Jessica Ivins :: User Experience Architect / Web Designer
News & Thoughts
March 3rd, 2008
My current full-time role at G2 Interactive consists of User Experience and no Web development or design. To keep my Photoshop and development skills fresh, I decided to do some volunteer Web work. Long story short, I was put in touch with Community Housing Services (CHS), a non-profit located in Lansdale, PA. I just recently designed, coded, and launched their new site.
CHS's old site was woefully outdated and difficult to use. I gave the site a face lift and rearchitected the content, making it much more user-friendly. I really enjoyed working on this. Like all volunteer work, it was very fulfulling, and it was fun to get my hands dirty with development again.
February 6th, 2008
For a good chuckle, check out the 2008 Bad Usability Calendar (PDF). It's as witty and dry as last year's calendar (PDF). I think my favorite is January's iTunes scrolling emulation, or the mess of dropdown menus in March. They've taken quite a few jabs at AJAX and other Web 2.0 technologies this year. Good stuff. :)
January 18th, 2008
I've been working on a site redesign for a non-profit in Lansdale, PA. It's been moving slowly but keeping me stimulated all the while, and it's allowing me to touch all the fun stuff I miss so much from development, like Photoshop, CSS, XHTML, and even FTP. :)
So today I was visiting one of my favorite veggie sites, only to be defeated by a rollover ad upon login. I was very confused and annoyed by the obtrusive ad, as it was covering a text link that I just wanted to click, but my efforts were fruitless. The ad was blocking me from interacting with the Web page components. I don't know where the ad came from or whether or not it was "user-initiated" - meaning it was triggered by me, probably unintentionally by rolling over an ad in the side column. I wasn't sure what to do. Should I refresh the page? Try to click on the navigation? Kick, shout, and scream? Was there any point to this annoying thing at all?
)
Note: I finally noticed the Close button in the upper right hand corner (but not until after I composed this diatribe). Finally came a sigh of relief, albeit a little late.