Category Archives: Brain Dump

Lunch today at Virginia Tech

I am a Hokie. I grew up an hour south of Blacksburg, fell in love with the campus at first sight, got two degrees from Tech, and moved back to the Blacksburg area just a few years ago. My brother graduated from Tech. My mom, who is now seventy years old, applied to Tech […]

Picture this…

Ten students cross the quad laughing to each other, led by Professor Martin. He takes the front steps of the dorm two at a time and holds the door for his students. “This could be embarrassing,” whispers Kayla.
The group gathers at the door to room 312. Two knocks and a snicker. The door swings open […]

No substitute for digging through the data yourself

Jim, Jeannine and I just returned from a week in London working with Imperial College on the architecture of their site. We got along famously with their internal team, and the result was great progress on the site map and wireframes of the key pages.

Does your web site help or hurt your brand?

What’s wrong with this statement?
“We need to make sure the look and feel of the site works with our branding.”
At first this seems reasonable – obviously your web site should use colors, fonts, logos and language that are consistent with your brand identity as it appears in other media. But this statement misses the bigger […]

Good project leadership makes all the difference

Information technology projects at U.S. companies fail at an alarming rate. Depending on the measurement you use, failure rates run between 35 percent and 70 percent. Web sites are a portion of this. They may fail even if they are successfully launched, because they do not achieve their objectives.
But why do so many projects fail?

Making the web usable for the visually impaired: Beyond Section 508 Compliance

In this post I’ll take a look at what’s being done to make the web easier for visually impaired people to use, and share some insights gained during a visit to the founders of Usability.gov, who have been leading the way in user testing research for accessibility.
People with visual impairments navigate the web much […]