Usability of IRS.gov improved?
Computer World — “The site overhaul began with surveying taxpayers and internal users about their goals for using the site, she said. Then, the agency sent several prototypes to a usability lab, while also actively working with employee user groups, such as call center representatives, who point callers to the Web site to ensure internal user needs would be met with the redesign.”
It is definitely encouraging to know that usability was a consideration in the redesign. I’m also pleased that they worked hard to improve their search engine. I’ve used the site several times in the past and I was always frustrated by how hard it was to find forms. I’m taking a stab here, but the vast majority of people just need forms and the information on how to fill them out.
By the way, on the second page of the IRS.gov redesign story, they use the word “portlets” a couple of times. Has that word gone mainstream? Then again, this is a Computer World article so geeks’ll get it.
Another sidebar: I still don’t have a good feel for how folks like me to link to the articles that I blog about. If you have a suggestion or recommendation, let me know. There certainly aren’t any good standards. It is sloppy for most people. And, I haven’t seen any data. Got data?
January 9th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
One rule of thumb for linking to articles that we follow over at Investor Geeks is to always include the author of the article alongside the link (or somewhere else in the post). The main reason for this is that people like to Google themselves from time to time and may stumble across your article in the process. If you’re lucky, said author will either (1) contact you, initiating a potentially useful relationship or (2) publicly thank you through some online medium with a link to your article, which could increase traffic to your site.
Besides writing out the author’s name, I try to have a recap of all references footnote-style at the bottom of my articles. This is just personal preference though. I haven’t read of any standard before.
January 10th, 2006 at 2:20 am
Like Jason, I’ve also started including the writer’s name in linked posts. I think it’s fair that you should acknowledge the writer of the article. The other thing that I’ve started doing is to use the article’s title in the link. This only if the title is not too big.
I also try to minimise the number of links because I think too many links in a post can be distracting for a reader.
No data on this though.