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Maybe I'm not very smart (don't answer that!). Possibly it's because I got my Graphic Design degree almost 20 years ago. Or maybe it's because most of what I've learned about UX design is geared toward eLearning, where the overriding goal is to make sure the user has the best possible chance of absorbing whatever content is presented. But I seem to have some concepts about what constitutes good usability that are at odds with what I see demonstrated on websites that are about UX and design or are by people who are using their sites to market their UX design services. Before I get specific about what I'm seeing in these sites, I thought I'd outline what the criteria are for me for good UX.
- Content is first. Every element should support the user's ability to read textual content, listen to audio content, view graphical or video content, etc.
- Navigation should be clear and intuitive, and there should be just enough of it to make sure the user is always aware of where they are and why they are there.
And that's really it. I haven't found anyone advocating illegible text and sites where you can't tell what's going on (or, conversely, you can easily tell what's going on but it takes you several extra clicks to get there), but in site after site devoted to design and UX, I am seeing some disturbing trends.
I'm going to dive into some of these sites, many of which I visit regularly, and point out some areas I see as less than stellar UX. If someone can show me why I'm wrong about these issues, fantastic! Maybe someone rewrote or reinterpreted the rules and I just didn't get the memo. I'm going to say some fairly harsh things about a number of websites, some of which are farily prominent. Let me say up front that I wouldn't be talking about any of these sites if they didn't have some pretty good things going for them. I'm not saying they're bad sites, but instead, more something like "If your site is about good UX, what does it say if I have a poor experience at your site?"
One thing that you should realize up front is that clicking on the thumbnails in this article will bring up a larger view of the graphic, not a link to the site. I deliberately left these graphics at full size so you could see how they appear to me in the browser I am using.
Anthony Franco's Blog
In his blog, Anthony Franco has this to say about himself:
As a President of EffectiveUI, I have the unique opportunity to listen to how companies like eBay, Adobe, Viacom, Microsoft, GE, Dow Jones, and Qwest and Nielsen think about the internet & desktop software, and how innovative thinking can completely change the way they do business.
Just for the sake of full disclosure, I want to start by saying that my screen resolution is 1920 x 1080. So if these screen captures look terrific to you, it's likely to be a difference between your resolution and mine.
This first screen shot shows how this website looks in Internet Explorer 8 at the size I normally use for browsing. I find the gray text on a black background, while visually rather elegant, to be a challenge to actually read. This is especially true when it is adjacent to eye-popping red, bold, underlined text that's approximately 5 times as large and is over 1/2 inch (~1.2 cm) tall on my screen. By contrast, the text in the sidebar is approximately 1/8 in, or about 2mm, tall on my screen, counting the ascenders and descenders. This means that the main part of the character is about 1mm tall. I admit it, I'm old, so maybe that's the reason that I find this uncomfortable to read. However, it seems to me that I may not be the only person who is fast approaching 40 to ever visit this page. Maybe others find that illegible as well.
I remember when, if a website's main text was under 12 points, it was too small. And this was in the days when 1024x768 was really high resolution. I concede that 12 point text doesn't make much sense for the web, for a variety of reasons. But I am disturbed by the trend to ever shrinking text on websites.
It occurs to me that, since I'm on IE 8, I can scale the display to make my elderly eyes more comfortable. This is what it looks like at 150%, which is the smallest size where I felt comfortable reading the sidebar text.
Now, the logo is uncomfortably large, as is the header text/link, which has grown to around 3/4 in; on my screen. I find myself wondering if there is a resolution at which this site is comfortable to read.
UseIt.com (Jakob Nielsen)
Jakon Nielsen literally wrote the book(s) on usability. We have one of them, which my husband used while he was researching to get his MSc in multimedia computing. This is what Nielsen's website looks like:
The text is clear and legible, and the navigation couldn't be simpler. But, my goodness. To find a site that's visually less appealing, you'd have to go to someone trying to sell you hamsters. It's really difficult to find or absorb any information on a page that positively screams "leave now, while your eyes are still functioning!"
