Last week I read Steven Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. I learned that most people ask totally the wrong questions when designing a site. Further, without being able to test our solutions in any sort of a real world atmosphere it’s impossible to know what we’re doing is right. The largest reason for this being that there is no “normal” internet user just as there is no “standard” website.
People ask the wrong questions all the time regarding web design. The best example I can think of is given in the book when a group is meeting about a project. The project manager asks how they can save space in the header of the page. A designer suggests using pull downs and a developer, who has a secret personal bias against pull downs, counters saying that pull downs won’t work with their java. The marketing person counters by looking for data on the subject of pull downs. Everyone is silent. This is a stalemate. Anyone who enters this argument now without asking the right questions is going to lose for a few reasons:
1. People are voicing their personal opinions, not facts, about the issue.
2. The only things that matter are: if the clients for THIS project will be annoyed by pull downs, if the site benefits in usability or user comprehension, and if there really is a technical issue because of your java. The last is the least important because if this is a code issue most code can be “made to work” if the reasoning is good enough.
It’s about asking the right questions as opposed to having all the answers. To get the answers to some questions the best way to do this is to run a usability test. Steve does a great job explaining how to do this in his book for almost nothing in a single day. The information you reap from this process will astound you.
One thing most designers/developers need to forget is that there is no “standard” internet user. When designing anything you should consider your target audience and who those people will be instead of catering for the “average person”. The other day a prospective client of mine handed me her business card printed on a 3×5 index card. I was taken back. It was huge. Then I realized why: she worked at a retirement home and the people who she regularly gave her card to were older with poor vision. It all made sense. For this business the “average client” needed larger text to be able to read it comfortably. Even though it brakes the common convention of business cards to have a standard size it worked best for their clientele.
That’s it for this week’s blog. Now that I’m done with this book I’ll be finishing Wikinomics, and also diving into my Yahoo Ambassador training.
I recommend you read the book.
Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug
Available at amazon.com
Check back next week for a new article about breaking another web standard: Putting the navigation on the right for enhanced usability.
