Everyday UI

What’s in a name?

When you call yourself EverydayUI, you’ll have to write daily. (I’m sorry, my bad).

But hey. What’s in a name?

The new ForeUI 2: Balsamiq combined with Axure.

I always liked Axure for prototyping. It’s simple to use, it has advanced ‘event handling’ and it can export to HTML, which means everyone can see it everywhere. Also, the priority, assign and note features are awesome when working in a team.

On the other hand, I also like programs like Balsamiq and ForeUI, which are more like dynamic sketches. Because of this, the prototype looks more unfinished and is easier to understand for clients. In most cases I start out with Balsamiq for the first rough sketches and then progress on Axure. But… my feeling is that this process can be steamlined more.

ForeUI 2 has made some good progress on closing in to Axure. It now has really advanced event handling (like onKeyUp).

While I still prefer Axure because of it’s stability and better user interface, I find ForeUI a very good alternative. Check out the demo of ForeUI 2.

Never use flags for language selection

I never thought of it before, but Karl Gilis made an excellent point about flags in language selection screens on his website (dutch). Flags are linked to countries, not to languages. One country can have more than one language. So, linking flags to a language doesn’t make sense!

This screenshots illustrates a Belgium website which uses flags for language selection. (link: usability-blog.be)

Some notes on ‘contact pages’

Contact pages are underrated, while they’re often the ultimate ‘goal’ of a website. Here are some quick notes on contact pages!

Track your goals

Google Analytics offers a simple way of tracking ‘goals’ on a website. Assuming contacting you is one of your goals, it might be a good idea to define this as goal in your tracking software, so you can measure the ways people get there.

• Check out Google Analytics Help section: How to set-up a goal

The contact form

Websites which are selling something, often tend to ‘narrow down’ the contact form, by asking questions like ‘what’s the budget?’, or ‘project type’. I don’t think that’s a good thing. You might scare the potential clients and also, what if he/she likes to know some other stuff before getting started?

The contact form should be used for initial contact. After that, follow up e-mails can refer to project type, or budget questions.

The contact form often should be as simple as a compose mail screen in Outlook, Hotmail or Gmail. Give the user the opportunity of writing something he wants.

Add an address

Your office address might never be used on this page, but it has another purpose. If you want to look professional, you want your visitors to trust you. Adding an address, phone number, e-mail address is a good way to gain trust.

Some contact pages

Fajne Chlopaki has a nice contact page

Speak Humans links their ‘Contact’ link to an mailto address. Very annoying!