Douglas’ blog post yesterday contained lots of interesting points about how computers communicate with users. It’s true that applications ought to speak in human language, not computer-speak; as Donald has also pointed out, it’s crazy to ask a user to “Attach Resource” when what she really wants to do is put an image on a Web page. In all our work, especially our work on LiveWhale, we try really hard to keep a focus on making things transparent (even fun) for our users, and we talk (and email and IM and videochat) constantly about the best ways to achieve that goal.
But that’s not what I’m here to write about today.
Well, in a way, it is what I’m writing about. Because what we’re talking about here is usability— user interfaces that are easy and enjoyable to interact with are inherently more usable than ones that aren’t. I might think LiveWhale’s interface is more usable than that of another CMS, but that’s not because that CMS isn’t capable of being used by human beings; on the contrary, top commercial and open source CMSs are used every day by plenty of people without complaint. I think our interface invites you to use it, which to me is the ideal of usability. Anyway, as it happens, one of the primary books on Web usability happens to have the worst, most foolish title of any book on Web development anywhere.*
Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think espouses a particular philosophy of Web usability that makes perfect sense. You shouldn’t have to look at a page and sit there thinking about what to click on; the information hierarchy of a page ought to be self-evident. Every day I encounter Web sites that make me think in ways I shouldn’t have to. Where is the search box? How do I find directions to your campus? What’s going on this week? Often the competing interests at work in a Web design tend to crowd out the simple big picture observations, and the things that ought to be easy get lost. It’s true, as Krug writes, that people don’t read Web pages, they scan them, and that’s why information hierarchy is so important. Frankly, I agree with most of what Krug has to say in his book.
But that title!
My company designs Web sites for colleges and universities. Usually the schools we work for hire us largely in an attempt to improve their sites’ outreach to prospective students; when we’re working on an Admissions site this is an obvious and explicit goal, but it’s almost always a general mission.
We have found, from years of experience, that prospects will become more attached to an institution if they find ways to make contact— let’s call it intellectual contact— with a school. They fall in love with a book by an alumni author, they meet with a faculty member, they have an interesting conversation on Facebook. At some point in the process of getting to know a school, something clicks. A connection is made.
(Obviously some students pick a school on less interesting criteria— its position on the US News list or the likelihood of a Fortune 500 job after graduation. But we’re not talking about them.)
This process, above all, involves thinking. Constant, engaged, curious, obsessive thinking about a number of schools, the choice of which will have an enormous influence on the kind of person you’ll turn out to be.
In our site designs we try to encourage this, and to create Web environments that repay close attention. Sometimes this means putting an actual math problem on a math homepage— why not? And sometimes it means detours, hidden doors, or easter egg-like features that you have to explore a bit to find, such as what happens when you click the motto (”Since 1840,” etc.) on the Southwestern University site, or the mouseovers on the Brown Admission Student Life page. Building things like this makes our job interesting, it makes our clients (and their stakeholders in the know) feel special. It’s fun for everyone involved.
But it does make you think. And invariably, at some design meeting or another, someone will ask, “Well, Steve Krug wrote this book, and doesn’t this design violate his main principle of usability? I mean, that design definitely is making me think.”
I don’t think Steve Krug is opposed to Web designs that invite some intellectual engagement. Especially not for prospective college students, for Pete’s sake. But the simplistic title of his book waters his argument, which I believe is a good one, down to its lowest common denominator.
I want the Internet of the future to be smarter, more engaging, better organized. And I want it to make me think. Otherwise the inevitable availability of Web content on every available surface in our lives will turn us into dull, unfeeling automatons. (Some people would argue it’s happening already.) Without an Internet that makes us think from time to time, we’ll end up glued to our chairs, waiting patiently for spoon-fed information from our Internet masters.
And nobody wants that. Not even Steve Krug.
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