WorkflowFreelance.com
WorkflowFreelance has this to say about itself:
Collecting thousands of articles, tutorials, tips, tricks, news items, design job openings, and live design discussions for creative professional freelancers and contractors from all over the Web, from the top authorities in the field, and then collating, filtering, and organizing that content, and delivering it directly to you by Web, RSS, e-mail, and even Twitter. All to help you Design Your Own Business™.
I have to tell you–I'd been getting this site's twitter updates and clicking its links for around two weeks before I realized this was an aggregator site. The WorkflowFreelance home page doesn't tell me why I should care about being on this site. The links that are vertically down the center of the page look like they may be a little more important than the links at the left and what appear to be ads to the right, but I'm left feeling a bit unsure. This reminds me of the scene in the Incredibles where Dash says "when everyone is special, that means no one is." It's clear that this site loves every bit of content that's on it and wants to showcase all of it. Unfortunately, I have a hard time understanding what's supposed to be emphasized on a site like this.
If you navigate around on this site for a while, you'll probably notice a cute little page fade-in between pages. This doesn't work well for me when the window first opens with one of their pages–such as, for instance, if I click a link from twitter. What happens then is the browser launches, the page comes up white, and the status message says "Done, with errors on the page." It took me several days to realize that the page was not, in fact, done. If I went away and did something else, sooner or later the completely blank white page would be replaced with content. Of course, I'd completely miss out on the "fade in" effect that seems to be in resurgence these days.
Readers who are old like me will probably remember that this type of effect was trendy for a while when browsers first made it available. However, it went away for most sites in precisely the same way as the "Skip Intro" page, and for similar reasons. I find it deeply disturbing that I see this effect on more and more sites.
DustinCurtis.com
Dustin Curtis has this to say about himself:
My name is Dustin Curtis. I make user interfaces and experiences. I am 8,306 days old.
Many of the articles on his site center around pointing out the design errors of others. Because this is a blogazine, each post is individually designed. My criticism of the site is actually tangential to this concept, but I'm not going to get into whether blogazines are an exciting new phenomenon or merely schizophrenic from a usability point of view. Instead, I want to concentrate on a particular post, which, on first viewing, looks like this:
No question about it. Visually, this is an interesting design, but you can see that about 1/4 of the third column (fourth if you count the graphic as a column) is cut off horizontally. Oh look, Dustin has helpfully given us arrow icons to assist us with the awkward navigation necessary when a designer ignores the normal strictures about not making people scroll horizontally. See, when you click them...nothing happens. Instead, the icons seem to stand for "I'm so in love with this novel design idea that I'm going to try to resolve the problems I know it causes by at least giving you a visual clue that you'll have to do something that virtually all other sites avoid making you do...scroll horizontally."
To be fair, when I maximize my browser on my 1920 x 1280 screen, the design makes more sense, with only two, arguably irrelevant, columns cut off.
I wonder, though, how many people have screens at pretty much exactly the right resolution to make this site's design intelligible, and of those, how many use their browsers maximized all the time? Maybe Dustin has just made the assumption that his audience is almost entirely composed of designers on high res screens. So let's check out the other posts on his blogzine.
Is it just me, or does it seem that the content of this page floats uncomfortably in the middle of a white space that seems to have been intended for a smaller viewing port?
So it seems to me that he's actually expecting visitors not just to alter their browsing behavior, but to resize their browsers, to view one post on his site. This kind of arrogance is disturbing in any designer, but it's especially disturbing in one who seems to be developing a following among would-be UX designers
Redesigning the Boarding Pass
This is a fun one, because the subdomain seems to have been set up for the entire purpose of explaining how bad the boarding pass was that he received on a recent airline flight.
What's probably not obvious to you in the thumbnail is that the page has a repeating pattern of pixel-sized "smuck gray" dots laid out like the dots on the "five" side of a six-sided die. Coupled with a small body text size, I found this very difficult to read, as I kept wanting to wipe the smuck off my screen. This is even worse in the comments section, where the type size decreases even further. I actually find it easier to ignore a background of cute puppies.
When I encountered this site, I decided to contact him and tell him how these dots were impacting my user experience. They were, after all, a minor part of the design and easily removed. And, after all, he has this to say about the airline:
You are confused, lost, and just want to get on your flight, it's cool, we don't really care, and we sure as hell don't want to want to make this process easy and enjoyable for you (sic).
