When I think about the types of communication systems that companies use, it seems like phone menus are much more error-prone than email, websites, and other channels. This really isn’t that surprising. You can easily test the functionality of email and web forms by sending an email message, or navigating to and submitting the forms [...]

During the past few weeks, I’ve eaten at two different Chipotle restaurants. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Chipotle is a fast casual chain that sells tasty burritos, tacos, etc. Generally, the food is very consistent from one location to the next. But one thing surprised me: the amount of salsa you get in [...]

Once your website grows to a certain size, you’re going to end up with a few broken links. Other sites tend to change their filenames, move to new domains, or take certain pages down entirely. This is especially true with smaller sites that don’t understand how to use a redirect when a URL is changed. [...]

Over the past few months, I’ve been trying out various versions of Opera Mini 4 for mobile browsing. I had at least two beta versions, all of which installed and worked fine on my BlackBerry. Granted, there was a problem actually starting the install the first time, but I figured this out with a web [...]

Considering how long the web has been in the mainstream, it’s amazing that some websites still use hard-to-read color schemes like yellow text on a white background or dark grey on black. To make sure you don’t accidentally end up in this club, always do a reality check when you’re creating a new design. Try [...]

When I encounter a product that’s hard to use, the same thought always crosses my mind: nobody in the company actually uses it on a regular basis. To be more specific, even if some employees do use their company’s product, these people don’t have any significant influence over product design or subsequent revisions. Obviously, customer [...]