Among the many interesting reactions to our blog usability study, Tim Bednar’s thoughtful post regarding the changes he is planning to make to the design of his blog has got to be the most inspiring. We knew that the results of our study would be a bit startling (although, upon reflection, not that surprising), but we secretly hoped to have the kind of impact that Tim’s post represents. Basically, he is proposing a series of subtle, but significant, changes to the design of blogs that would address many of the issues our test participants raised. Here’s what we think is really interesting:

The biggest blog design implication (that seems obvious now) is that all blogs need to publish entries in a flat hierarchy. All entries should be published as an individual page and these individual pages need to be clearly identifiable as “the blog” with the ability to search, browse the entire archive.

This is precisely the kind of user-centered approach that we (and others) would typically take to the design of any interface. Yet, inexplicably, this same rigor does not appear to have been applied to the design of most blogs — even ones offered by major corporate / media brands. Instead, many of us have just accepted the terminology and design conventions offered by the blogging tools themselves (because, we suspect, most people still don’t really “get” what all this stuff means). It’s a fascinating direction to take and we can’t wait to see how Tim’s blog looks after the change. ‘Nuff said. We will not steal his thunder here — go read Tim’s post.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 4:33 pm and is filed under General, Blog usability.