昨天听说yahoo换新首页，上去看了还是老的，今天再到yahoo.com一看，顶上有一句话问我要不要尝试一下新首页，当然要，于是看到下面的yahoo新首页。
因为新闻内容和广告等都是国外的，不太好评说，单从左边这个可以定制，并且加入更多应用的侧边栏来说，非常不错，应该对用户来说有很强的粘性，yahoo在很多年前成为最成功的门户之后，又想成为门户的门户，国内的话，很难想象登录sina之后收取搜狐的邮件。而在yahoo上就可以除了加上众多yahoo自己的应用以外，选择gmail，ebay之类的应用，使得yahoo首页成为替代浏览器收藏夹的功能，也算是一种个性门户吧，但yahoo有些不同。
暂时只发现左边的“我的喜爱”可以定制，右边yahoo的新闻等各类模块不能移动。和很多个性化门户有差异。或许yahoo明白了大部分用户并不喜欢折腾这个道理，只提供了需要定制的地方。
跟着我的团队很辛苦，因为我把这句话是当作座右铭的，个性使然，不拒绝任何新事物。以前说到过，网站应该是这个样子的吗，后来也做了一点试验，种种原因，不是很成功。也不是很失败，当时是环境等一些因素，无法继续坚持。现在，一些困难逐步消去，我又可以继续尝试变化带来的快乐。
很多人对于变化是有恐惧感的，这是非常正常的，此刻的模式经历过时间考验，一定有合理的地方，新的事物若都是正确的，世界恐怕会更加混乱。
回到一点小的问题上，中国网站和美国网站的分别几乎已经成为一种集体潜意识了。那一大堆一大堆的内容块，用户们真的会去仔细的一条条去看吗？那些标题党带来的点击，对于用户的体验会是没有伤害的吗？
这里是我工作的网站，首页是在2009年4月底重新设计的，当时设计的主要目的是为了统一页面风格，去除首页上和组织结构对应的内容块划分。但是，我发现核心问题始终没有解决，
1 提供的信息，不能正好击中用户的需求，用户应该怎么办？或者说网站为用户提供了什么办法？
2 不能击中需求，用户是否能够记住网站，以便定期回访？
3 击中用户需求之后，能否提供足够的衍生阅读？
于是，我们开始变化了，这一个变化涉及到首页-新闻内容呈现涉及-新闻运行方式-新闻频道-各个新闻子频道-新闻内页-其他调用显示新闻的频道，一个复杂的产品链。
2008年2月，我们的流量跌倒了很低，通过3个月的努力，5月底，流量提升了50%，这三个月我们只是刚刚开始做网站风格统一的事情，实际上整个运营人员在3个月中还减少了一半有余。
这次，我又想做一个大的变化，一步步解决上面自己提出的问题，垂直网站的用户是一个特定的人群加上一大群偶尔感兴趣的用户，真正的抓住了用户的需求，解决用户的问题，用户自然就会停留时间长，会回访，会有口碑效应。
互联网才几年阿，而抓住用户需求，倾听用户需求，总是不错的。如果愿意，欢迎参加我们的测试，共同交流，在这里或者本blog下留言都可以。
你应该已经听说过这个工具，Balsamiq Mockups，这个基于Adobe Air平台的UI设计工具。之前我也用过一些其他的UI设计工具，包括很多年前的Visio和Smartdraw，甚至是Word。现在，无疑Balsamiq Mockups for Desktop是UI设计工具中的翘楚。
79美元的价格着实不便宜，据说中国用户只要写一篇介绍介绍这个软件的blog，就可以得到作者给出的一个免费的序列号。我准备等一下去试试看好运气。
这里也顺便说一下我最近在公司做的一些项目，不过实在占用了我很多业余时间，而我的身体状况使我在10：30必须睡觉，时间管理真是一个大问题啊。
我和同事们正在进行几乎完全的网站重构工作，公司网站分为新闻，车型数据库，地方版，社区和交易系统。我们已经基本完成了地方版的工作，车型数据库已经到了coding，新闻这里比较复杂，在同时进行UI设计、UE设计、coding、运营流程重构和策略制订，社区我们用的是uchome，基本上没有什么太多的工作量，manyou平台现在越来越多的应用很不错，交易系统还在设计中。
我和我的同事们在去年，曾经用过6周时间，用一个产品经理兼程序员和一位美工，用六周时间完成了一个二手车产品，当时采用了一定的敏捷开发方式，在六周时间内每周升级一次，迅速的达到了项目目标。现在我和这几位同事又开始一个有趣的项目，一个和汽车有点关系的webgame，我们也会使用Balsamiq Mockups来完成这个产品的UI/UE设计，估计第一个版本的工作需要1-2周时间，之后将会采取一周升级一次的开发方式，对需求、用户访问习惯、市场推广方式、流量进行分析后进行提高。
