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Missing the obvious – why don’t we see things that are right in front of us?

Cognitive psychology talks about change blindness, web design about navigational blindness. What they have in common is that the focus of attention is away from where it should be, and as a result, important on screen activity or page elements are ignored.

Art.com logo

My recent experience on art.com is a great example of why you need to think about where your user’s attention is when designing page navigation…

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Pointless but quite entertaining search

I came across this new search from Microsoft called Ms. Dewey yesterday, it’s a flash based search interface with video and audio of a woman (Ms. Dewey) who gives her opinion on what you search for, along with the search results.

Ms. Dewey Screenshot

Doing a search for ‘pint of guinness’ and she’ll pour a beer (not quite guinness but close enough!) right in front of you, while searching for ‘iPod’ gives a few different answers, from a rant about your mp3 collection to what headphones to wear.

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