Where would we be without serendipity? I was looking for some examples of agile development techniques and stumbled across this excellent post from Tom Loosemore (the man behind Gov.uk from Government Digital Services). I thought I’d repeat the post here, but the original is on Tom Loosemore’s blog, published 7th February, 2007. As relevant today as it was then; proof maybe that sound advice built on practical experience doesn’t diminish over time.
- Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (sourced from )
- The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (Sourced , with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)
- Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people’s content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.
- Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.
- Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site.
- The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.
- Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.
- Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.
- Remember your granny won’t ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.
- Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.
- Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all:Users should always know they’re on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won’t ever get lost.
- Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users
- Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes:Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site
- Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale
- Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent:After all, it’s your users’ data. Best respect it.
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