突然发现，做网络产品设计成了一个比较时髦并且赚钱的工作。
因为很多人天天上网，网站不久这样嘛，页面设计和程序开发是后面的事情，设计个网站好像很简单。
真的那么简单吗？
其实，也天天用windows，用office，没有几个人觉得设计windows是个很简单的事情吧，说实话，能把写字板完整实现的大学毕业生估计不到10%。我想，大概软件设计还是一门传统意义上比较高深的事情，最容易的vb，学学变量设计，形参实参还比较闹心。网页不同了，dreamweaver拿来就能用，几个页面就出来了。不过如此。
真的不过如此吗？
内行的人知道当然不是，设计网站产品和设计一个传统意义上的软件一样，需要很多知识，在写创意纪主题的时候还提到了很多心理学知识，网页设计师能设计到什么程度，程序开发能开发什么功能，效率和稳定性如何，基础的服务器架构知识，项目管理，测试技巧，等等，也是一大堆。
不怪个人，怪互联网发展太快，还不是一门成熟的产业，于是大家可以热闹一下。浪淘尽，千古英雄人物。
从dos年代的简单(不得不简单)到windows下的花哨，又到浏览器中呈现内容的简单，然后又是浏览器中内容的繁复，现在又是google为代表的简洁，甚至包括容器-浏览器(chrome)的简洁。
我以为，界面的易用性和简介并不矛盾，有的界面我们还是需要复杂一些，漂亮一些，而有的则应该简单一些，清晰明了一些。个人从追求形式到追求用户体验走了很多弯路，还好，至少至少什么是不太对的。mind3项目实践中，也有这方面的探索。内容总是至上的。用户的行为流畅度和记忆则是其次。
从汶川地震到奥运，公司的网站都做了相关的专题，相比较，汶川地震时候专题流量更加高一些，几乎没有什么原创内容的专题一天可以有10w左右的pv，在分析流量的时候，发现一个很奇怪的现象，一些比较热门和还算热门的关键字从google和baidu过来很多，不少关键字排在前三，有一些可以到第一，比门户高和比转载出处高的现象经常发生。所以seo真的是一件很有趣的事情。
鉴于这些关键字中还是有一些比较敏感的，我刚才发现有一个关键字组合我做到google第三的，已经因为政策原因被屏蔽了。我小结一下自己的心得，并不是只针对seo，更多的是针对用户阅读，我相信google和baidu是能够聪明的明白用户需要什么内容的。
1 pagerank。pr值很重要，我们的两个专题分别在两个pr值不同的域名之下，不计算其他因素，流量相差好几倍。google几乎没有公开过什么其他指标，所以pr高很定是有用的。
2 页面简洁。不要有太多东西，虽然我们有时候没有办法，必须放一堆导航栏之类的，能够简化就简化，少放就少放，平衡的标准我觉得是从页面top开始最好第3行出现文章的标题，实在不行，不要超过第5行。
3 标题中关键字前置。张三在吃饭比吃饭中的张三要好。
4 内容中的第一段很重要。第一段不要超过100字，将主要内容说清楚。
5 关键字数量。一篇文章不要奢求针对很多关键字，一般1-2个为宜，最多3个，结合上面的原则，在第一段尽可能的反复出现。
6 转载注明出处。网站的网品很重要。
7 可能的话，改写一下转载的文章。这个涉及到版权问题，不多说了。
8 页面长度。以标准的1024-768分辨率来说，不超过3屏。你愿意看很长的文章吗，我不太愿意。
9 左边优先。很多地方介绍过，左边的内容重要一些，符合一般阅读者的浏览习惯。
10 标题优化，meta优化。别忘了就行，我发现页面title肯定对于seo结果有影响，并且不低。
暂时这些，大家参考，对于高手来说很浅显，不要见笑。最近在设计公司一个频道的重构，个人非常推崇简洁的页面设计和基于互联网的内容整合，如何整合内容到mind3中再谈了。
看到这篇文章不错，暂时没有精力翻译成中文，大家凑合着读吧：
User interface design is my favorite part of the development process. The problems it poses are the most interesting, and thinking up solutions is a form of creative expression. Users consume our applications through the interface – one chance to either deliver a satisfying experience or fail miserably.
