Do You Make This Obvious Web Design Mistake?

Warning

The most common web design mistake is to design for theexception, and to ignore the obvious. That's because designing for theobvious is boring, while designing for the exception is fun.

Some years ago, I was involved in designing contentmanagement software. We spent a lot of time designing breadcrumb trailnavigation, which tells the reader where a particular page sits in theoverall classification.

Another feature we wanted for the software was multipleclassification of a particular piece of content. This causedsignificant problems for the breadcrumb trail design, as there couldtheoretically be two or more breadcrumb trails for content. Anyway, itwas a bit of a challenge, and we really enjoyed working at it.

Nobody actually questioned whether breadcrumb trail navigationwas genuinely useful. It just seemed like a great idea. We were surethat everybody would love it. It turned out that it was a feature thatthe vast majority of people ignored. Everybody I have talked to since,and every report I have read, has stated that breadcrumb trail is, atbest, a like-to-have feature.

"The resistance to using breadcrumbs is perplexing," statesDr. Eric Schaffer, CEO of Human Factors International. "They increaseefficiency. They support site learning. They reduce the user's"where-was-I?" memory burden by providing a list of recently visitedpages. They make it easier to cross levels of the navigation decisiontree within the browse environment."

"But users don't use breadcrumbs spontaneously," Dr. Schaffercontinues. "Studies show that, too. Not surprisingly, the picture isnot so black and white. Super users DO use breadcrumbs. You do, don'tyou? And you use them because they are efficient. They make sense."

This is the New Economy, and we're not supposed to be bored,are we? We're all supposed to be doing challenging work that fulfillsus and moves our career forwards. We all want to design for the "superusers" because this sort of design stretches and challenges us.

There are far more ordinary people out there than super users.These people want to be lead through a simple process so that they cancomplete their tasks quickly and with as little mental effort aspossible. They like a website such as eBay, which under a big headingcalled "Find" asks: "What are you looking for?", and then gives you anice wide search box, with a button beside it labeled "Search".

The obvious is very often boring to the designer. When I telldesigners about the "stupid" things people do on websites, they oftenlaugh in disbelief. For example, lots of people click on the searchbutton without placing text in the search box. They do this becausethey think the search button is actually a link to the search page. So,when someone does that on your website, what should you do? Bring themto a dedicated search page.

Every time you add something to a webpage you potentially makethat page a little less clear. Go through your website and list all theparts that you think are really cool; the parts your friends are reallyimpressed with. Remove them.

What impresses you most is likely unnecessary to thesuccessful completion of the core task. Your goal should be to design awebsite that even an adult can understand.

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