Don’t Make Me Think author, Steve Krug, made a presentation with the Usability Professional Association (UPA) Boston meeting, held at Olin College of Engineering on January 17, 2008. It was my third UPA event and it continues to impress me with the quality presentations and talented audience.
Web 2.0 is requiring more focus be on effective navigation and clean design. Since web visitors attention is at a premium, designers are advised against ‘design subtleties’… they get lost on a web page. Steve points out that the user interface elements have to “be louder than you like, because visitors move so fast.”
Page titles/identification, or ‘You are Here’ indicators are critical in avoiding user confusing.
Another key point on text links was to ‘deliver what you promise’. In other words, the text links need to deliver what they say they are, otherwise you’ll violate the implied social contract with the user. I’ve seen this happen numerous times because a website designer is trying to economize words or because it visually looks better on the page.
It also was advised that clarity beats out consistency when it comes to page navigation, particularly in secondary navigation schemes. Sometimes you have to pull back and take broad view.
Lively conversation stretched far beyond the scheduled ending time. Thanks for the many tips, Steve, and Chris Hass, the UPA Boston chapter president and Usability Consultant at Bentley College.
by John Bergdoll, Creative Solutions, Inc.
Posted in User Experience | Tags: Boston, design subtleties, page navigation, Steve Krug, UPA, Usability, user interface, Web 2.0, website designer
