It was the same old story. I was working with Whitney Quesenbery on some wireframes for a client’s website. As usual, she’d done a lovely job on the design. As usual, I’d fussed around with content. We’d done our usualContinue reading… How to get clients to look at wireframes properly
Author: Caroline Jarrett
Colons at the end of labels – revisited
In 2006, I wrote twice about colons on the end of labels on forms. This is the second of those posts. I’ve updated it in 2025 to reflect on how the topic has changed in the past 19 years. InContinue reading… Colons at the end of labels – revisited
Colons at the end of labels?
This post dates from May 2006. I’ve updated it with my views in 2025. A month later in June 2006, I wrote another one: Colons at the end of labels – revisited, and in 2025 I updated that one too.Continue reading… Colons at the end of labels?
Matters of life and death: an investigation of “living wills” and other advance directives
Earlier this year, we learned of the bitter legal battles over Terri Schiavo. Her husband and her parents disagreed on whether to continue to give her treatment after she collapsed into a coma seven years ago. Like Terri, I haveContinue reading… Matters of life and death: an investigation of “living wills” and other advance directives
Sentence or title case in ISO-9241:1998
Update in 2025. This article was published in 2005 and reflected the standards available then. ISO 9241:1998 was withdrawn in 2021. Back in the 2000s, we referred a lot more to ISO standards, Twenty years later, we’re more likely toContinue reading… Sentence or title case in ISO-9241:1998
User Interface Design and Evaluation: Open University textbook
“User Interface Design and Evaluation” began life as the Open University distance learning course M873, part of the postgraduate diploma. More than 1000 professionals studied the course and the University decided to make the core course materials available as aContinue reading… User Interface Design and Evaluation: Open University textbook
“Easy Read” and writing for people with learning disabilities
For a long while now, I’ve been worrying about how to design forms for people with learning disabilities. It’s not been a pressing problem because frankly, a lot of the forms that I work with don’t even work for peopleContinue reading… “Easy Read” and writing for people with learning disabilities
We need to include people with disabilities in our designs
Recently, I was having an online conversation about the challenges of finding participants for testing – specifically, the challenges of finding participants with disabilities. Someone put the view; “if we’re having trouble finding people with disabilities, then maybe we wouldContinue reading… We need to include people with disabilities in our designs
Hooray, I’m Doing the Forms!
Here’s a little secret that I’d like to share with you: most people just aren’t all that thrilled by forms. They don’t like filling them in, they don’t like thinking about them, and they certainly don’t like the idea ofContinue reading… Hooray, I’m Doing the Forms!
The piece of HTML created just for me: Reset
HTML 2.0 appeared in 1995. At that time, I was working in usability of forms – and I still am. But I didn’t have email or an internet connection. So I think it was remarkably nice of the authors to includeContinue reading… The piece of HTML created just for me: Reset