So, a series of emails ensued.
Someone tweeted a link to your post about boarding pass designs. I started to read it, then I noticed my screen was all smucky. Wait. No it wasn't. You had a pattern of tiny little dots as your page background. After that point, the harder I tried to ignore the dots randomly intersecting the text of your post, the worse my eye strain got.
I notice that absolutely none of your improved boarding pass designs feature tiny little dots in the white space of the boarding pass. Maybe you should add some, to give the gift of eye strain to airline passengers.
Sincerely;
Amy Blankenship
OK, in looking back, I probably should have suggested he just remove the dots, but I was trying to echo the snarky, sarcastic tone of the site, figuring he wouldn't use such a tone if that wasn't what he responded to. So here's what he said back:
Amy,
Get some new eyes.
T
This was surprising, given how offended he seemed to be by his perception that Delta didn't care about his own experience. So, I'll admit I was offended when I responded.
Thank you for demonstrating exactly how deep your commitment to good design and user experience actually isn't :). Have a great day.
Apparently, he's no more able to let a conversation that should, by rights, be long over, die than I am.
Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to this experiment.
OK, I'd been planning the article you're reading for about 3 months...this might be a good site to include in the discussion. Maybe I can get him to clarify why he's less open to usability suggestions than might be expected.
I'm kind of curious as to why you feel that Delta should redesign their tickets based on your feedback. Why don't you "just get some new eyes" and learn to read their boarding pass in the manner they happened to design it, which is essentially what you've asked me to do when I pointed out a usability problem with your site?
BTW, can I have your permission to include this correspondence in an upcoming article in InsideRIA on Design/UX sites that don't "eat their own dogfood"?
Thanks;
Amy
His response?
Troll.
Obviously, I took that as a yes.
UXBooth.com
This was the site that got me thinking that sites about UX have a greater responsibility to demonstrate good UX than ordinary sites about, say, cute puppies.
When I first encountered this site, it was in a link to 10 UX Blogs You Should be Reading. Naturally, I wanted to visit these 10 paragons of good UX, so I clicked on the graphic for Usability Post. Around 20 years of using browsers has taught me to expect that when I click a link that I will be taken to the content. In this case, I was taken to a page that contained a link that, if I clicked it, would navigate to the content. So I think I made it to Usability Post and Boxes and Arrows before I decided those extra clicks were just too much hassle.
Again, I decided to contact the site with my concerns (actually this contact was first, but I thought the article would flow better if I didn't go in chronological order).
I was really interested in your site, until I clicked a link to see an article...and found it takes me to a page that has the actual link to the article, and not much else.
You've got to be kidding me. Please eat your own dogfood and apply good UX principles to your own site!
This was their response:
Thanks so much for your feedback! We all really appreciate you taking the time to let us know what works and what doesn't.
Frankly, we never really considered the option of just directly linking to the article, and upon review decided "why not?" Therefore, going forward all of the resources on the front page will indeed link directly to, well, the resource itself.
Thanks again for taking the time to write and for reading UX Booth.
And that, folks, is how it's done. Good designers are more married to having a good experience for their users than they are to their own egos.
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Great post! Thanks for informative article. I was looking for one of those. It's very helpful to me. Maybe you could guide me to finish my journey to find the answer with your experience and knowledge of 20 years in design(That's huge). I'm trying to find the differences and more exact meaning between UX and Usability. I'm familiar with Usability concept from Jakob's book. But about UX, I feel like sort of marketing buzzword. Is this possible to have the bad usability with good UX design? But how do you feel about that as a designer in the real field? Correct me if I'm wrong.
I commend your scrutiny of user experience, however:
Please keep writing, but keep drama with your friends.
Amy, you know I respect you, but you were being a troll.
First off, there is nothing wrong with the gray dots on the airline ticket site. Maybe your contrast is set too high. Honestly, it's a few simple clicks in IE or FF to disable the background image.
Secondly, your recommendation that he get new eyes to learn to read the airline ticket was uncalled for. The airline ticket has a demonstrable UX problem that goes past just readability; it's downright confusing. Your issue was subjectively aesthetic, grounded in opinion. His was objectively corroborative, grounded in years of UX research and print design.
