Journal

Favourite things: October

Here’s the second in my regular monthly round-ups of the stuff that’s been inspiring me or sparking my interest during October, sourced from my feeds.

Beyond Goals: Site Search Analytics from the Bottom Up
Lou Rosenfeld‘s upcoming book on analytics and user experience, Search Analytics: Conversations with your Customers is currently top of my ‘must buy’ list. This article is a little preview of what’s to come.

SEO FAQ
Derek Powazek‘s wonderfully splenetic rant about the evils of witless search engine optimisation dominated my feeds for days. Read, laugh, weep.

‘Real web designers write code. Always have, always will.’
Jeffrey Zeldman

Why designers should care about HTML5
My one issue about Cennydd Bowles‘ smart piece is that, published on his site and the HTML5 Doctor site means it’s talking a little to the converted: it deserves a wider audience.

Just add an egg
I’ve already concluded that no month is complete without at least one piece of wisdom from the pen of Harry Brignull. This piece really connects for me with Russell Davies‘ talk at Playful (see my post on Getting Playful for more) about the important role that ‘pretending’ has to play in user experience.

Focusing interaction design with design strategy
Andrew Meir for UX Booth on the importance of design strategy. It isn’t necessarily new, but Andrew says it well and with passion.

‘follow me, add me as a friend, view my photos, hear me speak, buy my book, attend my workshop, fork me. what happened to we on the web?’
George Ornbo

Herd mentality
Gruber in excellent form doing his usual forensic dissection of lazy Mac punditry. And no, Apple didn’t announce a netbook this month.

Desire lines – the metaphor that keeps on giving
Peter Merholz for Adaptive Path on a metaphor I’ve already found myself using.

‘It’s called “usability testing” (not “user testing”) for a reason: we’re testing the design, not the user’
Jared Spool

Still want more? Take a look back at my favourites for September.