Psychic: Fuckus!
Brodie: That’s what I’m talking about!
TS: She said “focus”
Brodie: Whatever.

On Saturday I did something I had only heard about in fair tales; I conducted a focus group for our new website. To put it lightly it was mind blowing. It was interesting to see how their clicking habits compared to how you had designed pageflow. Not to mention the things that were totally overlooked.

I had them do a few tasks that I needed users to be able to do with little problem (adding stuff to their cart, signing up for an account, checking out, searching, etc.). It was interesting to see where their eyes focused on the page, what confused them, and what path they followed to find products.

A friend of mine turned me onto what appears to be a wealth of information concerning web user interface. I found a few particularily interesting, such as the Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 and Writing for the Web.