Simplicity in web design
...is often reffered to as the second most prominent usability guru agrees with Neilsen’s views and described reading his first book Usability Engineering as “feeling like I’d hit the mother lode: someone who understood all the things I’d been thinking about and working on and telling my clients” and also states that he “almost always agree with what Jakob has to say.” Steve Kurgs website www.sensible.com, is laid out in a very simple manner following Nielsen and his own guidelines. (This interview can be read at www.studiowhiz.com/_reviews/article.php?topic=ai&ID=9 ) Another usability guru that agrees that web sites should be kept simple is Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini. Tog however also states that if the design is too simple then it will also be as bad as a design that is too overcrowded, that is to say that if the page is filled too sparsely then it will look and feel empty, making the user feel uncomfortably, but if the page is too overcrowded the user will feel equally uncomfortable as they will feel pressurized and cramped. Tog also states that the site should know what the user is going to want to look at and bring it to the user, in other words place it somewhere on the site in clear view that is easily accessible. (tog’s views on web usability principles can be viewed at www.asktog.com) Francis Till published an article that tries to explain why simple, text based web sites should be successful as accordance with Nielsen’s studies and theories. The studies were carried out by Marion Lewenstein, Professor of Communication, Emerita, at Stanford University. Lewenstein used a device that can track the movement and focus of the eye on 67 subjects over the course of four years. He would place them into the device and then show them different web pages to see where their eyes foucused first and how long they spoent viewing various parts of the screen. The most significant finding to prove Nielsen’s theories was that of the first three eye-fixations on a page, only 22% were on graphics; 78% were on text, proving that people are attracted to and read text before viewing a picture, which was the opposite of the expected result. The studies also showed that forcing users to scroll did not effect the reading of data, and that in reality reading behavior was more likely to take place below the first screen than above - meaning that being forced to scroll, once reading started, presented no barrier to continuing on, this is only relevent however if the information contained in the upper and lower part of the screen was relevent or interesting, otherwise the user simply wouldn’t read it. (this article can be viewed at:- http://www.sitepoint.com/article/273/2) In an interview with another usability guru Jared Spool, Jared tried to explain more reasons to prove and explain Nielsen’s theories. Jared also agreed with the study conducted by Stanford university that scrooling doesn’t effect the user from reading all of the data on the page, and in fact claims that the user would be more likely to read an entire article if the page were laid out simply, with a scroll feature rather than forcing all of the information on one page as it would then have a cluttered feel to the page. He also found that user tend to randomly hop around the site until they find what they are looking for, clicking on links and back buttons if the information isn’t relevant to their needs. If a site is designed simply with a well thought out composition as Nielsen claims is the best way, then there would be less links on one page for the user to click on and hence they would be more likely to stumble upon the information they require before giving up than on a more complicated web site. Jared also claims that pictures aren’t that important as once thought, mostly due to long loading times and claims that text in place of unnecessary pictures will speed up the site to the degree that it will increase user satisfaction. (This article can be read at:- www.webword.com/interviews/spool.html ) Given all from usability gurus such as Nielsen, Tog, Jared and Kurg the arguments that a busy front screen has a negative effect on a site and even business, some of the most recently visited sites such as yahoo, hotmail and BBC all contain busy front screens. I think that the one of the reason for these sites success is the generic ness, or similarities in the design. Internet user have become accustomed to having navigation buttons at the top of the screen, toolbars running down the left and right of the screen and the main information being displayed normally in a form in the centre of the screen. I think the reason why users don’t tend to feel cluttered or claustrophobic in a screen front with this generic design probably has something to do with that according to the a...