A quick scan at Amazon will show you
that books on web site design are hot this summer. Several of them
are in the top 1000 best sellers. As the world rushes to get
on-line, are the authors keeping up with the pace?
This very recent book appears to
offer enlightainment for designers seeking to get that "cool"
rating for their oh so hot new site.
Web Site Usability
a designer's guide
by Jared Spool, Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder, Carolyn
Snyder, Terri DeAngelo, Morgan Kaufmann, 1999
So yet another book that sounds like its aimed
directly at people like me - designers who design web site and
eCommerce applications. This book is written by the staff of
User Interface
Engineering, a usability consultancy on the east coast
of the US. This book is actually a published report. It includes a
coupon to receive three free issues of their magazine, "Eye
for Design". The content here is the kind of stuff that
appears on their and others websites and usually doesn't cost
anything. Personally, I'm a big fan of hard copy, even if it costs
a few dollars. You can read it on a plane! So is this little book
worth a few of your hard earned dollars?
First Impressions
Its a thin book, in a big type font. You very
quickly realise that its a report on some research activity. This
in itself is no bad thing. It will be quick and easy to read.
There are lots of screen shots, perhaps an average of one per
page. There is about 100 pages of real content, then there is a
short chapter describing each of the real websites used in the
report.
The first chapter hooks us in, with the
management summary. Firstly, we are told what they tried to test -
information retrieval - not browsing or surfing, and more
significantly, not on-line transactions or eCommerce. We are
introduced to the sites that were tested, namely, Disney, Inc.,
Fidelity, C|Net, Travelocity, Websaver, HP, Olympic and Edmund's.
In summary they all faired poorly but some were better than
others. Why? The rest of the book we are promised will give us
some insight.
Then there is the key point. If you take one
thing from this review or from reading this book then it is this -
Web Site design is counterintuitive in a counterintuitive way. It
is countintuitive++! We are then hooked by the 5 key findings from
the study. These are
- Graphic Design Neither Helps Nor Hurts
- Text Links are Vital
- Navigation and Content are Inseparable
- Information Retrieval is Different than
Surfing
- Web Sites aren't like software
Point 3 about Navigation is worthy of some
comment. The implication is that a "shell" type
structure as can be seen at UIDesign.net and is linch pin of
design advice from Darrell Sano, is aparently a complete red
herring. As a result of this, I have included a short review of
Sano's Designing Large Scale Websites in the August edition.
We just don't know
I entitled this review, "We just don't
know" because this is the true theme of the book. There are
lots of observations on the research findings but the truth is
that the authors are very short of answers. So if you as a
designer are looking for the answers then you won't find them
here. What you will find is a lot of thought provoking anecdotal
evidence. It will be up to you, to apply your own experience and
knowledge as a designer to draw the appropriate conclusions.
From time-to-time, you will also find the
results are in opposition to results published elsewhere by other
usability experts. For example, horizontal rules which were found
to ease and improve information retrieval in another study had the
opposite effect in the UIE study.
Navigation
The first of seven areas which the report
studies in detail is site navigation. Unsurprisingly, the tests
found that the User Base for a web site is diverse and there are
many differing goals. Users experience with the site varies
according to their goal and the amount of Domain Knowledge that
they already have. One observation was that sites designed by
teams who normally design "extranet" applications with
defined user bases had trouble with the more general internet site
for a wide audience. This was true particularly of Travelocity
which is designed by the same firm which makes the software that
travel agents use to book travel. They designed a site which
needed too much Domain Knowledge. None of this was particularly
startling.
More interesting was the observation that
Darrell Sano's advice regarding a "shell" structure may
be wrong, and even more strange was that "User's don't form
Mental Models of Sites". It was unclear whether this would
hold true for eCommerce sites.
The big implication of this, which was
unstated, is that developing web sites will necessarily remain a
very labour intensive excercise, and by implication patterns and
re-use of designs are not possible unless the content is similar.
Hmmm. I guess that we "just don't know yet!"
