Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
June 14, 2001
|
It's a fact: People won't use your Web site if they can't
find their way around it. Companies everywhere are
staking their fortunes and their futures on their Web sites.
People with little or no experience are responsible for
these big-budget projects, and usability is suddenly a
hot-button, bottom-line issue.
|
How we really use the Web
In the past five years I've spent a lot of time watching people use
the Web, and the thing that has struck me most is the difference
between how we think people use Web sites and how they actually
use them.
When we're creating sites, we act as though people are going to
pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out
how we've organized things, and weighing their options before
deciding which link to click.
What they actually do most of the time (if we're lucky) is glance
at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link
that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they're
looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they
don't even look at.
We're thinking "great literature" (or at least "product brochure"),
while the user's reality is much closer to "billboard going by at 60
miles an hour."
As you might imagine, it's a little more complicated than this, and
it depends on the kind of page, what the user is trying to do, how
much of a hurry she's in, and so on. But this simplistic view is much
closer to reality than most of us imagine.
It makes sense that we picture a more rational, attentive user when
we're designing pages. It's only natural to assume that everyone uses
the Web the same way we do, and-like everyone else-we tend to think
that our own behavior is much more orderly and sensible than it really
is.
If you want to design effective Web pages, though, you have to learn to
live with three facts about real-world Web use.
Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
FACT OF LIFE #1:
|
