Jakob Nielsen has a useful overview of the technique:

1. Replace every Nth word in the text with blanks. A typical test uses N = 6, but you can make the test easier by using a higher N value.
2. Ask your test participants to read the modified text and fill in the blanks with their best guesses as to the missing words. Each person should work alone.
3. The score is the percentage of correctly guessed words. Because you’re testing comprehension rather than spelling skills, synonyms and misspellings are allowed.

If users get 60% or more right on average, you can assume the text is reasonably comprehensible for the specified user profile employed to recruit test participants.

Of particular interest to me was the difference in meaning between ‘readability’ and ‘comprehension’ regarding the copy being tested.

Here is an example of the technique. (I scored 100% but had to remind myself that it simply meant the copy being used was comprehendible, rather than indicating that I was a literary genius.)

(I entered ‘electronic calculators’. Worked just fine.)

Read the backstory on Smashing.

Unfortunately, instead of making the Windows version of Skype better, they’ve decided to fix the discrepancy by making the Mac version of Skype more like the Windows version.

Totally agree. The new Skype for Mac has completely thrown out the old UI for something that’s much larger and arguably more complex. The Skype blog post that announced the new version is full of rationale of why things changed but, for the life of me, I can’t understand why the Skype team changed the things they did.

Skype 2.8 wasn’t broken. Isn’t broken. One of the reasons I’m sticking with it.

The other reason? Skype 5 for Mac.

For the record, I think this is change for change’s sake. The reasoning behind the change seems to be one of consistency — the iPhone has a switch on the side to mute it and it appears that the powers-that-be decree the iPad should tow the line — but I think this is an example of consistency being considered over appropriateness. Having the ability to mute your phone in an instant is a good piece of functionality to have, for a variety of obvious reasons. However I think the use-case for iPads is different — you’re unlikely to walk into a meeting with your iPad and want to mute it. It’s not going to ring (well, perhaps with a VOIP app it might, but certainly nowhere near as often as your regular cellphone would). My view is that you’re far more likely to want to read your iPad laying down, so having the ability to lock the orientation is a good thing.

But, I digress. The change is happening and I’m sure we’ll all get used to it. However, whilst we’re on the subject of consistency, it drives me nuts that the iPhone version of iBooks has the buttons in different positions to the iPad’s version of iBooks.

Above: the iBooks app on the iPad. Note how the ‘Store’ button is on the left and the ‘Edit’ button is on the right.

Above: the iBooks app on the iPhone. The ‘Store’ button is now on the right and the ‘Edit’ button is on the left.

A small thing, maybe, but my muscle memory betrays me when I switch between the two. I use the iPad version most often but, on occasion, I’ll want to use the iPhone version. If I want to browse the store, I always find myself mid-Edit — my brain remembers that the Store button is on the right. ¹

I hope this gets fixed in iOS 4.2.

With the exception of the 1983 Lisa mouse (with a steel ball!) and the Magic Trackpad I’ve used every single one throughout the years. Whilst the ‘puck’ mouse was the most uncomfortable they’ve all suffered from a lack of good ergonomics and I’ve never found an Apple mouse that’s comfortable to use for extended periods of time. I tried a Magic Mouse as recently as last week and didn’t get on with it unfortunately. I’m hoping to try out a Magic Trackpad soon.

I’m currently using a Logitech MX Revolution. Whilst it’s the most comfy mouse I’ve ever owned it still invokes pains in my right hand, wrist & fingers.

From “The customer is a stranger”:

The essential challenge of the Web is to become customer-centric. To truly succeed on the Web the organization must shape itself around the customer. This is very difficult for any organization to do because at heart all organizations are tribes. And the one thing a tribe does not like to do is shape itself around the stranger, the outsider.

The success stories are insightful. Which do you think would have garnered more attention from the client at the outset:

“We think you should make this change as testing has shown it’ll improve sales.”

Or:

“Making this change will increase your revenue by more than 2000% per quarter.”

I’m not convinced this is the future of payments. The convenience of cards is in their ease and speed of use — this disappears as soon as the user has to do more than present the card and sign. Imagine standing in line at a Starbucks and having to tap in a PIN to generate your card number so you can pay for your Americano. You’re going to hold a lot of people up.

I don’t think the future of payments involves little bits of plastic.

Apple changed it yesterday. This is how it looks now:

Gah.

In the eight years or so I’ve been doing design for the Web, I’ve seen–and admittedly have also personally attempted–more unnecessary re-inventions of the basic tab metaphor than I care to recount. For some reason, we designers find the basic visual construction of tabs (perhaps most prominently displayed at Amazon.com) to be dissatisfactory, but there’s no denying that they work. I’ve come to grips with this, and now I tell any designer I work with: let tabs be tabs.

Why do designers try and reinvent the wheel here? This is something I am also guilty of–I recently has cause to tweak a design to make the main navigation more obvious and clear-cut, so I designed it as tabs. Despite trying numerous ’sexy’ tab designs, I found the simpler they were, the better they worked. In terms of design, the tabs were probably the most simple elements on the page. They didn’t need to be complicated. Tabs are understood.

It’s strange, Khoi cited Amazon’s tabs as an example of tabs ‘that work’. I’m sure most UI designers would look at them and think “they could be spruced up a bit”. But I bet most designers would struggle to keep them as usable and, well, obvious as they currently are.