The Art of Communications

It is so refreshing to read an article about using technology from an expert who doesn’t repeat and repeat industry jargon, hollow phrases, cutesy acronyms and try to impress by citing every person who is, or ever was, noteworthy in the field. I liked Steve Krup so much that after reading the first few paragraphs, I went online and bought his book, Don’t Make Me Think. I plan to do exactly what his book advocates – think long and hard about how to redesign my website so that works best for people who visit it. After all it’s not about me. It’s about you.

No trick, only treat
His common sense and user friendly approach is very, very attractive to me. It mirrors my philosophy of how to behave in life and business. No tricks, just simply, “Treat others the way I want to be treated.” When designing websites, or any other marcom programs, you must get into the mindset of your target audience. In this case – the intended user of a website – you become the demographic and react like the user, not the maker. It’s not always easy to be objective about your creation, but to achieve success (as defined by lots of hits, returning viewers, and increased sales) Krup’s advice is exactly what every website needs.

Visual hierarchy – designing for success
Krup brought up an important point about working with designers. While talented, many designers want to create something different for the sake of being new, or unlike proven industry standards. While a cutting edge design might win art director awards, it won’t necessarily win customers. The criteria in judging a site’s design is that (just like the book), you don’t have to think about it. How well you understand the user’s needs and how well you design it to satisfy those needs will determine the success of your website.

A good example of this was several years ago when I consulted for a company who had just printed their new product line brochure. The photography was beautiful, the layout was crisp, the copy was dead on, but it was so difficult to use. Instead of the normal 11 x 17 layout with 2-page spreads, this brochure was 30% smaller in size and folded out to almost 6 feet in length. Once it was opened, you never quite knew how to fold it back up. Sort of like a Rand McNally map. The spreads were difficult to read because depending on how you folded it, you had to figure out what picture went with what text. It was not designed with the user in mind. God only knows what that designer would have done to a website.

Turn a ? into a !
This all seems like common sense – putting the user first – but according to Battleson, Booth and Weintrop in their library usability study, it was only a little more than 10 years ago that the user’s needs stepped to the forefront in website design.

It’s hard to imagine that software developers put people last, But then again, they do tend to worship the machine. However, in today’s increasingly internet-based marketplace, there are competing sites for just about everything. Consumers of information or products and services can go anywhere in the world to get what they want. If for no other reason, this reliance on the web should make the proprietors of every website take the time to invest in a design hierarchy that prioritizes information on the page and make it easy for users to quickly see what they are looking for and where to go next. Users should never have to question how a site works: they have to be wowed!

The website that respects its users and invites them to come in, is friendly, easy to navigate, now that’s where I, and many others, want to be. It’s like having the choice to visit one of two different homes. One family has plastic covered furniture and the other family has deep, plush couches and soft rugs on the floor. Which house do you want to visit? Where do you want to relax for a while? Where it’s designed for the user, where else?

References
Krug, Steve (2000). Don’t Make Me Think. Indianapolis: New Riders, pp. 1-39.

Battleson, B., Booth, A., & Weintrop, J. (2001). Usability testing of an academic library web site: a case study. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 27(3), 188-198.