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Built For Use
Built for Use is the kind of book that can be slipped under a door or surreptitiously dropped into a mailbox to make a point without wasting time on yet another useless conversation.
The book is filled with tidbits like:
- The best Web sites don't necessarily come from the best designers.
- Frustrated artists with nose rings and black turtlenecks should not be allowed to turn a company's Web site into a piece of experimental non-performance art.
- Flashing lights are great for Las Vegas, but who wants to work in Las Vegas?
Usability is not, and never has been, sexy. Grayscale sites like Yahoo! deliver value to their users because they load almost instantly and provide access to the things that people want.
This is basic, logical, intuitively obvious stuff. Yet it seems like a lot of this material is completely foreign to many of the people who make the final decisions about what corporate Web sites are going to look like.
As we move forward into a world where EZ-Passes will be used to finance fast-food purchases and where nanotechnologies will be woven into the threads of our jeans, it's important to learn -- and learn quickly -- that sexier is not always better.
Before companies sink millions of dollars into the development of yet another annoying and impossible-to-use Web site, they need to ask themselves:
- Can the site be used by its intended audience?
- Do the customers understand the language on the site?
- Are the customers' computers fast enough to download all of the relevant material?
- Are the customers savvy enough to find their way to the cash register?
- Will the cash register accept the customers' money?
- Is the system completely integrated with the company's back-end software?
- If you call the company on the phone, will you get the same experience that you get when you visit the corporate Web site?
If you say that you have sold me something, and you charge my credit card, then you had better deliver that thing to my door, and soon, or you will lose my trust.
Slapping a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval type "trust" sticker on some Web site does not build customer loyalty. Customer loyalty needs to be earned, one transaction at a time.
Could you imagine how annoying the world would be if retail clothing chains like The Gap put invisible trip-wires in front of their clothing racks, so that whenever you reached for a pair of khakis you crashed to the ground?
Could you imagine how annoying the world would be if retail stores covered all of their cash registers with a layer of Saran Wrap?
That's basically what some Web sites are doing now. If a retail site looks great but you can't use it to buy anything, or to access interesting content, then the site stinks.
If you work with marketers who desperately need to know a thing or two about user-experience strategy -- or maybe all nine -- hand them a copy of Built for Use. It will save time, and they'll praise you for allowing them to discover the truth on their own.
This book has a website, located at http://www.humanlogic.com/. You can purchase Built for Use from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
No DTD, no alt text for images, uses depracated FONT tags...
"In my values, freedom is more important than 'serving users' in a mere practical sense." -- RMS
The software co I work for went from an elegent and simple website, to an over-designed monstrosity. Helplessly I sat by and watch the crime occur. Despite being the interface desinger for the software, the marketing guys would not even consider my perspective.
From simple text based links, we got dropped down dhtml menus. From a simple logo graphic, we got business people high-fiving on the home page.
Marketing believed that our site was not about giving information to users, and potential users of our software. Rather our site's purpose was to create an image of company(a false one)relating to our size and prior successes. Unfortunatly a book like this will not convince them otherwise.
I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on what priciples it's putting forth, but your comment seems to be missing the point which the reviewer, at least, was making. Nobody's saying that art has no role whatsoever in website design. What they seem to be saying - and I agree wholeheartedly - is that art is a secondary concern. It's not wrong to have art, indeed art is often desirable, but art should facilitate the goals of the website, not be a goal per se.
I've done web site design, and I consider myself an artist of sorts, and they are very different activites. Art, as an end in itself, is about beauty and self expression. A corporate web site, like everything else a company does, is about advancing the company's financial position. Usually this means encouraging people to buy something (advertizing), directly enabling them to buy something (on-line sales), or maximizing the value of things they've already bought (customer service).
In none of these cases does the web site work by sitting there and expressing the artist's vision. It works by enabling the customer to do something they want to do - and which the company also wants them to do - using the web site. Art, in a commercial setting, is a fine means unto that end, but should not be the end itself. This isn't to say that art for art's sake isn't a wonderful and necessary part of our society, but a corporate web site is probably not the most suitable canvas.
The sad part is that too often the person making the decisions has a fast computer on a fast connection with the latest version of IE, and they think this is how everyone's experience is. So web designers can not only get away with this crap, but too often their clients will be *begging* for it...
Considering that I am the webmaster for a powertool company .. AND I happen to be owned by the marketing department.
..
.. just happened that at the time .. it payed very well to be able to do stuff on the web.)
.. because the current one keeps dying.
.. when IT suggested we just write our own.
.. or generate dynamic images to 'save work'
.. we have TWO guys with MBA's from Kellog's .. and *THEY* know what they are doing .. These are the guys who have cd's full of end consumer data and churn through it to find out what folks want.
.. who just come up with ideas of what they think we should do - with very little actual research.
.. the rest said it wasn't worth the $$.
How frustrating do you think THAT is
5-6 years of experience of working on corporate sites (my previous company was Comcast@home)
(and before you scream 'web-weenie' I have the C.S. Degree to back it up
And WHOM do you think they ask first about pretty much anything ? There are folks in the accounting department that are more in touch with what we are going to be putting on our website.
Currently two of our braintrusts in marketing are trying to convince each other how we should start using an *alternate* pre-packaged software to run our website
because every marketer I know is a system anylist.
Totally ignoring the fact that it was a marketing decision to buy it in the first place
This is being closly followed by the idea that we can use flash
because every marketer I know is also a graphic artist/programmer/dba.
To be fair
The others are all people who were promoted internally from TOTALLY non marketing positions
We spent over $3Mil developing a tool, plus the costs of manufactureing it, packageing it, and sending it to market. A month before it went on sale, someone had the bright idea to do customer focus group things about the tool.
2 people out of about 110 said that they would buy it
what a thing to find out after its already done.
but every marketer I know is psychic too.
Im beginning to agree with Douglass Adams, lets put them on a colony ship with the phone sanatizers.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!