In this week's podcast, we discuss:

Naked Day!

On Thursday, April 9th, LevelTen participated in Naked Day 2009. For those who aren't familiar, Naked Day promotes Web Standards and encourages websites to strip down to their skivvies (aka - turn off their CSS styles). This sparked a debate at LevelTen, which we captured on our podcast. So, it goes without saying that this week's podcast is all about Web Standards, W3C, and more.

Bonus Discussion - Semantic Web

We've all visited sites that are completely cluttered and offer more distractions than assistance to the end-user. Designing a better user experience increases conversion, retention, and can significantly impact your brand. Finding equilibrium between design and usability can be tricky - sit in the middle of a web design meeting between designers and user experience managers and you will certainly here compelling cases for strong design vs. strong usability.

Here a few simple tips to help you de-clutter a website and build a more positive user experience:

Any web designer will tell you that usability is at the top of their list, but as a designer it is common to focus on aesthetics first and usability second. This mistake is important to acknowledge because it is creating a barrier between “aesthetically pleasing” sites and “functional” sites. As designers, we have to remember we design usability. Below is a list of 8 steps designers should take to ensure site usability:

At LevelTen Design, one of the things we focus on when developing websites is usability. Usability on websites encompasses everything from creating usable navigation to making sure the website is accessible for the blind. Although we focus on several aspects of usability, one aspect of usability that has been ignored has been color blindness. The reality is that 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness.