I realized some time ago that my articles tended to talk about websites that make mistakes rather than highlight the ones that show concern for their users. Even though there is always something to learn from mistakes, I wanted to start talking about usability more positively, whenever possible.

That is why I have created the Lucid Web “Wink”, my personal acknowledgment of good usability examples I notice on the web. It is not meant to be any sort of authoritative judgment; it’s simply my way to highlight a feature, design element, process or anything that makes my life easier as a consumer on the web.

It took me several months to find something worthy of mention, but today, on World Usability Day no less, I did. So, I am happy to announce that I am awarding the first Wink to

istockphoto.com
for their Search Help function that allows someone to
refine search results according to the meaning of keywords.

(iStockPhoto is a royalty-free high quality stock image website)

I’m sure this exists somewhere else, but I had never seen it before and it was really helpful in finding an image for my new blog header, which is designed by a very talented guy called Simon Oxley. This useful feature saved me time and made me smile… what else can you ask for on a rainy Tuesday?