Celebrating Holidays and Special Occasions on Websites (Alertbox Oct. 2002)

Celebrating Holidays and Special Occasions on Websites

Summary:

Even small holiday decorations can increase joy of use and make websites feel more current and more connected to users’ lives and physical environment. The key is to commemorate without detracting from your users’ main reasons for visiting the site.

I has been a reader of Jakob Nielsen‘s Alertbox for one years. There is always very good suggestions and guidelines from Jakob on usability. This issue is no exception. I am going to implement it on my own site to see how it works. Let me know your comment on how it works.

I’d like to recommend Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox for everyone who owns a web site or who is responsible to deisng something – no matter it is software, architecture or others.

Update July 25, 2007

I reviewed the original alertbox article and my own comments on this (after 5 years), and the both Jakob (5 years ago) and I (who is 5 years younger than me) shows up before me vividly.

That is the good thing of blogging – it is just like a refrigerator – to keep your memory in a can and you are able to get back to it even after 5 or even longer period of time. I am so glad that I started blog 5 years ago…

What are the major holidays we want to celebrate in China (and internationally)? I would say:

• Spring Festival
• Christmas
• My birthday (yes, a little bit personal cult)
• Olympics
• World cup
• National holiday

I have ever put on snow on my homepage during Christmas, and that worked great.