Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Crafting Web sites since 1999

I am a Web designer passionate about creating elegant, inspiring, and usable Web experiences that connect with an audience and fulfull business objectives.

User Experience

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of Customer Experience

September 10, 2009

Please see the cashier inside to get your receipt” It was the sec­ond straight time that I had received this mes­sage after pump­ing gas at a neigh­bor­hood sta­tion. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the whole pur­pose of pay­ing at the pump. I want con­ve­nience. I want to be able to pump my gas, get my receipt, […]

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The Importance of Customer (User) Experience

July 9, 2009

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were trav­el­ing to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Tay­lor gui­tar was wit­nessed being thrown by United Air­lines bag­gage han­dlers in Chicago. I dis­cov­ered later that the $3500 gui­tar was severely dam­aged. They didn’t deny the expe­ri­ence occurred but for nine months the var­i­ous peo­ple I […]

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CMS Light

July 2, 2009

I just fin­ished read­ing Chris Coyier’s arti­cle, The “Light” CMS trend. For those of you who don’t know, CMS stands for “con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem.” The con­tent is stored in a data­base and then served up on a page using a pre­de­fined tem­plate. The idea behind a CMS is to allow non-technical peo­ple the abil­ity to […]

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What is a Browser?

June 30, 2009

A very telling video about what the aver­age per­son is think­ing when they use the Web. I lis­tened to an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about this sub­ject on Sitepoint’s pod­cast. I think the rea­son there is con­fu­sion about the dif­fer­ence between a browser and a search engine is the inte­gra­tion of search into the Web browser. Search […]

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Beyond the Web site

June 4, 2009

Yes­ter­day after­noon, I received this email from raysbaseball.com. I had bought tick­ets over the week­end to see today’s game. I was really impressed with the infor­ma­tion in this email. It told me about the start­ing pitch­ers for both teams and had links to rel­e­vant sta­tis­tics. There were also links to infor­ma­tion about vis­it­ing Trop­i­cana Field. […]

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That’s Clever

March 24, 2009

A talk from SXSW on the clever things design­ers put in their design to add plea­sure to the expe­ri­ence. I lis­tened to the audio but look for­ward to view­ing the slides since this was a very visual pre­sen­ta­tion. I would like to think more about the ideas pre­sented here. It goes on usabil­ity to adding […]

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What can brown do for you?

November 9, 2007

I found this site through Design Melt­down, a gallery of design styles. This site is a good exam­ple of nice design which gets rec­og­nized by a gallery but has some usabil­ity issues when you actu­ally use it. First, You have to go to the top right to a “home” graphic to link back to the home […]

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Connecting to Real Experiences

October 30, 2007

I came across Bald­win Wallace’s Web site as I was thumb­ing through Step Into Design mag­a­zine at Barnes and Noble. This is another exam­ple of a trend I have seen in col­lege Web sites. This site is draw­ing you into the world of being a stu­dent at Bald­win Wal­lace. Jared Spool clas­si­fies this kind of content […]

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A Bad Experience with Bank of America

October 17, 2007

I just received a new busi­ness credit card. As with all credit cards, you have to acti­vate it by call­ing a phone num­ber. I called the num­ber, pressed 2 for Eng­lish and then entered my card num­ber. Then I was asked for a ver­i­fi­ca­tion code. What? I look through the let­ter that came with my card. […]

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Helpful, Practical Feature from AirTran

August 22, 2007

Last week I booked a flight to Boston for Novem­ber using the Air­Tran. On the last page of the process, I found a fea­ture that I really liked. It gave me the option to import both my depart­ing flight and return­ing flight into Out­look. All the infor­ma­tion that I needed to cre­ate a cal­en­dar event […]

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Design or Content? Wrong Question

May 18, 2007

I like what this comic from Josh Porter com­mu­ni­cates and I like how he chose to com­mu­ni­cate it. those that read/use our Web sites are not so con­cerned about which is more impor­tant, design or con­tent. What is impor­tant to them is that they can use it or that they want to use it. MySpace is […]

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The “Experience” of Martha Stewart’s New Web site

April 5, 2007

I saw Martha Stewart’s new Web site for the first time tonight. I was pretty impressed by what I saw. The site takes advan­tage of Flash video, sIFR, and Javascript­ing that all con­tribute to expe­ri­enc­ing the Martha Stew­art brand online. You can take a tour of the new fea­tures which uses Flash video. It combines […]

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Difference between Useability and User Experience

April 5, 2007

This comes from Jared Spool on BrainSparks: Usabil­ity answers the ques­tion, “Can the user accom­plish their goal?â€? User expe­ri­ence answers the ques­tion, “Did the user have as delight­ful an expe­ri­ence as pos­si­ble?â€? Read the full post by Jared (one of my Web design superheroes)

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Empowering Users to Improve Their Life

May 5, 2006

I have been chal­lenged recently to think back­wards to con­sider “what prob­lem is a web­site try­ing to solve?” Or what min­istry prob­lem is the site or Web app try­ing to solve? I think these are good ques­tions to con­sider and to go back to as you con­sider if your site is stay­ing on course or […]

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Experience Design

April 19, 2006

As it becomes eas­ier and eas­ier for design­ers to pack more fea­tures into the lit­tle boxes they want us to buy, it’s going to become more and more impor­tant to ask the ques­tions about which fea­tures should be included and how will those fea­tures improve our lives. This is what expe­ri­ence design is all about… This […]

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Web 2.0 is about empowering the user

February 8, 2006

See Dave Rogers’ arti­cle, Web 2.0: Mis­tak­ing the For­est for the Trees? It helped me to make another step in under­stand­ing and being able to explain this con­cept that has been termed “Web 2.0.” Web 2.0 is the appli­ca­tion of the real­ity that most design­ers and com­pa­nies have been slow to embrace. The Web is […]

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About Time Amazon

August 26, 2005

When I am inter­ested in a book, I will usu­ally add that book to my Wish­list at Amazon.com. Then when I am ready to buy the book, I go to my wish­list and add it to my cart and pur­chase it. In the past, I have thought it would be really nice if once I […]

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