We’ve officially, finally, launched the company blog, Miskeeto Bytes.

The inaugural post, What’s in a name?, reveals the story behind our funny name (and its funny spelling) and explains our pricing model for design and development work.

Oh, and though it’s not 100% cooked yet, it does come remarkably close to the design recommendations I made for blog designs in my latest book, Designing the Moment. (The design was the result of a 400-person design discussion I led at WordCamp 2007, and I admitted in the book that I hadn’t yet applied the recommendations to my own blog.)

Ever watched a professional billiards player? Every game, every match, every win is an exercise in the basics. No matter how experienced these players get, they still rely on the basics to put together a winning rack.

Web designers need to do the same thing.

A developer recently asked me for advice on a data-grid in a learning management system he’d been working on. Each row in the table featured the name of an eLearning course alongside some other details, and he had struggled with how to enable users to edit a course via the table. The current version required users to double-click the course name to open the Edit screen. The developer suspected that double-click functionality would be a problem, and he wanted to avoid adding an Edit button to each row in the table for fear that it would clutter up the interface.

I explained that double-clicking was indeed non-standard for web apps, and that it’s difficult for users to discover. I explained that even if he added a line of instructive text to point it out, users were unlikely to read it. I said I’d need to see a screenshot of the data-grid to offer a more informed suggestion, but based on what he explained, adding an Edit button was probably the best solution.

Then he sent me a screenshot. And the answer jumped right out.

In the screen, the course names were displayed as plain black text. There was no hint in the interface that the course names could be clicked (or, in this case, double-clicked).

To solve this problem he’d been fretting about for days, he simply needed to use standard HREFs and then restyle the course names to look like links. Get rid of the double-click functionality. Scrap the idea of adding instructive text. Forget about adding an Edit button.

In other words, stop trying to reinvent the wheel and let HTML do what it does best—connect pages, screens, and screen states via the magic of hyperlinks.

When he replied to my suggestion, I could almost see him kicking himself. Like a lightning bolt had just struck him in the head, and he simply couldn’t believe he had missed something so obvious. So … basic.

If you don’t understand and repeatedly apply the basics, there’s a good chance any invention you come up with will miss the mark and fail to support the goals and behaviors of your users. Before you can innovate well, it’s vital to understand why these standards exist in the first place.

Every game, every match, every win is an exercise in the basics. No matter the project, the basics will take you a very long way towards achieving a good design.

Last night, Alaska Governor and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin perpetuated the myth that Pit Bulls are vicious dogs by nature. If you’re a dog lover, I know this will offend you like it offended me.

During her speech at the Republican National Convention, she stated (at the 4:00 minute mark of the video linked to here):

“I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”

Clearly, the only way this joke could be found humorous to the 20,000+ attendees is by playing on the stereotype that Pit Bulls are naturally prone to intimidation and viciousness. The media even latched on to the idea, saying that Palin is the Republicans’ new “attack dog”.

This, of course, is ridiculous. Pit Bulls are actually very sweet, very loyal and loving dogs who are eager to please. As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad owner.

Barack Obama has promised to adopt a family dog if elected, and the Best Friends Network has pushed hard to convince him to choose a rescue dog over the AKC’s exclusive (and meaningless) list of pure-bred dogs. They are to be commended for their hard work. Now, I hope that Best Friends can also do something to bring Palin’s faulty logic and insulting remark to light. I hope we all can.

As an Obama suppporter, I was offended by many things in Palin’s speech. But as a dog owner, I was most offended by her derogatory remark about Pit Bulls. I expect a certain level of sleaziness from politicians, and I’m prepared to take it all with a grain of salt, but this comment simply crossed the line. By insulting a breed of dogs, which clearly is unable to defend itself, she not only played on peoples’ fears about Pit Bulls, she perpetuated the myth that these wonderful dogs are suited only for attack and defense purposes. It’s appalling, and I hope that the public is able to see past Palin’s childish attempt to classify herself as a tough politician.

If you’re offended by her comment, please consider supporting the Best Friends Network. Start a Facebook Group to raise awareness. Twitter about it.

Stand up and disagree.

I’ve thought for a long time that, whenever possible, we should perform firsthand the activities our applications are meant to support. I’ve advocated this during conference sessions, in articles, in blog posts, and in conversation more times than I can remember.

As a result of this, some people—mostly professional interaction designers, in fact—have essentially called me foolish.

But then last week, Adaptive Path made the same case, when Alexa Andrzejewski wrote the blog post A mile in their shoes, about her experiences as she personally endured the activities of a newly-diagnosed diabetic.

From the post:

“As I pricked myself with needles and logged every carb at every meal, I quickly found that making these challenges my own got my mind’s wheels spinning a lot more often and a lot harder. They spun every time I rationed out cereal with measuring cups (subtracting fiber carbs in my head). They spun as I fretted over the ambiguous portions at restaurants. They spun as I snuck sandwiches onto the office mailing scale because I had no clue what 56g looks like.

While I could have learned about any of these issues by reading forums or blog threads, experiencing them for myself left me with a deep sense of empathy, a head full of ideas, and a nagging drive to find or build solutions.“

Alexa fully admits—as I have—that there are potential issues to this approach. For example, performing activities as a “tourist” is by no means a perfect substitute for being a person who actually must perform the activities regularly. The best person to explain the challenges of being a diabetic is a diabetic.

But—and I wish Alexa had said this—even as a tourist, performing an activity yourself is a far superior research method than simply interviewing or watching other people perform it. Observation has its merits, but observing how an auto mechanic works is very different than actually repairing a car.

Alexa could have performed hundreds of interviews, but she would have never internalized the challenges of a diabetic better than she did by performing those activities herself.

And I’m so glad she did. Not only will she design a better product, she’ll do it from an informed, firsthand perspective, and her product’s end users will benefit as a result.

Of course, there’s one other benefit to Alexa’s research. The next time someone accuses me of going off the deep end, I can point to a blog post from one of the most respected and well-known design firms in the industry.

Thanks, Alexa.

A taste of my newest article on Peachpit.com:

“Users do some awfully dumb things. Chalk it up to Stupid User Syndrome—the disease that causes otherwise perfectly normal people to become total morons as soon as they turn on their computers. They’ll make one ridiculous mistake after another, even when using painfully obvious designs. They’ll write an entire resume and forget to save it. They’ll ask the staff at the Internet cafe for the password to their personal email accounts. While at the local library, they’ll enter the username for their home machines into a browser’s Address bar and wonder why they can’t access their personal files.

So, who are these stupid users and how can we stop them from taking over the web?

Surprisingly, the answer isn’t so simple. (And please, don’t walk away from this article until you’ve read the last few paragraphs.)”

Keep reading!