A List Apart Survey

I think that a survey made for people who work on the internet is important because of the fact that people in these professions, particularly those that work from home, sit behind a computer screen all day and often don’t get the opportunity to interact with their peers. We talked earlier in the class about the fact that internet users as an audience are invisible to us and therefore hard to understand, and I think this concept extends to other web designers and developers as well.

The most surprising part of this survey for me had to be the information regarding gender. I had always assumed that the web design/development field would be male dominant, but I was surprised to find that only 16.2 percent of the respondents to this survey were female. Lately I have been seeing myself in more of a technical, development type of job, and I noticed that the more technical a field got, the greater the gender gap. I was also a little upset to see the differences in salaries between men and women and the fact that men are more likely to both make more money and have a higher job title than women.The rest of the survey I didn’t find very surprising. It seems like the majority of people are either working from home or an office doing mostly XHTML/CSS work and a pretty satisfied with their job. Most people tend to fall into the 40-50K salary range and have a BA.

In the future, I would expect that there will be a lot more people responding to this type of survey. I think that a lot more positions will require at least basic web site maintenance as part of the job description.  I think the field itself is only going to get bigger and it will probably as a result become more diverse. There will probably be more different job titles and a wider range of salaries included in this survey and there will be more women, people over 40 years old, and people of different nationalities represented. In short, I see using the internet as part of your job as becoming more commonplace and therefore creating creating results that are more characteristic of the human population as a whole.

Disconnected

While watching this documentary I thought to myself, like most people probably did, would I be able to go three weeks without using a computer? The answer for me is clear: absolutely not. I could easily live without all the social networking sites and time-waster entertainment sites that I often check. But for me, school and work are synonymous with computers and without the use of one I would be completely lost.

However, this doesn’t mean that a person living in our current technological world is incapable of existence without a computer. For example, my dad is completely computer illiterate. He doesn’t know how to type, what a window or a browser is, or even how to turn a computer on. As far as I can tell, he really has no reason to learn how to use a computer and is completely content to be in the dark about new technology. I also thought back to this last summer. I didn’t take any classes and often would have a few days off from work at a time when things got slow. In these situations, there would be days where I would not turn on the computer at all, not even to check my email. I really didn’t have the desire to be on the computer or miss browsing the internet. Mostly I just wanted to spend time  outside and catching up with friends and family in person.

Thinking more about last summer, I realized that I was a lot less stressed out during  those brief times when I left my computer off, which led me to believe that it was possible that computers were a source of a lot of my grief. Maybe being ‘wired in’ constantly isn’t good for us. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that computers are only a symptom of a larger problem, that they are only a tool to help us deal with what is ultimately the big issue. I think the reason that the students in the documentary had such a difficult time with their experiment is that they were expected to do so much in such a small amount of time. The kind of hard work and efficiency demanded of modern man is nearly impossible without a powerful tool like a computer and the internet. I think that a lot of the push back against modern technology is coming from people who are dissatisfied with the modern fast-paced lifestyle in general. Computers just happen to be an easy target for people to blame when really they are probably making modern life infinitely more easy.

In any case, I really enjoyed watching this documentary. It definitely made me take a step back and objectively look at my own computer habits. For example, for this assignment I watched the documentary online, read information about the documentary online, and typed up my response online with the aid of thesaurus.com.  I also replied to an email to a coworker and a facebook message to a member of my group project while typing up this response. Would I have been able to all of this without a computer in front of me? Probably, but this way I have time to spare to check the news online, buy tickets online, submit my time sheet online, find out my checking account balance online, and send out a few more emails.

Krug ~ Chapter 11

Chapter 11:  Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheet, and You

Although making a website accessible can be difficult, it should be attempted simply because it is the right thing to do.  Krug points out that people are often afraid to dig into accessibility issues in their site both because they think it will be a lot of work and make their site’s design less appealing. However, a site can become instantly more accessible by making it more usable in general. Fixing confusing parts of a site and using CSS consistently will not only make a site more accessible for people with disabilities, but also make it easier for everyone to use.

I think it is important with any website design to at least keep in mind the easy fixes, or as Krug calls them the ‘low-hanging fruit’. I had the opportunity not long ago to ‘see’ a demo of how a screen reader operates, and I found it to be incredibly enlightening. It is amazing how important things like alt tags, ‘skip to main content’ links, consistent heading tags, and names of hyperlinks can be to someone who is hearing the content read aloud. There are several easy changes that can be made to a site (many of which wont do much to the site’s design) that will drastically improve a disabled user’s experience on the web.

