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Design, usability and your site

How people use the Web,whether we like it or not

— and what we can do about it

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What are thecharacteristicsof your sites’

heaviest users?

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They’re machines!

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More like these…

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Hot, hot, sexy, sizzling design trends!!!!!

• …that you can forget in five minutes:– Web 2.0 rounded corners– Unusually large form fields and text– The “Aqua” look– Font replacement– Bold tropical color

palettes in large, flattint blocks

– Semitransparentdrag-and-droppersonalized layouts

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…and the meaningful values behind them

• Rounded corners, “Aqua”: more organic feel• Large text: readability• Font replacement: More refined, familiar reading

experience• Bold palettes: Contrast helps guide the eye• Personalized layouts: “daily me” but for more than

just news

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Internet designisn’t just about

pleasingpeople’s eyes

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Great Internet design

helps peopleget things done

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‘Jobs to be done’ on news sites

• “Catch up on the news”• Find a specific article or image• Find mentions (names, events, landmarks)• Find out who died• Find something to do• Find stuff for sale• Find a job, car or home• Find out who won the game• Find stuff to watch or listen to• Find what opinion leaders said about a topic• Find or start a conversation• Others?

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… which is why we get this …

• Almost all text same size, same font, same spacing

• Too many mandatories!

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…and we’re not even sure if it works…

• Eyetrack III showed erratic scanning patterns

• Some findings counter to instinct– Want ’em to read? Make

text smaller!– Right-side navigation got

noticed more

• Study premise: “catch up on the news”

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What about all the other jobs to be done?

• How do we know we’re doing these right?– Find a specific article or image– Find mentions (names, events, landmarks)– Find out who died– Find something to do– Find stuff for sale– Find a job, car or home– Find out who won the game– Find stuff to watch or listen to– Find what opinion leaders said about a topic– Find or start a conversation

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Find, find, find!‘Search’ isn’t

the job, it’s the method

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Typical news site search

• Form searches subset of whole site content, or makes user decide which set(s) to search

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But integrated search is growing

• One box, no filters, and a Go button

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…and here’s what you get

• But, no refinement or “search again” cues

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Another integrated search UI

• Note site directory listings at top

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How good search liberates navigation

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Is your content ready

to be found?

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Optimize designs for search engines

• Brand, URL, subdomain consistency– Try for “pretty” URLs

• sitename.com/cars OR cars.sitename.com BUT NOT sitename.com/index.php?section=cars&id=141&ref=home

• http://sitename.com/2006/05/18/news/headline-here/

• Content-to-code ratio• Semantically rich HTML documents with good

content-to-code ratio• Honest, detailed taglines and titles

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Avoid these, or search spiders will

• Redirects and refreshes– Understand the “canonical” URL

• Keyword bombing• Same metatags, titles through whole site• Nasty markup, obsolete comments, inline scripts

and styles

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How your site looks to a search engine

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HTML with good SEO practices

TitleTitle

SpecificmetatagsSpecificmetatags

Semanticmarkup

Semanticmarkup

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HTML with good SEO practices

Anchors (hyperlinks)with title values

Anchors (hyperlinks)with title values

Headings numberedby importance

Headings numberedby importance

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What’s wrong with this picture?

• Why the low Google PageRank?

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And what’s right about this one?

• Why the high Google PageRank?

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SEO better investment than SEM

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And good SEO becomes good usability

SEO Usability

Efficient document architecture Better performance

Everything labeled in plain text Easier task-oriented navigation

Alt-text and title-text Mouseover hints

Refined hyperlinking and URL structures

Intuitive screen-to-screen flows

Refined semantics Repurpose document for multiple platforms

Improved search engine rankings Easier for people who like to begin with Google, Yahoo et al

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Ways to measure usability

• User testing– Preselected tasks– Self-selected tasks– Mix tasks with

“impressions” feedback– Focus groups less

effective for this

• Heuristic evaluation

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Typical usability test case

• “Were you aware that sitex.com had listings of cars for sale?”

• “Have you ever used sitex.com to shop for or compare cars for sale?”

• “OK, now I’d like you to use sitex.com to find at least one used Ford Mustang for sale at an asking price of $14,000 or less.”

• [if successful] “Did you consider that process easy, difficult, or somewhere in between?”

• “Did you find what you expected?”

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New software reduces lab costs

• Morae– User’s on-screen actions, facial reactions, recorded and

synchronized– Observers can be in remote location as long as Internet-

connected -- they see action in sync via Web video– Facilitator or observers

can mark timeline foreasier editing

– www.techsmith.com

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What are usability heuristics?

• Generally accepted software usability principles– Users need clear indications from system about relationships between components– Users need feedback on system status: how far the user has come and has to go in

the current task– Employ ideas the user already understands and modes of interaction with which the

user is already comfortable– Reduce users' cognitive load: have them learn something once, apply it many times– Eliminate distractions– Do not punish users for mistakes; reward for completing tasks– Users should not be afforded the opportunity to make an error– Provide clear solutions to all difficulties users may encounter– Make the system's operation as obvious as possible– Design to allow for individual differences in users' experience– Anything the system can do to make work easier for the user the system should do

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So what’s the problem?

• All those jobs to be done• Tendency to pack too many value propositions into

top-level designs• Tendency to try to accomplish too much in a single

round of testing• Disappointment that people “don’t get” how much

your site offers, and how hard you’ve worked to help them find it

• Again, good search can help!

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Usability stretches beyond your site’s edge

• Many test subjects start by typing the target site’s URL … into Google!

• No amount of design expertise applied to your site overcomes this habit

• So you have to consider search sites’ presentation of your content when you design it

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Lessonsfrom

recentdesign work

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Home page doesn’t need 300 links

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Color palette can be subtle

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Users seem OK with wider pages

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…and liquid layouts are still too hard

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Classified splash pages are a mess

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…but a little TLC helps!

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Most home pages fall apart in 2nd screen

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Form design too often an afterthought

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Great SEO resources

• See your site as search engines see it• http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.search-engine-viewer.htm

• Firefox SEO/SEM plugins• http://seopen.com/firefox-extension/index.php

• Code-to-content ratio calculator• http://www.holovaty.com/tools/getcontentsize/

• Google for Webmasters• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/

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Great design resources

• The Web Standards Project• http://www.webstandards.org/

• Web Site Optimization• http://www.websiteoptimization.com/

• Vitamin: All about Web design• http://thinkvitamin.com/

• SitePoint• http://www.sitepoint.com/

• A List Apart• http://www.alistapart.com/

• Web Developer toolbar for Firefox• http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/