Web Sites that Work: Designing with Your Eyes Open

By Dana Greenlee, Co-Host WebTalkGuys Radio

Listen to the audio interview on web usability with Steve Krug:
33 min @ 20K Stream.
Real   WinMedia

Q. Let’s look at the contrast between text-based sites and sites that use a lot of images. Are there advantages of going one way or another, or is there a happy medium?

Krug: A happy medium is the key phrase. I’ve done a lot of work with Roger Black, the designer, and he had a phrase - it’s the “Beauty-to-Download” issue. I have nothing against web pages being very attractive, but the graphics should serve the interest of the site and the user as much as the words do. People go overboard thinking “Well, it’s got to be really good looking.” The fact is it’s possible to do sites that are very good looking and crisp and professional and attractive, but not full of graphics. Graphic touches have a lot more impact than what I call Big Honking Graphics.

Q. My experience is people do have a tendency to take more action from text.

Krug: Exactly. People act on the text. What eye-tracking research has actually shown is graphics do attract your eyes to a location and you then read the text that is next to the graphic. So if you have your lead story and place a small picture next to it, people’s eyes will tend to go first to that graphic, but then right after that they start parsing the words right next to it to interpret that graphic.

Q. What are some tips you have to design good navigation on a site?

Krug: You’re trying to guide people to what you’ve got, so navigation helps them to get there. But the other thing navigation does that no one ever talks about is it reveals what you’ve got. It’s kind of like a table of contents. It fairly concisely tells people what they’re going to find on the site. It tells you where you are on the site since there is no real sense of physical direction on a site.

Q. When you say “where you are on the site”, what do you mean from a design standpoint?

Krug: There is actually one design rule for me. Each page should have a name, and the name should be fairly prominent at the top of the page. So if I click on a button that says “Interior Design”, then when I get to the page that it takes me to, the words “Interior Design” should appear somewhere at the top of the page in the same combination of size, position and boldness that makes it clear that this is the title of this whole page. What you click is what you get. I click on these words and those same words show up at the top of the page, so it confirms that action.

Q. Is there any advantage to keeping your site fairly shallow, maybe one click off of the home page? This would make more navigational links if you have an extensive site.

Krug: Right. The one thing I could say about that with some conviction is some people say everything should be only 1-2 clicks away from the home page. But, in fact, if you watch people, they don’t mind clicking a lot of times to get to what they want, as long as each time they click, they’re fairly confident they are getting closer to what they wanted to get to. The clicks should be unambiguous and the links well named and the organization clear. That’s much more important than whether you can get to it in 1-2 clicks.

Q. Is there a way a website designer can shortcut hiring a usability expert and conduct their own usability research?

Krug: Neighbor testing! I do a lot of neighbor testing. If you’re doing usability testing, you’re supposed to recruit people to test it who are like the people who will use your site. But as long as the person has used a browser and speaks your language, then you’re probably OK. The way you do it is you basically get them to think out loud while they’re using it.

Q. If you could be god of the web world, do you have any pet peeves that you would abolish from web sites?

Krug: I do get annoyed when a site breaks the Back button. I’m clicking along and I move off to someone else’s site. I decide I want to go back to the original site and click the Back button several times and it just keeps reloading the home page of the second site. I finally figured out a way to muddle through this: if you click twice fast, you can fool it.

My other pet peeve is when you’re reading through a message board and you want to browse through a whole bunch of messages by clicking the “Next” button. Sometimes sites are set up so that to locate the “Next” button, you’re required to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find it.

Q. Most sites have navigation on the left side of the screen. There are advantages to have it on the right side since your mouse is already over there. Which side is best?

Krug: We try to interpret things through a visual hierarchy. The navigation goes to the left and toward the top because it’s at a higher logical level. The left side is conventional now. For the most part, if you don’t have a reason to buck a convention, it’s usually not worth it. Convention buys you a lot. If you follow the convention, you don’t have to worry about whether people are going to get that part of your design or not.

Q. Big Flash movies at the beginning of sites have been popular. What is your opinion on any non-straight-html elements like java, streaming audio or video, or Flash movies?

Krug: It’s the “Beauty-to-Download” issue. Are they pulling their weight? Factor into it how it may be annoying people. Fortunately, nobody does any of it anymore without a “Skip Intro” button. Of the Flash movies I see, 50% of them are inappropriate.

Q. With broadband on the horizon, how do you see web page designs evolving?

Krug: You know, I'm probably a Luddite at heart. I donut necessarily believe in high tech solutions. My guess is when everybody has broadband, there will be a lot more bad broadband stuff published. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It’s also so hard and expensive creating broadband content. The difference between making a short animated film and writing a short paragraph is pretty big. And words are pretty powerful if you use them well.

Steve Krug’s website is at sensible.com. His book is “Don't Make Me Think: Common Sense Approach to Web Usability”.


WTG

(Dana Greenlee is president of LoudVox.com and co-host of the WebTalkGuys Radio Show. WebTalkGuys, a Washington-based talk show featuring technology news and interviews. It is broadcast on CNET Radio in San Francisco and Boston, on the web at CNET Radio, WebTalkGuys Radio and via the XM satellite network and on NexTel's Wireless Web.  Past show and interviews are also webcast via the Internet at http://www.webtalkguys.com).