Great works of art and architecture live through ages and are appreciated, and criticized likewise. While their exuberance and extravagance strike us the most, it is the fine attention to detail that grab the appreciation (and/or criticism) of the finer eye. People spend a good portion of their earnings on holidays, visiting places of historical and architectural marvel each year. Visiting such places is not a profitable act (at least, not in terms of monetary gain), however one does gain an experience out of it. And many studies have indicated that spending on experiences builds a richer and happy life than purchasing the latest gadget that’s out in the market.

Visiting a well-built website designed for accessibility is also an experience. Many websites have realized this and there has been a huge improvement in terms of time and resource dedicated to user experience when building a website. One example that I noticed was the recent change in the dashboard of Tumblr where adding a quote would automatically truncate and create a 140-char twitter message (If enabled). Before this update, I had to manually copy the quote and paste it into the twitter box and truncate the message manually. I was impressed by this little feature that reiterates the wonderful things Tumblr has been doing to improve user experience. On the upside, the new feature would save about 15-20 seconds of my time each time I post.

P.S.: The new feature has not been advertised anywhere on their staff blog or the design blog or the engineering blog. A silent, likable update. 🙂 Try tumbling if you haven’t already. You will be bowled over by its simplicity and ease of use.