Web Page Tabs and Accordions

After having worked on medical devices for the last four years, I am coming back to my roots and picking up some web design projects. My approach for preparing for this re-entry to the web world was to visit as many sites as possible, taking a look at each from the user's perspective to see what kinds of features and interaction patterns were now routine parts of websites. My second step is to find out how the web producers "do it". Which of these things are technologically practical and useful and which aren't based on my client's technology choices, business needs and target audience.

It has been fun to refresh my HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills, all of which are very limited.
Here are two sources I think you might want to check out if you are doing any website design:

• warehouse of JavaScript tutorials, examples and code by Jason Bartholme
• animated examples of a wide variety of tab styles at DzineBlog

Customer Informed Design

I just downloaded the Harvard Business Review article, "Turn Customer Input into Innovation" for $6.50 because I thought it would help me think about User Research and what to do with the data in a whole new way. Were there techniques I wasn't tapping? Were there analysis trends that I wasn't familiar with?

The teaser on this article was:
"Lots of companies ask customers what they’d like to see in new products and services—but they go about it all wrong. A new methodology for capturing customer input promises to galvanize the innovation process."
and it definetly got my attention.

This article does support my general approach and I did learn a couple of nuggets, and a new algorithm I would like to use on my next data gathering. My peers in product mangement have talked about Opportunity Assessments and I never really knew how they came up with their numbers. This article describes how to ask questions, group responses and apply the algorithm for another view of the outcome. I was all over how to ask questions and group responses, but never applied this algorithm. So the article was just what I was looking for, taking my tried and true techniques and looking at the data in a new way.

I can't wait to try it!