The chapter carries on with a device by device
analysis looking at frames (which do rather well) and Table of
Contents and Navigation Bars and Hierarchical Maps and Site Maps.
It all concludes with some observations on Users and superstitious
behaviour. The key conclusion ought to have been that browsers
offer poor visual affordance for navigation but like so many other
"design" conclusions that might have been drawn in the
book, it is missing.
Links
Chapter 3 takes a look at the specific
navigation tool of Links. We get the observation that the
usability of a link is directly affected by the predictability and
the ability to differentiate it from other possible links. There
are a few good points made about offering suitable explanatory
text and avoiding obfuscation of links. More could have been said
about building the User's trust - another conclusion that was
missing. A few other good points are made, such as Bullet Points
are visually good and clear but use a lot of space in HTML.
Throughout my notes in the sidebar of the pages, I kept writing
the words, "poor visual affordance" which was the answer
to the questions being posed. Its such a pity that the book didn't
answer these questions. The teaching value of it is damaged as a
result.
Search Engines
Chapter 4 is all about in-site search engines.
Someone had to say it and I'm glad it came from such an authority
as the authors here. Search Engines are often terrible. Its time
they got better.
Chapter 5 looks at Comparative data. It ought
to be obvious that the web is bad at this - browsers just aren't
designed for it. Again another chapter full of observations on
what is wrong but no advice and what to do to fix it. How do we
get browsers to support comparing two pages side-by-side? Not
every user realises that they can open multiple windows.
Readability & Design
Chapter 6 was fascinating. All about
readability, the conclusion is that less readable pages are more
usable. How can this be? You'd better read the book to find out.
Again the conclusion is that much more research is needed and
really we just don't know yet! The concept that readers "skim"
more on the web is an interesting enough theory, though.
Chapter 7 has one of the big revelations.
Graphic Design doesn't matter! Well maybe it doesn't but surely it
depends what you are testing for? Well yes it does and the book
does admit that this rule really only applies to information
retrieval. It made a good headline - all the same. Another
astounding revelation is that download time doesn't matter. Huh?
Chapter 8 gives us a brief overview on User
Preference. Strangely? Users don't always prefer the sites which
are easiest to use. They often preferred the sites with the
prettiest graphics or most interesting content. The authors don't
offer any insight on this. We are left to draw our own
conclusions. Perhaps web sites are expected to entertain not just
inform.
How the tests were conducted
Chapters 9 through 16 provide a brief overview
and case study of each site which was tested. Chapter 17 is
perhaps the most useful in the book. It details how the tests were
conducted and how to repeat them. This is a little off topic for "designers"
as the cover suggested target audience. Once again a book by
usability experts provides its best value to usability
practitioners. There is much to be gained the world over by
repeating these tests for other sites and gathering more
information. I am sure that the authors will be glad of such
feedback as they work towards answering the many questions which
the research has thrown up.
Summary
I titled the review, "We just don't know,
yet!" and it is true that this book ends up asking many more
questions and leaving so many loose ends. Despite my relatively
mediocre rating, I would still encourage you to buy this book. If
for no other reason, I want to encourage UIE to produce a second
edition. A future edition must cover eCommerce sites and it must
start to answer the unanswered questions.
This book has wonderful production values. Its
well laid out, there are many illustrations which are always in a
relevant location to the reference text. Its a usable book with
some nice graphics for explaining the results from the research.
However, there is no index, no glossary and no references to other
work. Maybe they just aren't necessary.
This book will do nothing for inexperienced
designers who will be unable to draw any conclusions from the
observations. More experienced designers will be able to take
something out of it, even if its just a few keys points.
The book is most useful to other usability
practitioners who can use it to replicate the UIE tests and also
use the UIE results as benchmarks. They will be able to evaluate a
client site and say, "well its not good news but you did
score higher than Disney!"
So not really a designers guide afterall. Pity.
Recommendation
3/5 - a future edition of this book will
undoubtedly score higher when it can answer more questions than it
asks. At the moment it doesn't teach web site usability to
designers as the title suggested. |