Webmonkey is pleased to present this excerpt from the new book, Prioritizing Web Usability, by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger. This excerpt is reprinted with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders.
We conducted our first user studies of web sites and intranets in 1994. Even the first study, which tested only five sites with three users, identified a number of usability problems. For example, it was clear that users didn't want to read very much; detested long pages with dense, unstructured text; and preferred scannable content. In 1997 we conducted more thorough research into how people read online. It confirmed our early findings and resulted in refined analysis of design flaws and more detailed guidelines for avoiding them. This research was confirmed in yet another project in 2004 and led to even more detailed guidelines for specialized web writing.
In this chapter, we review the most prevalent usability issues and our guidelines for addressing them, developed during our initial period of user research, from 1994 to 1999. First, we discuss eight issues that continue to be as critical as ever to usable web design. We have assigned each of the problem areas a skull rating, with up to three skulls indicating how important it continues to be.
The rating scheme is as follows:
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Still a high-impact usability problem. It is very important that designers continue to pay attention to this problem and that interface evaluations check meticulously for it.
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Now a medium-impact usability problem. It is still important that designers avoid making this mistake, but it is no longer a top priority.
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Now a minor issue. Designers should remember our guidelines and try to avoid this design error, but it will rarely cause web sites to fail.
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0 Skulls
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No longer a problem and need not be checked systematically in interface evaluations.
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There are three reasons why a usability problem may be less of an issue today, and we discuss each of these in turn:
- Technology has improved. When you consider the primitive state of the web in the 1990s, it is understandable that several approaches caused dramatic usability problems even if they were not inherently bad designs. Improved technology has alleviated some of the difficulties users had in the past.
- Users adapt to web site designs. Confusing designs create many usability problems. When people get accustomed to certain design approaches, however, they are no longer confused, and those design flaws are less of a problem.
- Designers refrain from the worst abuses. To the extent that designers have shown increased understanding of particular design flaws and restraint in using approaches that increase the potential for problems, we consider that element to be less important, and we don't need to warn against it as strongly anymore.
Eight Problems That Haven't Changed
Eight of the original usability problems are as important today as they were when we first identified them. Though some of these bad design practices are less common on the web now, others are actually more of a problem because continued abuse has made users ever more sensitive to them.
Areas that still cause major problems include:
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Links that don't change color when visited
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Breaking the back button
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Opening new browser windows
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Pop-up windows
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Design elements that look like advertisements
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Violating Web-wide conventions
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Vaporous content and empty hype
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Dense content and unscannable text
Excerpted from Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger. Copyright © 2006 Nielsen Norman Group. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders. All rights reserved.
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