Thirdly, the site's whole purpose is to gain feedback about the airline ticket designs. He has a call to other designers for ideas. He likely set up the email address specifically for this one experiment. His response could have been out of anger; he checked the email expecting feedback about airline tickets. Instead you sent him a petty grievance with his background image (which as I said before, you could have turned off to read the text). Designers are not customer service reps, and you are not his client.
I also disagree with your assessment of Dustin Curtis' site.
First, if you take the time to look at all his entries, you will begin to see a consistent pattern emerge in his design. Every entry has a title, long body of content, and footer. But instead of organizing the content into a jumbled mess just to get it above the fold, he works the scrollbars into his designs. Every one of his designs is a master's example of proper whitespace utilization.
Secondly, I can only imagine that the "arrow icons" you refer to are the "Prev" and "Next" buttons at the top of the screen. If those are doing nothing for you, it must be because you are using the least standards-compliant browser on the market. If you are scrutinizing designer blogs and websites, at least do it in the browser they designed and developed for. Some of them intentionally don't design their personal sites to work on IE, as they are already too burnt out on hacking in IE workarounds at their jobs.
Thirdly, as a designer, it is Dustin's obligation to innovate and push the boundaries of what is acceptable in UI. Maybe it's because I'm on a Mac (with my trackpad's swipe scrolling capabilities) but the horizontal scrollbar does not affect the navigability of the piece at all. The content is intentionally designed for horizontal viewing, including the genius use of the cafeteria plate on the left.
Lastly, your article is about UX, but your entire complaint about Jakob Nielsen's site is UI related. His site is extremely usable, as long as the user doesn't expect flashy graphics and slick interactive elements. The comparison with the Petite Paws website is cruel and incongruent. Nielsen's site is organized and informative, while Petite Paws has a garish background, annoying graphics, and horrible navigation and text layout.
In conclusion, while I enjoyed your company and conversation on the RIAdventure cruise, and I usually enjoy reading your articles, I cannot agree with your assessment of these sites or your manner in which you critiqued them. I think sites exist which are in desperate need of a UX overhaul, I just wish you had picked one of them.
I found this article interesting and agree on many of the UX issues you have raised, however I have a few points in defence of the sites you have critiqued.
Firstly, the majority of the sites are personal sites. Therefore the owner has probably had to do the interface design, interaction design, write the copy, write the code, etc. In addition I doubt any have done - nor would I expect - any usability testing (well maybe Jakob Nielsen!).
All of these factors, when combined, make up the "User Experience", yet none of the site owners are experts in all of the aforementioned fields. Dustin Curtis, for example is an interface designer, while Jakob Nielsen is usability guru. A look into Anthony Franco's site reveals he's using a hosted Wordpress solution with a theme created by somebody else. In other words, he didn't design or code his blog site.
At the end of the day, a great user experience requires the skills of many experts. I think it can be forgiven if an individual's site has a few UX issues.
Thanks for the post, Amy.
@Jon. Agreed that this probably isn't the best venue for this post, but it still needs to be said.
@Paul Taylor. To make it easy on you, the user, I'm going to go back through your list and respond to each item respectively. But first, UX is an acronym for User eXperience, which incorporates more than just UI, site navigation, readability, etc. Please understand that.
Re: Boarding Pass:
1. There is something wrong with the dots. They are an eyesore. And the user should NOT have to go through the hassle of turning off the hideous background. Plus, how many people do you know who actually know how to turn off the background? Most internet users probably won't know how to do that. Don't even try to make the case that the users of the site are designers and should know how to turn off the background. His post was about a problem facing more than just one group of people, but rather everyone who buys plane tickets. Thus, if he is going to critique someone else's design he should be prepared to defend his own.
2 . I agree that Amy maybe should not have taken the low road so quickly when giving "constructive criticism." But I believe she did this intentionally to provoke a response, albeit, a negative one, simply to see if the writer would take the higher road.
