There’s a new story out this morning on Ecommerce Times that discusses why websites fail to be effective for their users. The article states,
“Many commercial Web sites fail to pass even basic tests for usefulness and usability largely because their architects use faulty reasoning to justify defective decisions.”
I’d like to offer up two situations I’ve experienced that cause bad decision making when it comes to web design:
1. The designer is focused on winning design awards, not user experience. One reason designers make poor decisions is that they are more concerned with how many design awards their work wins rather than how effective the website is for the customer to use. These design awards focus on cutting-edge technology use and high design, which is often not the most usable solution. Designers in this scenario use false assumptions to justify poor design decisions.
2. Management gets involved in design minutiae rather than effectively communicating an objective to their designer. Another situation I’ve seen quite often is when management forces a designer to design a page/site a certain way thinking that it will solve a corporate problem. The attempt by management to solve the problem often falls on its face since while they have an understanding of the problem, they don’t how to execute a solution. The designer should always be given an opportunity to devise and present a solution. In this case, I would hope that the company has adequate web analytics tools and agreed-upon metrics in place to determine the success or failure of the solution.
The article also mentions the importance of information architecture:
Information architecture — where information appears on a page — is very important in arresting eyeballs, according to Derek Olson, a project manager with Foraker Design in Boulder, Colo.
“Even in a small Web site, right up front, you want to clearly delineate the buckets you’re going to put information into, and make sure you’re not going to make your user scratch their head right off the bat when they get to your site,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“The best design is the design you don’t notice,” added Flanders, of WebPagesThatSuck. “You shouldn’t have to think about where things are.”
I use a two-step design process in my consulting work that forces me to think about user experience first and design second. My early prototypes are black-and-white line sketches meant to organize information. I then apply color and photos to these sketches after the client has signed off on the sketch. The end product is better because the client focuses on information and how the page/site addresses a business goal rather than color and photography.
