I launched the new design with only some of the content from the old design, with every intention of migrating the rest over in the not-too-distant future. But then I got a new job. Suddenly it's three years later and I still haven't migrated any of my old projects into the no longer new site.

So today I bit the bullet and did the necessary work to move several of my art projects into the art studio. I still have to add my very early web art. But the rest is there and looking great. Now if I could just get the rest of my web design projects added to the design studio, everything will finally be in place. By then of course, it will be time for a re-design that is more mobile friendly. But I think I can let this design sit a while longer.

This revelation came to me when I discovered new drop-down menus on the Greatschools main navigation menu. Drop-down menus aren’t new, but this new drop-down menu joined pre-existing drop-down menus associated with the sub-menu that is situated below the main navigation. So Greatschools implemented a second set of drop-downs from their main navigation to “assist” users in finding content that is deeper within the site. There’s only one problem; drop-down menus are not always that easy to use.

Most drop-down menus require precise control of the mouse in order to keep a menu on the screen, if the user ventures just a little off of the menu, the menu disappears and the user has to start over. In the Greatschools example, drifting off of the main navigation drop-down might trigger a drop-down from the secondary navigation right below it. I was told by a former colleague at Greatschools that the new drop-downs were added in response to a Google adjustment. The result was a success for SEO, but a less user-friendly page for the users.

Link fields are another mechanism used to improve SEO. Examples of these can be seen at that bottom of the LetsTalk and Wirefly sites. Both sites focus on selling wireless services and devices. Note the repeated use of the word phone in many if not all of the links. These links aren’t designed to entice users to click. They’re there for search engine indexers. If a user is looking for a new phone or service plan, chances are they’re going to click on the main navigation links labeled phones or plans. They’re certainly not going to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to click on links labeled “Verizon Wireless Cell Phones”. The end result is that the user is served content that has little value in helping them to complete the task of finding and buying a new phone or plan.

Greatschools also has link fields on the home page. In fact one is “hidden” from the user under a “tab”. But the links are there for the search indexer to find. These “hidden” links are of particular interest. Each link goes to a page that features a search form specific to the state clicked on, that provides the same search functionality as the find a school search forms at the top of the page and in the column on the right. Clicking one of these links doesn’t bring the user any closer to finding a school in their state. These links don’t improve the user experience.

The dark early days of SEO are also rife with bad user experiences including invisible text, link farms and irrelevant search results. The use of invisible text and link farms has dwindled since Google made changes that penalized sites that tried to game the system, but irrelevant search results still occur frequently because someone figured out a way to raise their page rank in response to Google’s algorithm.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think that SEO is the culprit here. Responsible SEO is a valuable component to a successful online business. But getting users to a site is only half the battle. If your site is not easy to use, users will go somewhere else to complete their tasks.

I also don’t blame Google. Google is merely adhering to their stated goal of providing the best and most relevant search results to their users. Google makes adjustments to their algorithm to support their goal, not to penalize the sites that occupied the top of the results list.

I blame the reactionary stakeholders who bulldoze through poorly conceived projects that take time and resources to deliver, but provide little value to the user experience and the overall success of a company. Websites that provide quality content and good user experiences rise to the top irrespective of what their competitors do to game the system. Providing quality content and experiences may not be as easy as adding a new drop-down menu or a link field to a site, but quality content and experiences do endure. The drop-downs and link fields are just an adjustment away from oblivion.

Flash was always misused on the web. A plugin that was meant to enhance the user experience quickly became the user experience. But Flash interfaces have never been very accessible to those with disabilities. Macromedia and then Adobe, made some effort to support accessibility, but they always came up short to providing full and equivalent access to disabled users.

Flash interfaces were also practically useless for touchscreen devices. The primary reason for this has more to do with the design of many Flash UI's. In many cases the UI designers relied on feedback based on mouse over events to let a user know that some graphical element was clickable. This allowed designers to create non-conventional interfaces that were not intuitive on the surface, but became more useful as a user explored. But there are no hover or mouse over events for a touch device. So a touchscreen user trying to decipher what they had to do to complete an action have to just tap around until something happened, or give up and maybe try the next time they were using a conventional PC and mouse.

As a web designer, I have done my share of Flash projects. My own philosophy when it came to using Flash, was that of enhancement, not critical content. Flash is not SEO friendly. Flash is not easily accessible. Flash is not a native web technology. It's that last point that indicates that the future of Flash may be dim (pun intended).

Simple animations, dynamic slide shows and carousels are all things that Flash excelled at, and are all easily replicated with HTML, Javascript and CSS. The only things that can't be easily done with HTML5 techniques are highly interactive games. It's unlikely that game makers will ever use open technologies for games because they can't protect their intellectual property. Since Flash obscures the programmatical code, game developers will probably still rely on Flash for interactive game creation. But gaming companies are not a big enough customer base to justify continuing development of a dead-end technology.

I think Adobe has come to the same conclusion Apple and Steve Jobs did, Flash has become expendable. It doesn't make sense to spend money and resources to improve a product for a dwindling customer base. Better to develop new tools for designers that adhere to open standards and are supported by (nearly) all the modern browsers.

Fast forward to this past summer and the bombshell announcement from Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings that prices for the combined DVD and streaming services were going to go up 60%. Users were left with the choice of reducing their service to either DVD only or streaming only at lower prices, or accept the price increase for both services.

