Lately, I happened to read an article – What makes a “User Experience expert?, written by RJ OWen. In that article, the author talks about the qualities of user experience experts. That article brought me up a few thoughts about the web user experience.
Focusing the content, ignoring the user:
When the Internet born, it’s main objective was to share text documents. So, all the sites that were exist then must be a text based websites. Then started the Internet era and companies started to have a online marketplace for their products. Each website’s objective is to sell as much as it can (either a service/product). So they used glossy logos, moving texts, animated GIFs – all to get the user’s attention.
In the recent past, we are little lucky that most of the web sites avoided such kinda flashy graphics. Instead, they started designing a well designed, good looking websites. In all of these, the main focus is on what the site provide – the content of the website. So, the web designers tried everything possible to highlight the website’s content. But they were ignoring one important factor – the user and how he/she is going to use the content of the site.
The user factor:
Ultimately the website’s goal is to be used by the user. But what if the website is not designed with usability in mind? It doesn’t matter how good the site is looking, User will not come to that site again. If there is a plain HTML designed website with more usability than a Flash designed, great looking site, User will definitely choose the first one because that site can meet the user’s need very quickly. So my point is – for any website design, put the usability requirements first.
Usability features for a website:
Some of the features, I can think of that can improve the site’s usability.
- Search: A search text box is a indispensable component in any website. User won’t be willing to spend more network bandwidth to browse tens of pages just to find one article. Instead one search box could save him a lot of time. And if the search text box is placed on the Top Right section of a web site, then it will be easily noticeable by the user. Because all the popular web browsers having the in-built search box in the top right section of the browser and the user may expect the search box in the “Top Right” location of a website also.
- Descriptive Action Texts: Instead of labeling a command button “Delete”, labeling it like “Delete last booking” would make more sense to the user. The user can easily know what action will take place if the command buttons are labeled more descriptively.
- Breadcrumbs: Let the user know how he is get to the current page. It helps the user to easily go back to previous pages. Breadcrumbs are indirectly helps the developer also to easily to manage ‘back’ action in a website. If the user is going to use browser’s back button, it may result in undesired state of the web application. But if the website gives the ‘breadcrumb’ feature to the user and he uses it, the site can easily handle this ‘back’ action and invoke any cleanup functions.
- Current stage in ‘Wizard’ like sites: If the site has a ‘wizard like’ functionality which requires user input in more than one windows, then showing the current stage of the wizard will be really helpful to the user. With this ‘current stage’ information User can know what actions he has done and what are left.
So, as a web user, what features do you think will make the site ‘great to use’?
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