It is a topic I have very strong and passionate opinions of, and motivated by this beautiful prose by Jono over at Not the User’s Fault, these are my guidelines for user interaction design:
The first step in interaction design is to know who it will be interacting with. Users can be profiled on many criteria, such as age, technical orientation, vocation, cultural background and more. The user profiles created from segmentation of those criteria are called Personas.
While defining Personas is a common practice for designing user interactions, it might not be possible to engage in all the steps required to fully understand the needs and tendencies of the users they represent – such as interviews, surveys, focus groups etc.
This is especially true on the web, where projects have limited funds and are very quick from inception to implementation. In this case, experience and common sense rule the day – but it is still important to define the base Personas for which the interaction under design applies. Going through the process brings out some considerations that can influence design decisions.
Watching actual users go through an interaction is very important to learn about its effectiveness. Watching live users in action is the best learning experience in interaction design.
Knowing your users is the most basic step to interaction design. Yet, for each user type and interaction requirements there are as many possible implementations as there are interaction designers. At this point the interaction designer has to make choices for his users based on his experience, attitude and style.
It is sometimes hard to avoid designing an interaction for yourself rather than for your users. It is a natural tendency to try to solve interaction problems in a way that seems most natural to you, however that might not always be in the user’s best interest. Ideally, the interaction designer is a part of the target audience. When that is not the case, observing prospective users is very important to understanding their needs and deciding on the approach to solve their problems.
I believe that good UI design is more intuitive than science, and in that respect it is not so different from graphical design. However the two should never be confused – as I’ve argued in my post on common misconceptions in web development.
This old mantra is very much an integral part of a successful user interface. By keeping interactions as simple as possible you will:
A large part of the success of web-based services can be attributed to the simpler interfaces they provide compared to desktop solutions. Some of this is a result of technological limitations on the delivery software (ie, web browsers), but it’s hard to argue with the results.
There are several common ways to simplify interactions:
This is obviously a very partial list, but it’s a good start.
For me as a developer, the KISS principle is deeply ingrained in my thought process. Translating it into user interface design took some getting used to, but once it happened it became second nature.
In fact, many parallels can be drawn between UI design and software architecture design almost to the point you wonder why most developers aren’t interested in designing interactions (actually I know why – most developers resent users for constantly breaking their code. I know this since a couple years back I had the same mindset).
The tools available to us developers have evolved much in recent years, allowing us to create richer interfaces and interactions. With power comes responsibility – we need to apply discretion when using advanced techniques and tools, as to not confuse users. Breaking interface conventions by using new technologies where they are not needed is a mistake.
Conventions should only be broken when they result in a bad user experience or when the alternative is significantly better. The latter is very uncommon when the former does not apply, so be advised.
If you do design a unique interaction (or at least, one that isn’t in common use) – make it as obvious as possible for the user. A user can only begin to understand your new interaction when he realizes that something is different. Disguising buttons as links, hiding drop down menus in small target zones, making background changes to the document without notifying the user – all result in user confusion and a bad user experience.
The more you need to educate the user on how to complete an interaction – the less likely he will bother to. Good interactions are self explanatory.
Users interact with your application since they want to achieve a goal. That goal might be to complete an item purchase, to indulge a curiosity, to gather information and many others. There are several factors that affect the user’s motivation to complete an interaction:
Negative factors can be offset by a fourth one:
The fun factor in interactions is often ignored as they are considered strictly functional. It’s no coincidence the word functional begins with fun 
. The fun factor of an interaction increases motivation for completing it – it makes your application more unique and it increases the user’s tolerance for the interaction.
There are several ways to increase the fun factor of an interaction:
Making your interface prettier will have a positive effect on your users’ perception of it. It’s no secret that most of the illusion of Apple’s superior OS interface is made on the grounds of aesthetics.
Computer games have some of the best interfaces of any computer software, and it’s no coincidence. You can make your interactions more gamely by adding feedback, reward the user for completing steps and transmit the feeling that the interaction is a part of the user’s journey towards his goal, rather than a functional requirement that he must take care of.
The user’s time and patience are limited. Advance the interaction as much as you can with each user input. Make the user feel the interaction is smart and that it is working with him towards completion.
Those are my thoughts on user interaction design, born out of my experience in web development and of my introspection as a long-time user. If you are interested in user interface design, the GNOME Human Interface guidelines are as good as reference as you will find. My favorite web authors on the subject include Jono at Not the User’s Fault, Bill Scott at Looks Good Works Well and Aza at Aza’s Thoughts.
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