3. Since UX stands for User eXperience - UX Designers ARE customer service representatives. The user IS their client. Responding to a user's feedback IS the designers job (when on self-run sites and environments). Responding to emails site in an appropriate manner IS part of UX and thus IS part of the designer's job (again, when on a personal site).
Re: Dustin Curtis's site:
1. The user should NEVER have to look deep to find a common, positive thread among usability. It should be immediately at hand. Dustin is a smart kid, and his articles are interesting, but his inexperience shows through on his own site. A master, Dustin is not (though he is on the road to becoming one).
2. Again, the user should not be forced to use a tool that the designer says they must in order for experience to be positive. That train of thought is exactly what Amy's post is attempting to demonstrate. After all, its USER eXperience, not Designer-Tells-You-What-To-Do eXperience.
3. Could we at least have a bit of consistency? Horizontal scrolling then vertical scrolling, then content that is a different width, then... That's not innovative, that's down right annoying.
Re: Nielson's site:
UI is a subset of UX. Please understand that.
I've been to that site a couple times. Never want to go back. It is next to impossible to find anything without straining and is, thus, unusable.
I think you may have a false understanding of UX. Have you ever read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. You should.
@sardwon These individual authors are supposed to be UX designers (or trying to give UX advice/criticism) and should be held to higher standards on their personal works than anyone else. So, yes, they should all be testing their own work and are not exempt to any kind of criticism. In fact, UX designers should be prepared to be stoned to death if their own sites, or responses to emails/phone calls, have some kind of issue. This is what Amy is trying to get at. Please re-read her last paragraph.
- 0
When design suits its function, then it's good design. When it doesn't or if it has no firm function, it becomes art. The two are not mutually exclusive, but if you want to blend design and function with usability to create a pleasing and effectinve User eXperience, then the 'artist' has to respect the user. If the artist doesn't respect the user, then the user wil probably vote with hs feet (eyes!).
Re. Jacob Neilsen's site Useit.com - The site is absolutely accessible and usable, according to strict definitions of the terms, and crammed full of great information. But it is unpleasant to visit from a design perspective, looking like a hangover from 1996. It's the kind of site that I copy/paste into Word so I can change the font and format the text into something I can scan more easily !!
I'm really pleased by all the comments, because I believe this kind of debate is healthy.
@Dongwook: In my opinion, the difference between User Experience and Usability is that a usable site will make sure that you can get to all the content you need, either with your keyboard or mouse, and the content will work with a screen reader, if someone supplies their own CSS, or if someone has adjusted their settings so as to see everything in high contrast.
A site/application with good UX will make sure the most important elements of the site are easy to find and access, that when you do access something that you're clear on where you are and how to get back to where you just were. Typically, these sites are characterized by better-than-average graphics that support these goals (important elements will be larger or otherwise highlighted, transitions help the user see where something went, etc.)
This is just a "top of mind" explanation of how I see the difference, but don't take it as gospel :).
@paul: I think most of your issues were addressed fairly well by @Zero, but he left me a few crumbs:
- The airline ticket has a demonstrable UX problem that goes past just readability; it's downright confusing. Your issue was subjectively aesthetic, grounded in opinion. His was objectively corroborative, grounded in years of UX research and print design.
I would argue that "your design makes my head hurt" is much less subjective and more a matter of fact than "I'm confused by your design." Telling someone that a design that makes their head hurt doesn't make their head hurt is akin to telling the guy wrapped in blankets shivering in the corner that he's not cold because you're not. Additionally, a quick search on scholoar.google.com shows that researchers have known since at least 1997 that patterned backgrounds in the content area of web sites are a bad idea, and why. I didn't actually need to do a google search, because I actually lived through this period as a web designer.
- I can only imagine that the "arrow icons" you refer to are the "Prev" and "Next" buttons at the top of the screen.
I am referring to the arrow pointing to the right at the bottom of each column.
- As a designer, it is Dustin's obligation to innovate and push the boundaries of what is acceptable in UI
I totally agree with you that the new crop of designers, unencumbered by the baggage that designers of my generation picked up while learning to "just make it work", produce some incredibly exciting visual ideas. The thing is, designers already tried making users conform to their ideas of how their site should be viewed. It was a painful experience for both users and designers.
