Happy talk must die
We all know happy talk when we see it: It’s the introductory text that’s supposed to welcome us to the site and tell us how great it is, or to tell us what we’re about to see in the section we’ve just entered.
If you’re not sure whether something is happy talk, there’s one sure-fire test: If you listen very closely while you’re reading it, you can actually hear a tiny voice in the back of your head saying, “Blah blah blah blah blah….”
A lot of happy talk is the kind of self-congratulatory promotional writing that you find in badly written brochures. Unlike good promotional copy, it conveys no useful information, and it focuses on saying how great we are, as opposed to delineating what makes us great.
Although happy talk is sometimes found on Home pages—usually in paragraphs that start with the words “Welcome to…”—its favored habitat is the front pages of the sections of a site (“section fronts”). Since these pages are often just a table of contents with no real content of their own, there’s a temptation to fill them with happy talk. Unfortunately, the effect is as if a book publisher felt obligated to add a paragraph to the table of contents page saying, “This book contains many interesting chapters about _____, _____, and _____. We hope you enjoy them.”
Happy talk is like small talk—content free, basically just a way to be sociable. But most Web users don’t have time for small talk; they want to get right to the beef. You can—and should—eliminate as much happy talk as possible. - Steven Krug
On arrows pointing TO what you click
Every time I use it, it makes me think, because the button that executes the search just doesn’t look like a button—in spite of the fact that it has two terrific visual cues: It contains the word “search,” which is one of the two perfect labels for a search box button, and it’s the only thing near the search box.
It even has a little triangular arrow graphic, which is one of the Web’s conventional “Click here” indicators. But the arrow is pointing away from the text, as though it’s pointing at something else, while the convention calls or it to be pointing toward the clickable text.
Moving the arrow to the left would be enough to get rid of the question mark over my head. - Steve Krug
How people use the internet.
- Steve Krug
Buttons should be buttons
Another needless source of question marks over people’s heads is links and buttons that aren’t obviously clickable. As a user, I should never have to devote a millisecond of thought to whether things are clickable—or not.
You may be thinking, “Well, it doesn’t take much effort to figure out whether something’s clickable. If you point the cursor at it, it’ll change from an arrow to a pointing hand. What’s the big deal?”
The point is, when we’re using the Web every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to throw us.
And as a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. The fact that the people who built the site didn’t care enough to make things obvious—and easy—can erode our confidence in the site and its publishers. - Steve Krug
2011: The Year in Kickstarter — Kickstarter
Love this.
How to Pitch: 6 Things You Must Know | Inc.com
Always focus on benefitting readers—when you do, your company will get to bask in the reflected PR glow. The more you feel you need to say, the less you really have to say. Some people think writers are lazy and look for stories that write themselves. I can’t argue with the lazy part, but I really don’t want to read a 1,000-word pitch with a comprehensive overview of the topic and every semi-relevant statistic. The best products can be described in a few sentences, and so can the best pitches.
Simplicity - Matt Gemmell
A lovely reminder.
It’s just part of the search for simplicity, and focus, and elegance in life - which is something that creative people desperately need. Don’t remove yourself from contrary opinions and criticism (that’s how we grow), but be willing to take control of your environment.
Simplicity is a powerful thing, if you can find it. It can improve your creativity and focus, provide much-needed perspective, or allow you to declutter your workspace and your thoughts. It can also make you happier.
The Technium: Better Than Owning
This is the future and present.
The internet is this magic rental store. Its virtual basement is infinite, and it provides omni-access to its holdings. There are fewer and fewer reasons to own, or even possess anything. Via omni-access the most ordinary citizen can get hold of a good or service as fast as possessing it. The quality of the good is equal to what you can own, and in some cases getting hold of it may be faster than finding it on your own in your own “basement.”
Access is so superior to ownership, or possession, that it will drive the emerging intangible economy. The chief holdup to full-scale conversion from ownership to omni-access is the issue of modification and control. In traditional property regimes only owners have the right to modify or control the use of the property. The right of modification is not transferred in rental, leasing, or licensing agreements. But they are transferred in open source content and tools, which is part of their great attraction in this new realm. The ability and right to improve, personalize, or appropriate what is shared will be a key ingredient in the advance of omni-access. But as the ability to modify is squeezed from classic ownership models (think of those silly shrink-wrap warranties), ownership is degraded.
The trend is clear: access trumps possession. Access is better than ownership.
The Year That Was - The Morning News
For me, the Occupy movement definitely tops the list.
We gathered writers and thinkers around the world and asked them to sift through the past year of revolutions, deaths, discoveries, and breakthroughs to answer: What was the most important event of 2011?
