EppsNet

• The Content Strategist as Digital Curator: http://bit.ly/7haS0a #

Infomaki is an open source “lightweight” usability testing tool developed by the New York Public Library to evaluate new designs for the NYPL.org web site and uncover insights about our patrons. Designed from the ground up to be as respectful of the respondents’ time as possible, it presents respondents with a single question at a time from a pool of active questions. In just over seven months of use, it has fielded over 100,000 responses from over 10,000 respondents.

— The Code4Lib Journal – Infomaki: An Open Source, Lightweight Usability Testing Tool

• Notes on Strategy from the Harvard Business School: http://bit.ly/1jTVWO #
• The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing. With examples: http://bit.ly/daUqF #

• Writing Microcopy http://bit.ly/pYMPz #
• Hof's Hut closes. Went there on my first date, then to a movie at the Cinedome, which was demolished 10 years ago. http://tinyurl.com/nkc2s8 #

• It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. –Seneca #
• The definition for “value” that I recently started using is “what guides us when we have to make a hard decision.” http://tinyurl.com/chzkqp #
• @tweetmeme @smashingmag Reading ‘Designing Drop-Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices’ http://tinyurl.com/dnzeyh #
• Love the Weinerschnitzel vs Carls Jr 2 for $3 chili dog battle. The customer is the true winner! #
• RT @BonnieLowe: Reading “Thirsty plants cn twttr 4 water w/ new device.” nxt it’ll be yr cat tweeting 4 snacks. http://tinyurl.com/dfh8dk #
• RT @KathySierra: Choosing a dog based on breed name is ridiculous, but the coder in me is geekily drawn to: http://tinyurl.com/d3gmkc #
• At Uni High 4 Irvine Band Festival #

Look me in the eye
Then tell me that I’m satisfied
Hey, are you satisfied?

— The Replacements, “Unsatisfied”

What is a reasonable target for user satisfaction with a web site?

We did a user satisfaction survey last year and found that 14 percent of respondents felt that our web site didn’t measure up to their expectations.

This year, we have an incentive goal of reducing that number to 8 percent, not based on evidence that any web site has ever achieved a number that low, but based on the opinion of the company that did the survey that anything over a 10 percent dissatisfaction rating is always bad.

Or to flip it around, we’re trying to achieve a 92 percent approval rating.

I wish we hadn’t set the bar quite that high. I don’t want to be a pessimist but not only is that considerably higher than, say, Google (at 78 percent — and what’s not to like about Google?), it’s also higher than Santa Claus, crack cocaine and oral sex . . .

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I read where someone said the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web. A lot of people say the Drudge Report is ugly.

Ha! A lot of people say pugs are ugly too. It doesn’t matter to me. Beautiful and ugly are just opposites that people made up. According to the Tao, there are no opposites.

The Drudge Report is the pug of web sites.

— Lightning