About
Locus of Control presents topics that spark discussion among website creators and users, with a focus on enhancing web user experience. It regularly spotlights useful, innovative web applications as well as examples of exceptional design. About the author...Keep in Touch
Featured Posts
Specials
Topics
adobe air blogging collaboration communicating copy writing design tools desktop apps everyday design facebook flash gadgets icons information architecture information design inspiration interaction design interface design logo design mobile productivity requirements research tools shops social twitter usability user experience vector wallpapers web 2.0 webapps web design web dev windows 7Time Warp
March 2010 S M T W T F S « Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Make Yourself at Home
A Work in Progress
I'm using a free theme until I can make my own. I promise it will be well worth the wait ^_^
Tag Archives: webapps
Allowing Integration is Key to any Webapp’s Success
The web, as we know it today, provides a wide array of applications and social media tools, which we all use in different ways. One day, I was feeling quite overwhelmed by my own use of the web, and attempted to draw a diagram of how my various web applications were interconnected by the flow [...]
Can You Find the Missing Link in Target’s “Itso Builder”?
So the other day, I stumbled across a cool project called Itso Storage that IDEO did for Target some time last year. The product is the typical IDEO output: clever, practical and elegant. However, the web aspect of Itso appears to be missing an important feature. Either that or I’m blind. (Was that a bad [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged everyday design, flash, shops, usability, user experience Leave a comment
Tweetizen – A Simpler Way to Group Tweets
I’m sure a lot of you wish you could split the people you follow on Twitter into groups based on friends, family, co-workers, or subject matter. Well you can. Maybe you’ve tried TweetDeck or PeopleBrowsr – both of which can do this, among many other things. You have to download TweetDeck and (correct me if [...]
Tutorial: Turn Your Sketches Into Clean, Sharp Vector Art
When you scan a sketch into your computer, the lines are often light and have fuzzy edges. Resizing the scan blurs or pixelates the image. You can use Photoshop to darken the lines, but they’re still not going to be as clean and sharp as if you vectored the sketch.
Vectoring your scanned sketches is great [...]
Two New Tools for Quick Usability Testing
In a previous entry, I discussed the need for better UX design tools. Now, from the makers of OptimalSort, come two new tools for testing the usability of your IA and interface design.
Treejack
You input a sitemap in the form of a hierarchically structured list and assign tasks for test participants to perform.
Participants navigate through the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design, research tools, usability, user experience, web design 2 Comments
Get an RSS Feed of All Your Comments Across the Web
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a nice, consolidated feed of all the comments you’ve made on other people’s blogs? BackType gives you this for free, and it’s really easy to use. In addition to the RSS feed, you can also use BackType to:
Five Ways to Create Online Forms & Surveys Without Code
As a compliment to my recent post about form design, here are 5 free WYSIWYG editors for building online forms and surveys. I’ve also included screen shots of each form builder interface so you don’t have to sign up for anything to compare them.
Wufoo – Lets you adjust label positioning on form fields (as [...]
How to Make the Most of Five Seconds
You might be amazed how little time it takes for users to get a first impression of a website and how difficult it is to change that impression once it’s made. Wouldn’t it be great to know what users see in the first 5 seconds of viewing a site design – before building it out?
Two Card Sorting Tools For User Experience Design
Following from last week’s discussion about UX design tools, here are a couple of free webapps that allow you to set up card sorting exercises and analyze the results.
For those who may not know, a card sort is an exercise often used by Information Architects and other UX professionals to reveal natural patterns in the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged design tools, information architecture, research tools, user experience 1 Comment
Improving User Experience Design Tools – The Spirit is Willing, But the Flesh is Weak
User Experience professionals are frequently concerned with bridging the gap between themselves and the users of systems they design. However, there is a parallel gap that needs to be closed between UX designers and the developers of UX design tools. A series of surveys conducted in 2006 by associates of The Information Architecture Institute revealed [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged design tools, information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design, user experience, web design, web dev 1 Comment
Two Ways to Add Chat to Your Website or Blog
Adding a chat widget to your website is a quick and simple way to provide a social element for your users, without managing a complex forum or starting a corporate blog. On the other hand, perhaps you’re a blogger and you just want to give your users a way to interact with one another in [...]
Three Tools to Generate Background Patterns
If you’re looking for a quick way to add a nice looking background pattern to your website, blog or twitter profile, here are a few options – besides the Tartan Maker and Stripe Generator I mentioned in an earlier entry:
PatternCooler – With over 31,000 designs to browse, you’re sure to find something here that will [...]
Top Ten Twitter Tools To Try Today
Alliteration is fun. Anyway, what follows is a list of what I believe are the top 10 tools to use with Twitter, roughly in order of usefulness:
Awesome Highlighter: A Tool for Researchers & Editors
Here’s just a few of the awesome things you can do with Awesome Highlighter:
Highlight with multiple colors and add annotations on websites.
Tag your highlighted pages to your heart’s content.
View your saved pages and edit the highlights, notes and tags.
Easily share with a hyperlink, or send your pages to Twitter and Delicious.
Remind yourself and others why [...]
Gubb: The List-Maker’s Paradise
Are you a compulsive list-maker? Or maybe you just need to keep track of a few things. Either way, Gubb is a simple web application made especially for you. On the surface, it’s intuitive and straightforward – you just make lists.
Setting the Stage – Thoughts on “Web 2.0″
Let’s get this Web 2.0 talk out of the way – does anyone else feel like it might be just a little bit out of control? I figured I’d use the special occasion of my first post as an excuse to lay down some ground rules. Well, really just one: This blog is not about [...]
Wireframing & Prototyping Tools: Balsamiq & Friends