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usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology. And while technology often changes quickly, people change very slowly.3
The human brain’s capacity doesn’t change from one year to the next, so the insights from studying human behavior have a very long shelf life.
I have a great job. I’m a usability consultant.
A live presentation allows people to ask me questions and voice their concerns—something a written report doesn’t do.
Useful: Does it do something people need done? Learnable: Can people figure out how to use it? Memorable: Do they have to relearn it each time they use it? Effective: Does it get the job done? Efficient: Does it do it with a reasonable amount of time and effort? Desirable: Do people want it? and recently even Delightful: Is using it enjoyable, or even fun?
A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it’s worth.
the tradeoffs should usually be skewed further in the direction of “Obvious” than we think.
every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand.
The most important thing you can do is to understand the basic principle of eliminating question marks.
If you can’t make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.
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.”
people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.
we tend to focus on words and phrases that seem to match (a) the task at hand or (b) our current or ongoing personal interests.
the trigger words that are hardwired into our nervous systems, like “Free,” “Sale,” and “Sex,” and our own name.
Economist Herbert Simon coined the term (a cross between satisfying and sufficing) in Models of Man: Social and Rational (Wiley, 1957). I’d observed this behavior for years, but its significance wasn’t really clear to me until I read Gary Klein’s book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions.
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fire commanders didn’t compare any options. They took the first reasonable plan that came to mind and did a quick mental test for possible problems. If they didn’t find any, they had their plan of action. So why don’t Web users look for the best choice?
If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.
Take advantage of conventions Create effective visual hierarchies Break pages up into clearly defined areas Make it obvious what’s clickable Eliminate distractions Format content to support scanning
“Stop,” a highly visible color that contrasts with most natural surroundings, and standardized size, height, and location.
If you’re not going to use an existing Web convention, you need to be sure that what you’re replacing it with either (a) is so clear and self-explanatory that there’s no learning curve—so it’s as good as the convention, or (b) adds so much value that it’s worth a small learning curve.
Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t.
The rule of thumb is that you can—and should—be as creative and innovative as you want, and add as much aesthetic appeal as you can, as long as you make sure it’s still usable.
If you can make something significantly clearer by making it slightly inconsistent, choose in favor of clarity.
good visual hierarchy saves us work by preprocessing the page for us, organizing and prioritizing its contents in a way that we can grasp almost instantly.
we’re looking for a variety of visual cues that identify things as clickable (or “tappable” on touch screens)—things like shape (buttons, tabs, etc.), location (in a menu bar, for instance), and formatting (color and underlining).2
Don Norman explains so enjoyably in his recently updated usability classic The Design of Everyday Things,
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everything can’t be important. Shouting is usually the result of a failure to make tough decisions about which elements are really the most important and then create a visual hierarchy that guides users to them first.
When you’re editing your Web pages, it’s probably a good idea to start with the assumption that everything is visual noise (the “presumed guilty until proven innocent” approach) and get rid of anything that’s not making a real contribution.
If you’re using more than one level of heading, make sure there’s an obvious, impossible-to-miss visual distinction between them. You can do this by making each higher level larger or by leaving more space above it.
Even more important: Don’t let your headings float. Make sure they’re closer to the section they introduce than to the section they follow. This makes a huge difference.
you really want to learn about making content scannable (or about anything related to writing for screens in general), run, do not walk, to an Internet-connected device and order Ginny Redish’s book Letting Go of the Words.
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doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.
rule of thumb might be something like “three mindless, unambiguous clicks equal one click that requires thought.”2
anything that’s not a plant or an animal—including things as diverse as pianos, limericks, and cheesecake, for instance—falls under “mineral,” it requires almost no thought to answer the question correctly.3 3 In case you’ve forgotten the game, there’s an excellent version that you can play against at www.20q.net. Created by Robin Burgener, it uses a neural net algorithm and plays a mean game.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.1 1 William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (Allyn and Bacon, 1979).
You can—and should—eliminate as much happy talk as possible.
Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back to the bare minimum.
Clear, well-thought-out navigation is one of the best opportunities a site has to create a good impression.
They’ll be looking for the word “Search,” so use the word Search, not Find, Quick Find, Quick Search, or Keyword Search. (If you use “Search” as the label for the box, use the word “Go” as the button name.)
I think this is one of the most common problems in Web design (especially in larger sites): failing to give the lower-level navigation the same attention as the top.
if there’s a major discrepancy between the link name and the page name or a lot of minor discrepancies, my trust in the site—and the competence of the people who publish it—will be diminished.
“You are here” One of the ways navigation can counteract the Web’s inherent “lost in space” feeling is by showing me where I am in the scheme of things, the same way that a “You are here” indicator does on the map in a shopping mall—or a National Park.
The most common failing of “You are here” indicators is that they’re too subtle. They need to stand out; if they don’t, they lose their value as visual cues and end up just adding more noise to the page. One way to ensure that they stand out is to apply more than one visual distinction—for instance, a different color and bold text.
Too-subtle visual cues are actually a very common problem. Designers love subtle cues, because subtlety is one of the traits of sophisticated design. But Web users are generally in such a hurry that they routinely miss subtle cues.
Done right, Breadcrumbs are self-explanatory, they don’t take up much room, and they provide a convenient, consistent way to do two of the things you need to do most often: back up a level or go Home. They’re most useful in a large site with a deep hierarchy.
Use > between levels. Trial and error seems to have shown that the best separator between levels is the “greater than” character (>), probably because it visually suggests forward motion down through the levels.
Boldface the last item. The last item in the list should be the name of the current page, and making it bold gives it the prominence it deserves. And because it’s the page that you’re on, naturally it’s not a link.
Tabs are one of the very few cases where using a physical metaphor in a user interface actually works. Like the tab dividers in a three-ring binder or tabs on folders in a file drawer, they divide whatever they’re sticking out of into sections. And they make it easy to open a section by reaching for its tab (or, in the case of the Web, clicking on it). I think they’re an excellent and underused navigation choice.
For tabs to work to full effect, the graphics have to create the visual illusion that the active tab is in front of the other tabs. This is the main thing that makes them feel like tabs—even more than the distinctive tab shape.
you should be able to answer these questions without hesitation: What site is this? (Site ID) What page am I on? (Page name) What are the major sections of this site? (Sections) What are my options at this level? (Local navigation) Where am I in the scheme of things? (“You are here” indicators) How can I search?
