Comments on: Weblog Usability from Jakob Nielson.

By: eric

eric — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:21:40 +0000

Ellis,
I think we stopped by your booth during the workshop so we just barely missed you. You are with Sway Design right? Thanks for the shout out, we’ll make sure to connect next time, there was just to much to see and do at once.

Toby,
Drop us a line when things are up and running or if you have questions with the new blogs. I just found Concealed, Discovered, Revealed blog before the conference, are the new blogs for Artists in Residence again or are they for the Museum itself?

By: Ellis

Ellis — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:41:27 +0000

I also sadly missed your workshop at MW2006 but heard it was great. We gave the Walker Blogs a shout out at our mini-workshop “Using Open Source Software to Facilitate Collaboration Among Artists, Exhibitors and Patrons” and in our paper since The Walker setting the standard right now. You’ve done a great job with the blogs.

Nielson (it’s Jacob BTW) has some good points. I think your decision to avoid problem #8 “Mixing Topics” by splitting the Walker Blogs is one of the smartest things you’ve done. It lets the overall site speak with numerous voices which is really valuable.

By: toby

toby — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:18:49 +0000

thanks eric,

thats a good tip about the blogline folders- i hadn’t noticed that feature - it works very nicely. i take your point about the long titles being ungainly.

we’re planning on setting up more blogs here at the V&A museum over the coming year and will be taking a few tips from the way you’ve done it at the walker.

By: eric

eric — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:58:23 +0000

Hi Toby,
That’s an excellent point about the names. We opted not to append “Walker Art Center” because it makes our titles very long and they wrap to a second line on most RSS readers, so perhaps something like “Walker | New Media Initiatives Blog” would be more palatable. I’ll be sure to point out your comment to the team here but I’d also mention that Bloglines has folders. If you haven’t used them yet it might help keep things sorted.

By: toby

toby — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:12:09 +0000

I enjoyed listening to your entertaining blog presentation at Museums on the Web a couple of weeks ago.

On the subject of blog usability…. I’ve just signed up to a couple of your blogs and have got one minor usability gripe - the title of the rss feeds.

I use bloglines to manage my feeds and, as usual, this application lists my feeds in alphabetic order. Because your feeds are titled ‘New Media initiatives’ or ‘Visual Arts’ they appear scattered through the list. I’ll probably forget who is producing these feeds, and end up unsubscribing.

I’d find it useful if you included Walker Arts Centre or something at the beginning of each title to group them together and remind me what I’m subscribing to.