No matter how great or bad someone’s experience is, how the experience ends is going to make a very big impact on how they feel about it. How can you leave your users with a big smile?

Use the vocabulary of your users, not the vocabulary of your own abstract creations. Even though your software is flexible and is therefore capable of supporting many different opinions, you must pick the one way you think is best for your customers and then defend the hell out of it.

How do you decide if something is a needed innovation or innovation for innovation’s sake? Is it just a distraction, a fad, a nuisance or gimmick? Is it a needed change or a usability nightmare?

Today is election day, and Google knows that. When you can correctly guess what your users are looking for, you have the chance to delight them.

Make sure you spend sufficient time creating your sample data. Even the most useful application doesn’t seem that way when it’s empty, and even the most imaginative user is not going to envision your application in its most flattering light.

“Rich Internet Applications” are all the rage these days. However, when they’re used for standard web-site navigation, they can fail miserably. Even Adobe’s own website has usability challenges with Flex site navigation.