A few weeks later after customer defections and a drop in stock value, Hastings made another announcement that the DVD service was going to be spun-off as a "new" company called "Qwikster". Users of both DVD and streaming services would be required to maintain two accounts, two queues, and two review histories. The gist of Hastings' message was to suck it up if you wanted to continue using Netflix and Qwikster to satisfy your movie fix.

Hastings made another announcement last week that the Qwikster initiative was dead. Netflix will remain the one source for DVD and streaming services. The price hikes will remain, and Netflix will still treat the two services as separate businesses behind the scenes, but the customer experience will remain the same. Netflix stock sat at nearly 50% of what is was at the beginning of summer. Netflix' fall from grace was now complete, but what went wrong?

First, Netflix took their customers for granted. Until recently, Netflix was highly regarded by users. The website was easy to use. The movie suggestions were relevant. The movie library was enormous. But most of all, the service was convenient and affordable. One of the things that distinguished Netflix from Blockbuster was the convenience of the service. Customers could keep a DVD as long as they wanted with no late fees. Blockbuster soon caught on, but they could not catch up. Blockbuster had fomented too much bad blood with customers to win them back. Netflix subscription numbers grew exponentially. Customer satisfaction was high and users were happy. Then the infamous announcement was released.

The tone of the announcement for the DVD and streaming service split and the new pricing for the combination package was unapologetic and cavalier. Netflix basically said "This is what we are doing like it or not". It seems that they never really considered how customers would react to the service changes and pricing. They also were not very concerned with losing customers to competing services.

As criticism and account cancellations mounted, the stock price dropped. Hastings released the "apology" and Qwikster announcement. The spin-off of the DVD business was unpopular with all Netflix users. Especially the part about two separate accounts, charges, passwords and queues. Hastings even acknowledged that the changes would be inconvenient for users of both services, but Netflix was going to go ahead anyway. Netflix knew that customers would be unhappy about the changes, but wasn't going to deviate from the course it set. These are not the actions of a company that values its customers.

Next, Netflix overestimated the value of its streaming service. Netflix currently offers nearly 5 times as many DVD titles as streaming titles. They are working to expand the streaming library, but for now, the average user with 20 or more titles in their queue, could only see three or four of those titles instantly. Where is the value to customers for paying the same or more for less?

Netflix also did not factor in the hidden cost of the unlimited streaming plan; overage fees due to metered band-width. The two biggest high-speed internet providers, Comcast and AT&T have implemented bandwidth limits for all customers. The limits are generous, but most customers have to be cautious about going over. Customers who view 8 streamed titles or more a month risk exceeding their limits and paying penalty fees. Did Netflix really expect that customers would forgo the affordable DVD service for a potentially costlier streaming service?

Finally, Netflix failed to learn from history. This is the most puzzling aspect of Netflix' fall. Blockbuster customers were unhappy about late fees and the inconvenience of their services. Netflix lured them over and made them happy. Blockbuster went bankrupt. Netflix won. Now Netflix is making its customers unhappy and can't comprehend why they're unhappy.

In the meantime, other's are quickly stepping in to lure customers away. And customers are leaving. Many of those that are staying have chosen one of the cheaper DVD or streaming only service. The bottom line is that Netflix is losing customers, income and stock value. Now it's just a question of whether the damage can be overcome. The way Hastings has responded so far, I would say that the answer is no.

When the home page first loads, your first instinct is to type in a search query and hit enter. But the results returned are anything but helpful. If your query generates no results, you get a page that has samples of queries that SHOULD work for the site. Clearly the folks behind W|A need to re-think their design. If you are going to present a user with a search box, and then give them zero results AND tell them how they should have searched, not only are you breaking user expectations, you are insulting the user as well.

They have obviously invested an enormous amount of time and resources designing and developing this service. But it seems obvious that they haven't spent very much time on user testing. If they had, they would not need to have primer on how to use what appears to be a simple and familiar service to begin with. I don't think they have to go back to the drawing board, but they do need to reconsider what it is they want the user to accomplish and then create an interface that helps the user succeed.

I'm specifically referring to the story about the tragic discovery of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu's body that is prominently placed in the story carousel. Is it really appropriate to promote being a better bunny in light of such a tragedy? Do you think Cost Plus wants their message mixed with that kind of tragedy?

Granted, Cost Plus probably paid for the ad placement well in advance and can't control what stories will appear at any point in the day. But surely the site producers could take the ad down until the feature stories change, or at least tone it down a bit by removing the huge background portion of the ad. They could always make good with Cost Plus by extending the time the ad is supposed to run to the next day. That's what they do in radio and television when programming supersedes scheduled ad spots.

I still have to tame IE6's weird image loading behavior in my galleries. For some reason, when an image loads in the image viewer, it is retaining it's dimensions in IE6. The result is that if a horizontal image loads first, any verticals that load later retain the dimensions of the original horizontal image and vice versa. This leads to images that are scewed non-proportionate dimensions. Definitely not a good look.

I'll probably have to come up with some tricky conditional JavaScript to make IE6 behave. Anyone have any suggestions?

On the bright side, the Design Studio now has a respectable amount of work to show off. The Art Studio has most of my existing photography galleries and the blog section is working with one minor breadcrumb glitch.

I still have to create my information pages and then I will finally get to building the new articles section that will have some web design or development articles that I have prepared. So come back often to see the progress.