Just because you don't remember "this site is best viewed at 800x600" doesn't make it OK to inflict more or less the same thing on viewers (without the polite message), 15 years later.
@Zero
- I agree that Amy maybe should not have taken the low road so quickly when giving "constructive criticism." But I believe she did this intentionally to provoke a response, albeit, a negative one, simply to see if the writer would take the higher road.
I totally admit I'm not a saint, and as I said in the post I wish I had approached it differently. However, who would have guessed that someone who is comfortable with using the "f" word in a site that's a subdomain of a business they have an interest in would be so bothered by what I saw as gentle ribbing.
I was trying to understand why, as a user of content, he feels the producer should conform to him, but as a producer of content he doesn't seem to "get" that this can't happen if content producers are unwilling to conform to consumers of their content. To this end, I flung his own words back in his face, hoping that this technique would cause him to realize the hypocrisy of his own response.
- So, yes, they should all be testing their own work and are not exempt to any kind of criticism. In fact, UX designers should be prepared to be stoned to death if their own sites, or responses to emails/phone calls, have some kind of issue.
Maybe "stoned to death" is a bit harsh. But certainly the usability of your own website demonstrates what it is that you do vis-a-vis user experience. When this is in conflict with the content, then this causes visitors to question what kind of UX you'd actually provide if they were to hire you. There is no way of knowing how many potential customers saw the sites in this list and went somewhere else based on the flaws in basic usability.
For the sites that aren't aimed at marketing, there is also no way of knowing how many people had excactly the same problems I did and simply left without calling it to the site owner's attention, never to return.
I also would like to point out that if your site is about criticizing others, then you shouldn't be surprised or upset when people criticize you. It's what happens. Take for instance, this post. I knew when I posted it that it would probably generate a substantial number of negative responses. I'm pleased, though, that each commenter has taken the time to participate in the discussion. I feel that often slightly heated discussions are good learning experiences.
@sardwon
I meant to say: in your response you 'forgive' Anthony Franco's site because it's a WordPress theme. Well, that's a fair comment, up to a point. Unfortunately, we humans judge people in all sorts of ways, and we have many, many expectations of people based on our judgements. Frankly, we are often overly judgemental, putting unfair expectations on people.
But in Anthony's case, I think he set the bar very high on expectation.
I attended his presentation at AdobeMax last year. It was a great presentation on design and UX. View it here http://max.adobe.com/online/session.213 it really is worth taking an hour or so to watch the whole thing. Don't be tempted to just listen. His visuals are essential to the presentation.
And having seen that presentation, even I, a graphical numbskull, am disappointed by my eXpreience when I visit his blog.
Singling out individual blogs, sites and people in this fashion is the uber fail.
Vitriol and open acts of warfare. These sorts of articles linger and linger and will ultimately cost one of these people some sort of opportunity.
I'm not sure what qualifies you to run amuck making random analysis but I sure hope the tables don't turn your way sometime.
This post was long-winded, poorly formatted, boring and inflammatory at times. You did engage in trollism.
And frankly - I don't like your photo. Or your name.
*These last two statements are satire, that betray my true thoughts*
I hope you do not delete my comment - unless you delete the entire post.
Best,
J
PS: I am not one of your victims. Merely an observer.
@Zero. I won't defend my understanding of UX to you.
Firstly, the airline ticket site. Amy said her problem with the site was "your design makes my head hurt," then claims that is not a subjective judgement. This is the opposite of truth. Using "my head," in her description of the problem is the very definition of subjectivity. Personally, the background isn't a problem for me. Obviously it also isn't a problem for a great many other people, because the site has hundreds of responses and numerous entries.
I think that if Amy had been nicer when she emailed T, she would have gotten a better response. I disagree with the assessment that she could send a snarky, sarcastic email to him just because he was snarky on his website. His sarcasm was directed towards Delta, not the user of the site. An appropriately congruent sarcastic response would have originated from Delta, not a user of the site.
-The user should NEVER have to look deep to find a common, positive thread among usability. It should be immediately at hand.
One would hope that in researching an article criticizing designers, the author would look at more than one example from them. This is all I meant.
