Sneaky User Testing

What happens when you unleash Paul Ford’s design and technology skills on a 150 year old magazine of literature, politics and culture? Harpers.org.

Paul also found a clever way to prototype the site: ‘It’s been noted that Harpers.org looks like Ftrain. It’s actually the other way around: Ftrain looks like Harpers.org. I’ve been using you, the Ftrain reader, as a guinea pig for about 5 months, testing ideas I developed for Harper’s, finding out what JavaScript worked in which browser, which interface ideas were too baffling to include, and seeing how you dealt with different sorts of links. Thanks for that.’

Then of course there’s all that semantic taxonomy hoohah, you’ll want to read about that too.