Mozilla Labs is organizing a design challenge to create a new home tab for the upcoming Firefox 4. The new home will be using the users’ history information to produce a better user experience.

I was doing some user research asking people to show me their way of using their web browser and I was specially paying attention to the homepage. These are some of my findings:

- It is very important to have search functionality in the homepage. Users go there as an starting point to a new search.

- People like having relevant information in the homepage, like feeds coming from different websites or news coming from a particular source (e.g. Yahoo!).

- Many users get lost when using tabs. I’ve discovered that many don’t even know what a tab is, the potential of tab browsing is something unknown to many people.

Based on that I prepared my proposal for the design challenge:

It would be nice to get your comments!

Find here more information about the Home Tab Design Challenge.

Now a days it seems that products have to be sold worldwide to be considered successful. Every product, a camera, a TV or a website, that aspires to become usable in different countries have to be carefully designed. Buttons, icons and colors should be either worldwide recognizable or adapted to the local market.

Design for the public space

City sign design seems to be a very localized field, traveling around I discovered that signs vary from country to country and often from city to city. I have an example of how a concept or sign could be differently interpreted.

Traveling in Argentina I saw the following sign… 

Public space sign designs in Buenos Aires (Argentina) are, in my opinion, pretty well done. The sign used to indicate the name of a plaza is not an exception but it is very localized. It’s clear for Argentineans that plazas have always trees and that’s why this sign works so good there. 

In Europe the plaza sign from Buenos Aires might not always be understood. In the old continent most plazas don’t have trees. 

Why this example?

This is to show why localization of designs are important. This example is about a design in the public space but it could be applied to software, web and product design. If you want to sell your product oversees you should take care of the meaning sign, symbols, icons and colors could have there; a good designer should think about localization and what signs or icons could potentially mean in another culture.

Do you deliver information to users per email? If so, try to:

Send users information that is relevant to them

Designing a newsletter that is "usable" is not an easy task but benefits could be huge: more visits and sales could be reached through good newsletter usability and marketing. Let me show you the iTunes Store "alert me" newsletter example:

The iTunes Store Newsletter

On March 13th I was criticizing Apple for sending me advertisement of an old album that I have and I listen to very often. I was wondering why they were bothering me offering an album that I already have?

 The Newsletter Now: Björk

 Yesterday I received a new iTunes Newsletter recommending me albums of my favorite artist: Björk. There are 2 important things here:

- iTunes knows that Björk is my favorite artist and sends me album recommendations of her,

- iTunes recommends me Björk albums that I don’t have (yet!)

Lesson

Send users information only when this is relevant to them. Recommend only products they might like to buy and they will happily click.

Giving users an easy way to see and change their privacy policy gives them a better sense of security and at the end they might finish up giving you more information if you take the time to design a good privacy page. Keep in mind that some users don’t want to share any kind of information with websites but, fortunately, thats not the typical user profile. 

"give them the chance to control all that data all the time…"

Most users will accept to give you some information, specially if you give them the chance to control all that data all the time. That’s why it’s important to give users an easy access to the privacy settings, make that link highly visible, like Facebook does.

Facebook has also a good privacy settings page design. They grouped the settings in different categories. Once inside the category the user has great amount of options. My first impression was that this was too much, but if the website gives the option to deactivate single features there are more possibilities for the others to remain active.

Advanced options…

Organizing your website template in content modules will make your site look more organized and will make it easier to update if you are displaying a lot of information that has to be changed regularly.

"define modules where the information is going to be displayed and link them to the database…"

Insert information into databases through a content management system, then define modules where the information is going to be displayed and link them to the database. This way users know where to expect the information they want as the general look and feel will be more organized.

A web design example could be Sky Sports, the online version of the TV channel. They have a loot of content that is organized in boxes and modules that are connected to a special part of the database. This also help journalists to know exactly where their articles and pictures will be displayed. Read here more  Design vs Art articles about Content Management. 

Direct manipulation make users feel more comfortable using your website. Users have been using windows for a long time, so if you try to imitate this behavior users will probably understand your interface without problems.

One good design example is iGoogle, the customized Google homepage. Feeds looks like windows with titles, an “x” and a minus. All these give hints to users that those are actually windows and they will try to move it.

Google have also done this interface self explanatory and easy.

Integrating Ajax in the new BBC homepage has been a great move for better usability and interaction. Clicking on Edit displays the options straight away on the homepage, without pop-ups or taking users to another page.

If you give users a high level of customization, a very interactive interface is the right option, users will feel more comfortable making all those selections. The most important thing, they will actually do those selections; if your customization process is tiring your users are not going to take advantage of it.