Capital Notes - Web Usability

"Capital Notes" is an easy blog to navigate around and to read. According to Nielsen's book, Designing Web Usability, chapter 3 explains content design and what to do to create a successful site with regard to length of text, scannability, chunking, headlines, copy editing, use of the inverted pyramid, page titles and legibility.

Length of text: Myers' blog posts include some quick paragraphs with short sentences however some sentences are written a bit longer.

Scannability: The blog is fairly easy to follow with scanning. Some words, phrases and names are written in bold black text to bring attention to them, different colors are used for links,

Chunking: The home page uses chunking well. Each post includes a short paragraph explaining what it is about. However, on my screen (a 10.5") not much is shown "above the fold," so scrolling through the site to navigate is necessary. Each post, when selected, doesn't include multiple pages; it requires scrolling down the page to read the post in its entirety. When Myers uses long quotes or excerpts, chunking of the text is used for easy reading.

Headlines: For the most part, Myers uses clear, important headlines, however sometimes "cute" or "clever" headlines are used.

Copy editing: Myers does a good job at editing his posts. There are few, or no, errors and the writing is "tight," leaving out elaborate details.

Use of the inverted pyramid: Myers uses the inverted pyramid style throughout his posts, starting with the most important information first and then going into less importance as the blog ends.

Page titles: Each headline is a page title leading readers to the blog posts. There are no page titles though when past months/years are clicked on for older posts, i.e. June 2009 doesn't have a page title announcing that page is just for posts from June 2009. The dates are listed in small, italic text above the post, but other than that someone could get lost in archives with no title.

Legibility: The blog is very legible. The background is white with no distracting graphics. The text color is black, blue or orange resulting in high contrast between the text and background. The font for the story are of good size and the post time and labels of the blog are smaller text. None of the text is distracting or moves.

Nothing has been posted to the blog since the birth of his son, October 3, 2009.