A few months ago, Hamilton referred me to a design and usability book called Don’t Make Me Think. It’s a very clear and concise book that provides a very practical set of principles for web usability including navigation tips, what to include on your home page, and how to conduct usability tests. The main point of the book is that web pages should be obvious and self-explanatory. Users should never have to think about what each page of a Website does and how each page should be used.

Our current focus at HelloMovies is to achieve such simplicity without sacrificing functionality. We have lots of information on films, many different ways for users to share their opinions on films, and many thoughts on how to use all of this data to enable the discovery of new movies. Unfortunately, packaging everything into a Website that services both the casual user who wants to find a movie to watch and the power user who wants to rate and catalog 1,000 movies will not be easy.

Thankfully, we are starting to meet some talented and experienced friends to guide us in the direction of such polished and easy-to-use Websites as Shelfari and Mint.

We pushed a few changes to the live site on Friday. The biggest update is Invites! If you’re a HelloMovies user, you now have 3 invites that you can send to friends. We’ll of course increase this number over time as we get closer and closer to launch.

We also added a few more pages including a Genome Requests page and a Top Rated Movies page. The Genome Requests page lists movies that need additional tags and the Top Rated Movies page includes such lists as:

Guilty Pleasures (movies people like, but aren’t very good)

1. Any Given Sunday
2. The Thomas Crown Affair
3. Serendipity
4. Legally Blonde
5. Closer

Worst Movies

1. Daredevil
2. Scary Movie
3. Honey
4. Hostel
5. Balls of Fury

Finally, we’ve made some layout changes to each of the movie landing pages to make it easier for people to rate, review, and tag movies. If you’re registered on the site, let us know what you think of the recent updates!

Katie Couric recently asked Obama and McCain about favorite movies.  McCain went with Viva Zapata! while Obama picked The Godfather, Part 1 (and 2).  BOTTOM LINE: the next president will, for sure, really like Marlon Brando.  Check out the video here.