but I bet usability would suffer if it were designed...properly, if only because it's popular and it works

People love it, arguably that's what it's all about

it does prioritize content and confer that priority well

JohnGB

Yup, it works

Ben Brocka

13:47

It's just...really ugly and no designer would approve of it, yet there it is, a very popular website, and I've never heard a reader complain that it is hard to use

craigslist is another example, though IMO it's harder to use

Drudge is just links though, so it's hard not to be able to use that

JohnGB

agreed

pretty doesn't matter as much as designers would like to think

Ben Brocka

But it often matters more than engineers would like to think

But in this case it seems the engineer (or more accurately reporter?) was right, or at least not wrong

JohnGB

Engineers like features

designers like pretty

neither is right

it's about usability

Greeting @RogerAttrill

Ben Brocka

But usability is of course related to both, and UX is more than usability too

JohnGB

sure

Roger Attrill

13:54

hiya

JohnGB

but saying it's about UX would sound lame being in a UX chat room :)

Ben Brocka

This is where it's relevant though, UX is usually more than usability, in the case of Drudge it's great usability and not much else at all

JohnGB

the UX is pretty good

I get just what I expect. A link to the story

Ben Brocka

Though I do notice some of his lists are unlabeled, but they're pretty easy to pick up on what the content is

Think I should ask as a full question?

JohnGB

Sure, but make it about UX and not just ugly = bad

It's got some interesting discussion in it

Ben Brocka

14:00

The question was always "when is ugly not bad"

Rahul

I don't think drudgereport is ugly

JohnGB

I would consider rephrasing it as "Can ugly be good UX?"

Rahul

I think it's unconventional for a website, but it reminds me of a flyer

Ugly would be if it was all misaligned and used terrible colours, for instance

But Drudge uses great visual hierarchy, clean typography, few images, etc

A lot of news sites could stand to learn from it

Ben Brocka

Perhaps it isn't so much "ugly" ugly as extremely basic. The site looks like (and is) raw HTML made by someone not paying attention to style and all of those negative things we say about most people's first websites

Rahul

I think he was paying a lot of attention to style

Ben Brocka

14:08

the difference is it works, and there's nothing really wrong

Rahul

It's like craigslist

Intentional minimalism

Ben Brocka

Craigslist certainly doesn't have the same usability though...

JohnGB

Craigslist intentionally just never changed

I don't think it was them setting out to make it minimal as much as that is what you did back in the 90's

Ben Brocka

In that way they're the same as Drudge, but drudge works and it works well. Craigslist I've always found awkward at best

Erics

ugly is an aesthetic choice, the UX question is what does that choice communicate?

2

JohnGB

14:12

Hi Eric. And true

Erics

newspapers, at least the old dead tree kind, are "ugly" as compared to magazines

Ben Brocka

I'm not sure I agree that it was necessarily a choice despite the effectiveness. Drudge report is run by 3 people, and mostly by drudge himself. It has every appearance of a novice learning basic HTML and stopping there. Maybe it never needed to change, but at best the choice was whether it should change or not, not whether it should be ugly or not

Patrick McElhaney

I wonder if Drudge's ugliness communicates that he's literally putting the page together with his own hands. No editors, no producers, nothing to filter his message.

JohnGB

Also that there is no database running it

straight html afaik

Erics

yep, Nd yep

Ben Brocka

14:16

It literally is straight HTML

JohnGB

And beautiful for it

Erics

feh, iPad fat thumbs

Ben Brocka

It is and always has been manually put together

Patrick McElhaney

Sometimes you see fragments of HTML because he typos the code :)

JohnGB

:)

Patrick McElhaney

14:17

I'm trying to figure out what the [brackets] on some of the headlines mean. He just started that.

Ben Brocka

They're arrays of stories

Patrick McElhaney

Oh, I think I just figured it out. It means pay-wall.

Roger Attrill

Jason Fried of 37 signals: Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web

JohnGB

I was waiting for that @RogerAttrill

It's a great article

Ben Brocka

@RogerAttrill Thanks for that. Writing up my question

Rahul

14:29

I would pay good money to get some Jason Fried/Ryan Singer answers on UX.SE :)

Roger Attrill

or Matt Drudge?

Rahul

I don't know that he thinks about what he does as UI design

Patrick McElhaney

BREAKING: Users don't scroll...

Roger Attrill

haha!

JohnGB

What is this "scroll" you speak of? Is it a message from the UX gods?

Rahul

14:38

Speaking of 37s, office hours starting in 20 mins: 37signals.com/officehours

JohnGB

Damn...

I have something on in 20 minutes :(

Off to do my thing. @Rahul: take notes please :)

Cheers guys

Ben Brocka

15:03

0

Q: Can ugly be good UX?

It's heresy I know, but look at DrudgeReport.com. It's raw, hand written HTML, it's plain, boring typography, it's something any UX or Graphic designer would scoff at if you handed it across their desk. But it works, and it works well. Drudge's design has been fairly consistant and it's pretty m...

