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User Experience (Usability)
297 hits
Nov 26, 2003 12:33 am |
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re: re: Usability or Design -- who should win out? |
Nicola Dourambeis
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Nice point!
We did a usability study on our sites and the recommendations were similar. Graphics only serve to divert the user's eye (rather than a call to action). Thus a homepage with a large image would cause users to click on links outside of the image. It didn't mean that we threw out the image, it simply forced us to be very smart about what links were placed right beside the image.
A further recommendation was to change all text links to blue hyperlinks. Well, yes of course by doing this users will understand that there is a hyperlink, but guess what? It looks bad on an e-commerce site (apologies to LandsEnd). It tends to cheapen the branding. So, a compromise is to underline links (but retain color and font styles). Does it provide perfect usability? Probably not, but it acts as a good compromise to design and usability. Users need some reinforced branding to feel comfortable with a site (here is where design is key) but design elements must be balanced with ease of use.
Best,
Nicola Dourambeis
> Howard Theriot wrote:
> I think this goes right back to the old standard: First learn the rules, then you can break them effectively.
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>Regards,
>Howard L. Theriot
>www.catchlight.com
>
>> Rebecca St. Martin wrote:
>> I've been following along...what a great discussion!
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>>Here's something interesting. One of my clients contacted me to help redesign a massive web site. Since there was so much content (and money) invested, I suggested that we do a guerilla study on a new prototype (HTML backbone, graphics free) against the old site (graphic rich) -- and that we did. Here's what we found:
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>>Users completed their tasks ~85% to their satisfaction on the prototype (vs.~less than 50% on the old site)
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>>Users completed their tasks ~50% faster on the protoype.
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>>Not one said they liked it. They said they'd rather use the old one -- which, as the numbers show, still produced a good deal of frustration and inefficiency.
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>>So I think that the important thing in web/application design is not one discipline or the other -- design or usability-- but an appropriate balance of both.
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>>If you look closely at all of the web disciplines and the guidelines each follows as apart of good practice, you'll find that a rule in one breaks a rule in another. Private Reply to Nicola Dourambeis (new win) |
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