Don't Make Me Think: Chapters 4-7

So the fourth Chapter of our text is “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral," which essentially talks about trying to keep your categories relatively basic and easy to understand. The best example he used I thought was when he was searching for something for his home office and had the categories available of either Home or Office. I've run into this issue before because depending on what you’re looking for, it can be quite confusing. It can also make a difference of what the user is looking for specifically. For example, if the user is looking for paper clips and staplers, Office would seem like the most logical selection. Where I feel it can be tricky is if the user is looking for something like a desk or a lamp. Both are items that are used in an office, but can easily be items someone would have in the home without having an office. It just makes sense that the designer should maybe keep thoughts like that in mind when making decisions about what goes where.

Chapter five discusses reducing unnecessary words from your site. The examples he used included “Happy Talk” and instructions. I can understand why a lot of sites use happy talk on their homepage. The site wants you to know how great they are, and hope that the enthusiasm projected will pass on to the user as they are using the site. Often a site might say something like:

Welcome to Brand-X. We’re glad you've taken the time to visit our site. Our company has been around for 75-years and our company goal has always been to provide the best product that we can. We hope your experience is great and we thank you for your patronage.

The other item mentioned in the chapter are involving instructions. Like the example he used for the survey (which I found amusing was Verizon, since I had recently had a horrible experience with their website). It was ridiculous how many instructions there were for that survey. As a user, I would think that something that has that many instructions, it must be really complicated and I’m going to take a little time to decide if I want to take the survey or not. The more simplified instructions that the author offered up would definitely increase my chances of wanting to take the survey (or whatever task I might be looking at).

The next chapter covers what I think is one of the most important aspects of using the web (or applications in general), navigation. The author was correct that this is a pretty lengthy chapter, but there really was a lot of important information to look at. I thought the Sears analogy at the beginning was a great way to compare a physical store to a website. As a user of both, if I know what I’m shopping for, I rarely want to waste a lot of time browsing. There are a few aspects that I like from this. First is searching for something specific. The example he uses is a chainsaw. If you decide to use the search bar on the website and ask an employee for help at the store, both methods need to be knowledgeable enough to help you find what you’re looking for. If I go up to an employee at Sears and ask for the chainsaws and they lead me to the hacksaws, that’s the same as typing in chainsaws to a search engine and the first result being hacksaws.

The same goes for if I’m looking on my own. Your store had better be laid out well enough that I can find what I’m looking for easily enough before I throw my hands up and leave (and probably just go to Amazon and order one).

The importance of hierarchy was also discussed. Making sure the user always knows where they are at all times (especially when dropped in the middle of a site), and making visual cues obvious (such as using highlights, color, etc). Without that you risk losing the user to a better designed site that offers similar services. The navigation must be clear and consistent. This doesn't mean you can’t be a designer, but you better make sure your design is understandable.

It’s unfortunate that the book is as old as it is because he does reference Amazon a lot. Their current design no longer uses tabs, though it is still a very well designed site.

Finally, chapter seven focused on the importance of the homepage. The best explanation given in the chapter was comparing it to that of a newspaper page one. You have your site name/head and tagline placed in a prominent spot at the top and probably to the left (based on how most people read) so it can be seen right away. You have your brief explanation of the site’s content (news, shopping, information, etc) and maybe why your site is the best (though that can be considered “happy talk” that was mentioned earlier). It then features your headline, which can be a featured product or lead story/article. All of this information is presented right away on the site, before you even look at a menu, search bar, or have to scroll down at all (the above the fold part that was discussed).

The homepage can also vary somewhat from the rest of the navigation because you need to make sure you’re conveying the needed information to the user, but that doesn't mean that navigation takes a backseat. Things still need to be laid out logically and easy to use, or again a user will leave if it’s too complex and move on to a similar website that may have a better layout.