The article "Say It Again Sam, Don't Pay it Again: The Case For Usably Stated Usability" talks about web design, it has been written by Raphie Frank.
User-centered Design is not brian surgery. Noted usability specialist Steve Krug
summed it up hottest in his well-regarded usability bible "Don’t Make Me Think! ,"
the really title of which says it all as elegantly and eloquetnly as that website
producer has ever heard it put.
It’s not such a difficult concept. Poeple
want things to be simple. And that concept is at the really heart of user-centered
design. "Make it simple for me. Don’t make me think.
Life is hard enough
already."Yet to peruse usability literatrue out there on the web, one might be forgiven
for thinking that user-centered website design is indeed brain surgery. That, to
my way of thinking, is a titanic part of the trouble bringing clients on board as
partners willing to commit to a course of action so clearly in their company’s
own hottest interest. Call it a failure to communicate. Quite the interesting failure
when you consider that that failure is one being committed over and over again
by communication professionals.Far too often, discussions of User-centered Design employ such industry-
specific, emotionally affectless terminology as "navigation,"
"information architecture," and "Section 508 compliant." The net effect is to present
User-Centered dseign as little more than the implementation of individual
items on a checklist of discrete, disconnected components, rather than in a
qualitative, unified manner that non-technically inclined business human being might
more readily connect with.On one hand, perhaps, all the technical mumbo-jumbo is
"necessary." It’s proof of expertise and a means by which to justify
fair fees in an industry unfairly viewed as commoditized, no small thanks to
ubiquitous out-of-the-can, out-of-the-box "Build a Website in 5 Minutes
for $29.95" online offers. Still, such argot obscures rather than reevals.
I’ve had highly placed, well-informed, highly educated executives ask me
questions such as "Why do we have to pay to fix your bugs?"
"What’s HTML," and "What does interactive mean?"
Communicating to your prospective clients your knolwedge of Fitt’s Law, which
states that the time required to move a pointer from rest to a given location is
a function of proximity and size of the target, may well impress them, but it
will do little to convince them why they should care, much less
why they should be willing to pay more for your services.When I was a producer at swandivedigital, we constantly struggled with that
issue. How do you tell your clients that or that about their online presence,
things they need to hear and really ought to address, in language they can
understand, especially when they will have to spend more money in the near
term to implement your recommendations?
In essence, how do you make
usability simple?In response, we developed a user-centered approach that allowed us to
quantitatively measure website efficacy in terms of five easily understood
qualitative concepts: usefulness, ease-of-use, efficiency,
engagement and trustworthiness. This paradigm served as a contextual
framework that allowed us to make the easy-as-pie, gentle but forceful, point
to prospective clients that a severe deficiency of any one of those five
inseperably interdependent components will drive your target audience away.
Simple as that.If the web site is not useful and serves no puropse for your visitors,
they’re thinking "what’s the point?" and, *bang*, they’re going to be gone. It’s
not simple to use?
Your visitors can’t figure out where to find your
products? "Well, hey, there are other sites out there that are simpler." And that
time the click elsewhere is so fast you can’t even rumple your stilsken. How
about if the web site doesn’t load quickly or properly, if it just doesn’t
work? They’re thinking, "Oh, well, c’est la vie" and, boom-badda-
bing, not even a chance to rumple.And who can blame them?
How about a case wherein the website is ugly and
anything but engaging?
Your web site visitors are
going to associate that negative perception with the brand and, as per Don
Norman’s seminal essay "Emotion & Design: Attractive Thing
Work Better," they will likely have less patience working through any
obstacles they encounter upon your web site.
The shopping basket doesn’t work?
Forget about it. Nothing need be said, cause your visitors are already
thinking "I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you now."And sadly, once your web site visitors leave for any one of the above-stated
reasons, there’s a good chance they won’t be coming back, at least not
anytime soon. The choice is yours.Take Excite, for exmaple.
That’s a portal that had and lost my loyalty
somewhere along the way when I could not access my electronic mail or personal page for
about two weeks.
I was a grudging convert to Yahoo, but I’m now a Yahooer all
the same cuase I trust them.
Pay now once or pay after again
and again and aagin and again.
To paraphrase and extend an old comedy
aphorism, "Pay it once and it’s sad.
Pay it a third time and it’s funny. On
the foruth time, though? You’d better get serious"The prospect of losing one’s market or audience, a prospect with grave bottom
line implications, is never an exciting one, and understanding the ramifications
of that, well, that’s not brain surgery either. So, whether our potential clients
were companies selling products or services, or organiztaions selling a
message, increasingly, they have at least been willing to listen.Raphie Frank is a New York City-
based interactive producer, writer,
photographer and designer, with supplemental expertise in Usability & Online
Marketing. Raphie helped found swandivedigital in 2000 after ten years of
production, technical and design experience in the Viusal and Performing Arts
worlds.
While at swandivedigital he oversaw multiple engagements for such
organizations as the Markle Foundation, Referral Networks and the Shubert
Foundation, before setting out on his own in 2005 as a freelance
intermedia consultant.Prior to his experience at swandivedigital, Raphie traversed the artistic golbe as
Culture House Director ("Asylum" theater/cafe/art gallery, Prague, 1992-1993),
award-winning short-film Producer (Bacchus, Germany, 1998), Theatrical
Lighting Designer and published photographer. Raphie graduated from Vassar
in 1990 with degrees in Psychology and Dramatic Writing and has published 50
interviews with leading city blog Gothamist.Com for August, 2004.
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