A while back, I wrote about a study that suggested the design of blogs was an inhibitor to usability, particularly among those who are less-than-familiar with the various unique elements of a blog.
I suggested that blog design 2.0 was due with usability in mind. I’m not sure if leading the charge toward enhanced blog usability was what Allan Jenkins had in mind, but he’s certainly taken a step in that direction with the relaunch of Desirable Roasted Coffee. Jenkins, a Denmark-based communicator (and personal friend), worked with a designer to achieve the new look.
What I like about the design:
- A menu across the top breaks elements of the blog into understandable categories: Archives, Blogs of Note, and About Desirable Roasted Coffee.
- Under the last category you’ll find Allan’s blogging code of ethics, his Creative Commons license, a link to the RSS feed, and a few words about the blog.
- The left-hand navigation starts out with information about Allan (including his consultancy) and contact information. Below that is the listing of recent posts, cateogries, and the blogroll
The redesign doesn’t address issues like intuitive understanding of trackbacks and permalinks, but that’s for Six Apart and its fellow blog software companies to tackle.
Allan also has an OPML listing of his blogroll, available for download so you can open it in your browser. He promises he’ll be incorporating the OPML file into Desirable Roasted Coffee “so you can peruse the blogs before downloading. And I’ll be breaking up the .opml file into categories.”
Nice work, Allan!
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
