Shown here is a snippet of the woot! homepage. I enjoy this little widget particularly because of the way excerpts from the forums are prefixed. The human readability of “[user] would like to know…”, “[user] reports back…”, and “[user] had some troubles with a…” is significant.
Go organic with your Web application’s verbiage, especially in areas where users are likely to be in a hurry. “About two days ago” as a timestamp is wildly more helpful than “53 hours ago” or “2-1-2010 6:00 PM”. While it’s no replacement, widgets and primary listings are great places to use a more natural language.
And tomorrow, when I check my schedule and see my next meeting is in “about 3 hours”, I’ll remember. When I am in a hurry I can throw “[blah blah] 7pm tomorrow” at my calender app and it will just work. It feels comfortable, and it encourages smooth interaction.
Humanized Output
Go organic with your Web application’s verbiage, especially in areas where users are likely to be in a hurry. “About two days ago” as a timestamp is wildly more helpful than “53 hours ago” or “2-1-2010 6:00 PM”. While it’s no replacement, widgets and primary listings are great places to use a more natural language.
And tomorrow, when I check my schedule and see my next meeting is in “about 3 hours”, I’ll remember. When I am in a hurry I can throw “[blah blah] 7pm tomorrow” at my calender app and it will just work. It feels comfortable, and it encourages smooth interaction.