My first impression of Regator is favorable. Not only is it a familiar three-column layout, it’s clad in my favorite color: green. The load time is really quick. I immediately notice the gator, very cute. Then I see the title of the site, and the text “The Web’s best blog posts from the web’s best blogs.” This gives me a pretty good idea of what Regator is.

I click “personalize My Regator preferences.” I’m presented with a “manage” screen. I fill out some options and I’m ready to return—but I can’t find a way to get back to My Regator. This is very confusing.

When I finally do find my way back to the “My Regator” page, I’m lost again. I can’t find those helpful text boxes or that (what looked to be) swanky video. That’s a pretty big bummer, as I feel like alot of the character and falair of a site comes through when they’re building that relationship. At this point, I’m feeling thrown to the proverbial wolves.

The first visit to the “My Regator” section of the site is a pleasure.

I decide to see what “My Regator” is all about. I love the starting page, a clear list of delimited text that tells me what this page is about and how to use it. They even include a video. I’m very anxious to get things going. I find the default page for “My Regator” to be very user friendly.

• Keep Conventions — Because most sites place the “search button” after the input field, I would consider moving in this direction. Also, make buttons have at least a slight bevel with no underlined text.
• Lower the Cognitive Load — Don’t provide extraneous information to users who will not use it. For example, how do the arrows in the right column help the average user? the power user? Keep in mind that “nice to have” doesn’t equal “need to have.” Also, consider renaming “Directory” to “Browse,” as this will consolidate the number of application-specific terms the user needs to know.
• Don’t build broken bridges — As a blog aggregator, your application bridges the experience between a user and their favorite blogs. Consider opening a new window to blog posts by default. For photos linked from Regator, follow the same treatment of videos and audio on the site, loading them inside the page. Lastly, you may consider providing a thin bar across the top of blogs accessed through regator that brings a user back. This way, the user moves along a loop (with your application as a waypoint) and not in a straight line.
• Capitalize on known information — consider having the site load “My Regator” if a user is logged in. This way, a user is more likely to feel catered to, and not like they created their account to be hidden away. Perhaps this is a simple preference. Frankly, I could see using Regator as a way to preprocess my RSS feed.