Never Neglect Good Design
Digg
Share
This time out I'm tackling a topic not necessarily specific to the spicy food world: human interface design....
Are you ignoring one of the principal components of any successful product, service, or application? I'm talking about good design. The following is a brief introduction on recognizing bad design is and what to do to test for it.
Nazi Masochist Architects
Over a decade ago when I was attending East Central College here in Missouri, we had to deal with a design faux pas on a daily basis - the main stairway leading from the parking lots to the central buildings.
Now, most stairways are created to allow for the normal stride of adults; left foot on one step, right foot on the next, left on the step after that, and so on. A nice, natural walking pattern.
Not this walkway. The steps' length were made a little longer than 1 1/2 the size of regular steps, forcing a person to lumber up with their left foot on the first step, and then put their right foot briefly on the first step to compensate for the wide length. So instead of a typical left, right, left, right pattern, we had to deal with a left/quick-right, left/quick-right, left/quick-right...It was that unnatural stride or we had to sprint up the stairs full speed.
Although this was a nuisance to everybody, both students and the faculty joked that this outside stairway was designed by Nazi masochists to punish anyone attending the school. Seriously, I believe the reason for the peculiar design was to make up for the more-gradual-than-usual incline of the hill. Understandable, but didn't the architects consider how people would use (or couldn't use) the steps? In their defense, I hear that they've since torn up the old ones and installed new, user-friendly steps.
Bad design is everywhere
Think atrocious design is only found on the rarest of occasions? Think again. I bet you see them quite often; almost daily. Here are some blunderous designs that an average person has probably encountered:
- Not enough contrast between the text and the background color on a bottle label, or when the text is too small or printed in a font that's to hard to read.
- A sign painted with dark colors that looks great in the daytime, but can't be seen too well at night.
- A car cup holder that will only allow you fit in a short 12-oz. soft drink can because the ashtray is directly above it, or one with the base and holder that's extremely shallow and will cause taller, top-heavy mugs to topple over when the car even takes the gentlest of turns.
- A faucet that runs water into a sink when turned on at full blast, but when turned to only a trickle water runs down the bottom of the spigot and onto the back of the counter instead of into the sink.
- Text on a billboard that's too tiny to read.
- Something large placed in the narrowest part of a busy passageway, congesting traffic even more.
- The confusing network of downtown streets in most large cities.
There are also ones in the computing/internet world:
- Squares, icons, or logos that look like buttons but aren't.
- Error messages that don't adequately describe the problem or make sense to the end-user.
- Improper or confusing use of color.
- A dialog box textfield that's too narrow and forces the user to scroll horizontally to read every data entry.
- Placing the navigational menu too far down the page.
- Contact info that's impossible to find.
- Modeling interfaces after "real world" items (such as a remote control or a stereo receiver) when a Windows (or Mac, Linux, etc.) interface would be far easier to use.
- The frustrating use of "Mystery Meat" navigation on a website.
- Having to click on several different menu options to accomplish something that could have taken only one or two clicks with a good design.
Too often the back-end programmers are only concerned with making something operational. Too often designers and graphic artists are interested in making something look good. The results all too often are a mixed bag - some elements work well, others unintuitively.
Solutions?
Test things thoroughly.
You and your web team (if applicable) should check everything out from a user's perspective, not just a developer's. Many developers are only caught up in creating the back end of a project; most of the time that's fine if that's what you specialize in. But occasionally scrutinizing your work from the front end can give you valuable insights on how you can possibly improve the back end.
Of course, for large projects, usability testing with outside test users is always a given. If you are heading up an internet or intranet site or application and you're not running these kinds of tests, you're asking for trouble. The book Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests by Jeffrey Rubin is a good place to start if you're unfamiliar of the subject. (See also the books listed below.)
Revise, Rewrite, Rebuild
Some of the best book authors in history are quite familiar with the concept of revision. Hemingway rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms 39 times. When asked about how he achieved his great works, he said, "I write 99 pages of crap for every one page of masterpiece." He has also been quoted as saying "the first draft of anything is shit."
The same notion applies to web design, whether you are a programmer, webmaster, or content manager. Don't be afraid to scrap your current prototype(s) at a moment's notice. To construct the best user interface, you should continue to create different mock-ups and take the best characteristics of each one to produce a good design, and then modify that design until you have the best one possible.
Find out what other sites are doing.
Popular internet destinations like Google and Amazon have long been lauded as model sites when it comes to ease of use and simplicity. By no means are they perfect, but they allow the end user to get the job done a majority of the time.
I'm not implying that everyone should plagiarize their design styles, but many admirable examples of intuitive design can be found on Google and Amazon, therefore countless other sites - many of which have been online for years - could take a tip or two from them.
Read up on the subject.
There are many terrific resources to turn to both in print and on the web. The book list compiled at http://www.usabilityfirst.com/training-workshops/books-on-usability/ is an excellent place to start for breath of usability and design coverage. Keith Instone's Usable Web presents a remarkable assortment of neatly categorized links on web UI's. http://www.useit.com, run by Jakob Neilsen, is perhaps the most popular site on internet usability. Usability.gov is another good destination with helpful tips and information, including the famous Section 508 guidelines.
Comments
2011-07-22 08:25:34
http://www.sensible.com/
2011-07-22 12:16:40
Add Your Comment: