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October 17, 2005

Weblog usability issues

Not only my blog content sucks but its  aesthetically poor as well.  That according to  UI guru Jakob Nielsen's Weblog usability mistakes.

He has identified following 10  weblog  usability issues -

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

I can surely fix 5, 7, 8 and 10. For the rest I don't think I suck as much as some of the other popular blogs I read. 

I do read lot of blogs which suffer from these usability issues.  It's interesting to note that  most of these usability issues go away when you think strictly in terms of Bloglines folders or Newsgator folders. Though that begs a question - Do RSS feeds really need a browser-centric usability model ?  What if I only care about the content quality and ignore how and who of the posts?

At-least to me that's the way of scanning  500 odd feeds , I scan for the  content quality and then recheck who wrote the post to get a better understanding by taking into account author's background and his "agenda".

If I were to add some content level usability issues then I will add following -

- Check your BS level
- Mix agenda with some honesty
- Count your I-told-you-so's and keep it to the digestible level
- Latin is long dead and lot of people prefer ground floor level English, so please keep your Wodehouse in your pocket
- Back up your suck-ups with some fair reasoning (I am getting ready for some flames on this one)

What is your pet peeve with the content on Blogosphere ?

October 17, 2005 in Emerging Technologies | Permalink

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