http://artoftheproduct.com The Art of the Product Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:10:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm a big Google Reader fan. It's a great application. I can move from desktop to laptop to iPhone to my wife's computer and everywhere there is a browser, there is Google Reader, waiting for me with all my sweet, sweet blog feeds, up to date with what I've read ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2009/01/08/fix-this-use-the-most-natural-sort/ Stroke of Genius: Make Use of Your Medium The BBC History site is an excellent place to learn about WWI and WWII.  Among the many great resources are a set of animated maps covering things like the fall of France during WWII, the landings on D-Day,and the Western Front from 1914-1918 ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2009/01/07/stroke-of-genius-make-use-of-your-medium/ Andy Brice of the Successful Software blog has written a list of 100 ways to increase software sales in 2009. They come in 5 categories: website traffic, trial conversion rate, sales conversion rate, value per sale, and alternative sales channels. Not everyone idea is a priceless gem, but a surprising ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2009/01/03/increase-sales/ Covering every aspect of dealing well with error conditions could take a whole book. What I want to talk about specifically is the information that you pass on to your user when an error occurs. Here are some rules you should follow for error pages and dialogs: Never show your ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2009/01/02/abort-retry-fail/ Dmitry Fadeyev wrote a great article for Smashing Magazine called 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Design. This article is a must read for anyone involved in creating Web or intranet products and many of the techniques have direct or analogous application for desktop and mobile interfaces. If you ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2008/12/19/art-of-the-link-10-ui-techniques/ People have become accustomed to choice: 24 different types of toilet paper, 100s of car makes and models, and 47 different types of tomato sauce.  A lot of this choice can be traced back to some now famous psychophysics experiments performed by Harry Moscowitz in the 70s and 80s for ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2008/12/05/give-them-some-choice/ "Two groups of men were asked to rate the experience of having a diagnostic colonoscopy." Whenever you can get product design insight that starts with a sentence like that, you have my attention. And what is the advice? It's called the Peak-End Rule. No matter how great or bad someone's experience ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2008/11/19/art-of-the-link-end-with-a-high-note/ I recently provided a guest post to 47hats.com, the blog that's helping microISVs and software startups succeed. In the post I explain how abstraction that's useful in the software development process can sabotage your product when exposed to users. The Law of Overexposed Abstractions - the users of your software don’t ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2008/11/08/leave-the-abstract-to-art/ I recently waxed poetic on the power of innovation. So 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 just a usability nightmare? It can be very ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2008/11/08/usability-quick-take-mapping-innovation/ Today is election day, and Google knows that. So when you enter the search "where do I vote" (or anything similar), you get this: And if you then enter your home address you get a map of your polling location. This is brilliant. When you can correctly guess ... http://artoftheproduct.com/2008/11/04/usability-quick-take-guess-what-they-want/