I'm not sure if I over asked or under asked that question...

Roger Attrill

@BenBrocka is the 'perfect' link correct?

Ben Brocka

No, thanks for finding that. It's supposed to be the 37 signals link you posted actually

Roger Attrill

I thought it was... :-)

np

Patrick McElhaney

It's hard to answer. A few months ago, we would have closed it as "not constructive" or "not a real question." But people on this site have impressed me with their ability to answer unanswerable questions. :)

Rahul

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing

It's similar to the "what is intuitiveness" question

Ben Brocka

15:14

@PatrickMcElhaney I usually find those to be the most interesting too depending on answers

How do I propose a tag synonym? I'm looking at ux.stackexchange.com/tags/webdesign/info it should really be aliased to website-design ux.stackexchange.com/tags/website-design/info

Nvm found the tab for it, don't have enough rep

Patrick McElhaney

@BenBrocka Thanks, I took care of it.

Ben Brocka

@PatrickMcElhaney Thank you

Rahul

15:36

Wow great quote from DHH in the 37signals office hours:

"David H. @Adnan, design on behalf of your users, not just on their request"

3

in response to a question about whether they make new features because people ask for them

Ben Brocka

15:47

@Rahul Great way to think about it, especially since users don't always know what could help best, just when something's wrong usually

Ben Brocka

16:08

1

Q: Is UX the same as Usability?

The two terms have seemingly become synonymous, but is "user experience" really the same thing as "usability?" It would seem that some sites, apps or products provide the user with an experience that is, overall, enjoyable without being as usable as they could be. (Facebook and MS Office come t...

usability user

Between that and my question I think we're in for a whole ton of usability vs/and/or UX debate...

Roger Attrill

16:33

@Rahul - thats spot on. Time and time again I am reminded of the relevancy to UX of Henry Ford's quote: If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

2

Rahul

@RogerAttrill Indeed, I use that quote all the time :)

Ben Brocka

@RogerAttrill Heh

I've always been a bit skeptical of 100% user centered design, though it has it's uses in doses

Rahul

User centered design and opinionated design aren't mutually exclusive

Some people just misinterpret "user-centered" as meaning "Don't use your brain"

Ben Brocka

Well it's often fairly synonymous with "do what users tell you to" depending on the application

Rahul

" 42 percent of U.S. consumers would like to buy a tablet that runs Microsoft’s operating system. "

Ben Brocka

16:42

I wonder what FB would be like today if they were UCD 100%. No chat, no apps, no newsfeed

Rahul

allthingsd.com/20111005/…

Ben Brocka

So Myspace with a consistent blue theme, and no autoplayed music. Which I guess is all a lot of us really wanted actually

@Rahul I find this hard to believe, I guess as long as the price point and consistent windows experience are there it might well be the case though

Tablet PCs never took off in the consumer market, but they've always been expensive

Matt Rockwell

17:07

@Rahul @RogerAttrill That quote is printed on a poster on my cube wall haha, great quote

(Ford)

Ben Brocka

18:31

Should tag wiki text start with a capital? ux.stackexchange.com/tags most of our tag wikis don't and it bugs me, but some do, and that bugs me more.

Patrick McElhaney

19:26

@BenBrocka I guess it depends if it's a complete sentence. There's lots of room for improvement in the tag wikis.

Ben Brocka

19:37

I noticed, I just wasn't sure what conventions there were. I looked at blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/improved-tagging and peeked at the SO tag wikis.

Some/most of our tag wikis are trying to form a sentence using the tag name as the first word of the sentence...I find that odd

Patrick McElhaney

Stack Overflow Blog: Redesigned Tags Page

Posted by Jeff Atwood on March 23rd, 2011

In the spirit of our recent redesign of the users page, we felt it was time to enhance the tags page, too.

As you can see, the tags page now shows a bit more information about each tag, namely:

The first three lines of the tag wiki excerpt for the tag. The number of questions asked in that tag over the last two relevant time intervals — day, week, or month. These intervals are also clickable so you can zoom into recent questions with the tag.

The number of questions asked in that tag over the last two relevant time intervals — day, week, or month. These intervals are also clickable so you can zoom into recent questions with the tag. …

I think most of our tag wikis were created by @BennySkogberg. He might have used that convention, but I don't think we need to stick to it.

Ben Brocka

19:52

@PatrickMcElhaney Thanks, I think I get the guidelines now

Ben Brocka

20:02

ux.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/crowd-sourcing

dang we have almost nothing on crowd sourcing?

Roger Attrill

are you trying to crowdsource some questions on crowdsourcing!?

Ben Brocka

No, I'm too lazy. Maybe I'll crowdsource crowdsourcing questions on crowdsourcing

Roger Attrill

hehe - no that's no good - those questions would go on meta

Ben Brocka

20:37

It was a hot topic in HCI so I figured it might have some questions here, I guess it's more of a big-name thing though than something just anyone would have a question about

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