-A master, Dustin is not
I didn't say he was a master at design. I was responding to Amy's comment that he over-utilized whitespace on the flimsy doorknob piece. Oh wait, she made that judgement after stretching her screen width to 1080, something she specifically criticized about one of his designs in a previous paragraph. I said he was a master at whitespace utilization and organization, something he clearly excels at.
-Again, the user should not be forced to use a tool that the designer says they must in order for experience to be positive. That train of thought is exactly what Amy's post is attempting to demonstrate. After all, its USER eXperience, not Designer-Tells-You-What-To-Do eXperience.
I disagree, but that is out of blind hatred for IE. I understand this, I know it is irrational, but it is my subjective opinion.
-Could we at least have a bit of consistency? Horizontal scrolling then vertical scrolling, then content that is a different width, then... That's not innovative, that's down right annoying.
Yes, you can and do. But you're missing what is consistent. His designs consistently organize content around the idea of scrolling. I found both of his horizontal scrolling pieces to be very well thought out. The fried chicken piece looked like it was a print piece, suitable for a newspaper or magazine.
As a user I don't mind scrolling horizontally, but this is partly because I have a mac with an excellent trackpad. What I DO mind, is scrolling both horizontally AND vertically.
Dustin's pieces are more artistic. It is his personal site and his prerogative. As for his professional work, did you see his redesign of AA.com? Frickin brilliant.
RE: Nielsen's site. I understand very well that UI is a subset of UX. Unfortunately, the UI is not that bad. Bland, maybe. Simple, yes. Unusable? Absolutely not. If you want information, you can get it very simply. I'm sorry that you seem to need slick graphics and colorful CSS to look at a page for longer than a minute. He is not trying to be Smashing Magazine, he wants to display a list of continually updating information as easily as possible. As someone who often reads technical documentation, his site is perfectly navigable and readable.
@Amy
-Just because you don't remember "this site is best viewed at 800x600" doesn't make it OK to inflict more or less the same thing on viewers (without the polite message), 15 years later.
I do remember the days of "this site is best viewed at...X" and I don't appreciate your attempt at marginalizing my opinion because of my age.
I agree with most of what Steve said, but I don't think the fact that it looks like it was exported from FrontPage makes it unusable.
Hi, Paul;
I apologize that I wasn't more precise with my terminology. I wasn't specifically meaning you, Paul Tayler, but more you, whoever is designing a site who doesn't remember why certain standards are in place.
Thanks for your comment.
Amy,
Thanks for clarifying. Sorry that's how I read it, I'm probably just hyper-sensitive to tactic. I do appreciate your posts, and I love that a woman is in the community being vocal about RIA development. Thanks for responding, and keep up the good work.
Paul
Hi Amy,
interesting post in the sense that it is one of the few on InsideRIA that I could not finish. It is a bit tedious to read through an academical topic that reflects the author's obvious issue with her age, and using it as a little chat room to free frustration. This could have been a great post, had it been approached by the standard set for writing about these type of things in other similar posts. Believe me, I want this approach. I would not find it boring. I'm not finding yours particularly interesting because you're not afraid to speak your mind. You have spoken your mind, and it's rather riddled with a mid-life, feminist kind of mess.
To be clear, if you are unable to approach these topics professionally, revert to discussing recipes and Heat magazine articles. Remember, your audience is a bunch of geeks, including me, who want to see a standard applied to a topic. Yes.
Your knowledge on the subject has become lost, because I don't like your writing. I do believe I'm not the only reader who feels this way. Your post has become messy and useless. It is rather intrusive to a professional society.
Amy,
Thanks for mentioning UX Booth in your article. I think every person who designs a website maintains a delicate balance between their user's experience and ego. That's just the nature of being a digital content producer.
As a consumer, however, I've run the same gamut of sites that you mentioned. I think it's interesting that many of us can't find the time to practice what we preach. But it isn't for lack of want. It's for lack of time. The question practitioners must ask themselves is: do I want to help paying clients or do I want to serve as a model for my colleagues?
In our case at UX Booth, we want the blog to stand up to feedback as much as possible. We've got a bug list a mile long but we're working on making building a better blog, one step at a time. No blog gets it right 100% of the time.
