Another sign the economy is really good

I'm looking for a UI firm to redo the UI on my first product. Right now, it's pleasing and usable enough, but going forward with this and our other products, I'd like our products to have a unique, company-specific "personality" (most people would call this look and feel) . I call it personality because I want it to be a bit more pervasive and a lot less surface level than simple look and feel. But that's not the point of this post.

So far, I've written 4 firms.

One called me immediately. They totally and absolutely "got it." But, I need more bids before I just blindly go with the first group I talked to.
Another one wrote me back after 2 days and said they'd routed my RFI but they weren't sure if they really did that sort of work, but they'd let me know (doesn't sound promising does it).
Two others - not one peep. Seriously. Not one.

I find it somewhat amazing that companies won't follow up on leads. However, I know that at my last large company, they basically tossed all the leads that came from the web. But small companies... especially companies that deliver web-based products... wouldn't they be interested in talking to a new business prospect?

Apparently not.

Please send recommendations my way... The two that haven't responded are no longer contenders. I will not be ignored!

Obvious, but useful

When I'm working on a new idea, or a usability issue, I find the best person to ask is a person in your client's target demographic.

It's a simple little trick, and it works like a charm.

Ie, if I say to you (example from MBA accounting class, credits to Dr. Granof):

"I'm interested in bonds."

And you are a:

criminal	you think:	bail bonds
investor	you think:	government bonds
baseball fanatic	you think:	barry
fetishy type	you think:	you get my point...

So... if I find myself trying to sort out "what message" or "what placement of this element" or even "what sites should I advertise on," the simplest thing to do is think of your target demographic, find a few of them, and talk to them.

Primary research can be as easy, and as inexpensive, as a cup of coffee.

jakob says, "I'll take mine in vanilla"

I've been seeing a few
posts lately that claim that Nielson is against Web 2.0. I don't really think that's the case... I think he's against most everything when used frivolously (and in his definition, the threshold between frivolous and necessary is reached very quickly).

From his site:

This is not to say that there's no role for new technology. We're currently working with a company that's placing an extremely complicated application online. They can't do this with good usability unless they use several "rich UI" tricks. But that's an application, and a big one to boot. For 90% of websites, it's more important to focus on communicating clearly, whether they're e-commerce sites, corporate sites, government sites, or non-profit sites.

And that's the rub. So many sites are just done so poorly, that slapping some community features in them isn't going to save them or make them places people want to visit.

User first. Bells and whistles later.

Let's Get Web 101 Right First

You know, before everyone goes jumping over to "Web 2.0," I'd suggest getting some basics right, like making sure you know how to set the field focus. I mean really, is it too much to ask a programmer to put my cursor in the right place, when the entire purpose of the login form is for me to enter information? C'mon, people.

The Statesman form above is just one of a ridiculous number of examples of usability violations in web applications. Call me crazy, but when I work on usability for an application, this is one of the first things I look at. I'm keyboard driven. When you tell me I have to enter information on the next page, I'm ready to type. Do they not teach this stuff?