Usability philosophy
As a user experience consultant, I am often accused of encouraging boring web design. I am however only striving for and promoting clarity in web design.
Good design of your web site gives credibility to your organization. Your web design should ideally reflect the three elements of my 'Credibility Loop' (see diagram below).
The terms "user friendly" and "user friendliness" are not used on this site, as there are no widely accepted definitions for them. They are often used as vague marketing terms.
Usability suffers with:
- light body-text on dark background
- text in italics
- 'Flash' intros
- a lot of centre aligned text
- reset button on forms
- a page that takes a whole minute to download
- corporate statements of mission and values
- the spawning of new browser windows
- inappropriate use of HTML frames
- insufficient contact details
- unclear and cumbersome navigation system
- out of date material
- pop-up windows
- mouse-trapping
- splash screens
- hit counters
- long bulleted lists like this one
Usability is enhanced with:
- quality content - not too much or too little
- easy and intuitive navigation around site
- uncluttered layout and fast loading original graphics
- information presented in bite size chunks
- no more than four screens of text per page
- dark body-text on a light background
- short bulleted lists like this one
Philosophy