Thanks again,
Andrew
Hi Amy,
I really wanted to go along with you on this article. You had me with your call out of Useit.com. Who cares if the site is usable when It is so arrogantly ugly and deserving of much more flack than it gets? The picks at effective UI weren't educational or interesting, however, and I flatly disagree with your comments on dustincurtis.com and the boarding pass redesign site. Your choice of sites for this article seems random, and the criticism of dustincurtis.com and the boarding pass site misplaced.
I too got my BFA in graphic design 20 years ago. I recently came across both of these sites, and found them rather inspirational and compelling. What Dustin's site and voice lacks (I agree - experience) he makes up for with personality and originality. Remember when you thought you could redesign anything, and that design could change the world? I do, and I love that Dustin and Tyler were offended, did something about it, and shared the stories. Both of these sites do just what they should - inspire ideas and dialogs. Little dots and tiny navigation arrows are not the point, and have no impact on the story or the ideas presented.
There are so many sites out there deserving of criticism. I vote for a redo.
Best,
Tania
Tania;
I think the point has been somewhat lost that they are all compelling, useful sites in their own way.
What I actually remember about being a young designer is that the projects I was assigned in school taught me almost nothing about how to design successfully in the real world. In fact, I was almost fired from my first design job because I had no idea how to quickly evaluate the project, decide what was important, and deliver a solution that met the client's needs in a reasonable time frame.
Instead, I was taught to view every project as high art and spend days or weeks deliberating before finally coming up with something my ego was way too invested in. I actually agreed to work for half pay for a couple of weeks while I worked out the basics of how to work as a designer, not just come up with pretty pictures.
Ironically, I wound up leaving that job a year later when I was working fast enough that my hourly wage was no longer able to support me.
I again found my schooling working against me when I started designing websites a few years later. Print design classes taught me that I should control every aspect of the viewer's experience, and it was quite painful to let go of that in favor of a vision where the design conformed to users' choices about viewport size, font sizes, and even colors.
These sites all made decisions about the various elements of their design, decisions that have consequences both for visitors and for themselves. For instance, Dustin Curtis' article demonstrates both that he can produce beautiful, compelling designs and that he is either ignorant of the common stricture against horizontal scrolling or that he will disregard it in the service of another objective. I suspect that more visitors will be inspired than put off, but still the possibility is there, and I presume he accepted that they could be put off when he decided to post that particular design.
By the same token, I made the decision to make a post that I knew would be controversial, and I welcome the dialogue that it has inspired. What I find difficult to understand is that people seem to support Dustin and Tyler's decision to see an issue and start a dialogue about it, but some commenters seem to feel there's a problem that I am doing the same thing.
My basic point is that it's better for a site to be both beautiful and respectful of the user, and I find objections to respecting users' viewing preferences frankly puzzling. It's a shame that this point has not been explored in more of the responses.
Thanks for your comments.
Feminist?
Mid-life crisis?
I found the article, the linked-to sites, and the comments interesting. I'm appalled, however, to see this reduced to gender/age attacks. I'm reminded of several professionals on the internet who were middle-aged women pretending to be younger men, and who gained large faithful followings.
In other news, I hated the dots and had to increase the font-size several times to read Tyler's site. The content was great, though, but... For the future, Amy, I think people who include anti IE6 vitriol filled with profanity will probably not respond well to snark.
-Beth
I agree that It is better for sites to be beautiful and respectful of the user. It is also important for design to be appropriate for the audience for which it is intended. Dustin and Tyler's sites are clearly not targeting everyone. They are speaking to others like themselves, who, I am sure, are not bothered by small dots and tiny arrows. That aside, a critique of the redesign for american airlines and the boarding passes would make more sense, as those designs are targeting everyone, and might inspire constructive discussion, as they have on some other sites. The particular issues on the sites that publish the redesigns aren't interesting enough to inspire discussion. It is like criticizing ee cummings' grammar - to do so misses the point and the gesture.
I also agree that sites should be beautiful and help the user as a matter of course. This is what good design is all about, helping the user. On my website I've tried to keep things as clean as possible whilst giving the user an easy experience. (Hopefully I've got it right!)