Concept and Audience – Hillman Curtis

I think that it was really helpful to read these two chapters right before diving into our next product. I found the chapter on concept to be very reassuring. It was good to hear from a designer that coming up with a concept is a process and that ideas don’t just come to people out of thin air. Concepts often come from weeding through a lot of different ideas and a ton of not so great sketches. It is also important to often be rethinking your work and remain open to change in your design. Although the author tells us in the end that describing the process of developing a concept is nearly impossible, I though this chapter did provide some clarity on subject. I think this quote really sums up the theme of the chapter nicely: “A concept is an idea. Our job as designers is to visually explain that idea.”

The next chapter about the audience seemed to me to be reiterating a lot of the ideas that Steve Krug has put forth in Don’t Make Me Think. Basically what I got out of it was that knowing your audience, through extensive research, usability testing and client meetings, is really important, especially for New Media designers. Designing for the audience can be particularly difficult when you are creating a website because “our audience is basically invisible to us”. It is also important to realize that designers are not fine artists, and while it is important that a designer to express themselves and be creative, our work has to “be created for an audience in order to succeed.”

Though we still have to meet as a group to hammer down a clearer concept of our online store, I have a few ideas of where I would like it to go. Basically, our store would be aimed at women in the pacific northwest who need clothing that is practical in our environment but will also be fashionable and make them stand out in a crowd. Our brand would be functional for inclement weather but still colorful and playful and have a one-of-a-kind look. I know from personal experience that it can be really hard to find a waterproof jacket that is fashionable and doesn’t look like something you would wear snowboarding or hiking in the mountains. I guess my target audience would be someone who needs practical clothing that can be worn every day and with every outfit.

Device ~ Usability Testing

I had my friend Kim take a look at my Device website and answer a few questions for me about it. Kim is a student at Western who generally spends around 2 hours a day on the internet. She said that the majority of her time on the internet was spent on gmail or facebook, but she also often uses google and has purchased items online before. She is also familiar with Western’s site, including myWestern and Blackboard. I have summarized our conversation below.

Q- What do you think this site is?

A- Design Department Newsletter. She saw it as a kind of extension to a school department. Basically, you learn a lot of information in classes, but she thought this website might have the kind of information that you can’t learn in a classroom environment. She mentioned the two featured articles, one being on ‘design for the public good’ and one about new technologies as two really good examples of this.

Q- What strikes you first?

A- The pictures. Curious about what they are of (many of them are close ups) but in a good way.

Q- What do you want to do first?

A- She always checks to see what is clickable on a site. She noticed immediately that the header was clickable and that clicking on it would load a different background picture, which she thought was cool. Also noticed that the Upcoming Events box was not clickable, which would be something I would want to fix.
The first page she went to was the forum page. She understood immediately what ‘forum’ means in the context of a website. As a side note, when I showed this site to my mom earlier in the day, she completely ignored the forum link and was much more interested in the news articles. Kim asked who was allowed to post on this forum, was it only open to design students? Unfortunately at this stage, my forum page has filler text where I plan on having a short blurb about how the forum works, but this is definitely something I would need to consider adding to that explanation.
Once Kim was done checking out the forum page, she was delighted to find a visible link back home. She later explained that she hates the back button and tries to use it as little as possible.

Q- Ok, now that you are back home, I want you to pretend like you have been to this site before, and a few months ago you saw a story that you really liked. How would you go about trying to find this article?

A- She paused for a minute before clicking on the News link. She said that articles seemed to be located here, so this might be a good place to start. When she got onto the news page, she paused for another minute, then noticed the archive links in the lower right hand corner. She told me she had not seen these the first time, but that is where she would probably look for an old article. She also noticed the search bar and said that she might try that as well.

I’m also posting a link to a ScreenToaster video that captures the computer screen as Kim was being asked these questions:
http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stV09dR0VIR1xZRV9bWF5dU1JX/device_usability_test

Overall, Kim seemed to easily navigate the site. She appreciated the photography and the easy to find link home. If I were to make edits to the site, I would make more of the items on the page directly clickable (many things are inactive because they simply do not go anywhere) and provide a more detailed forum page that included instructions and a login feature.

Krug Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Usability testing on 10 cents a day

I think the important thing to take away from this chapter is that you should always do usability testing regardless of how much time and money you are able to throw into it, and that you should try to do it early and often. Krug tells us that even one poorly designed usability test can lead to valuable results, and that testing two small groups throughout your design process can be much more useful that testing one much larger group of people one time. Depending on how big of a site you are working on and how much time and money you have budgeted for it, Krug gives a range of different levels of usability testing that can be done to help improve a site’s design and funciton.
I really enjoyed Krug’s triage comparison in this chapter. He believes that after a usability test, it is important to identify which problems are most and least important to fix in order to create a successful site. He tells us to ignore what he calls ‘kayak’ problems, or those time when a user will go off track but easily manage to find their way back without any help. I also like his suggestion to resist adding things in order to fix problems and instead focus on clarifying information that already exists or even taking away distracting or misleading information. I think the best sites are those that don’t even give a user the ability to make an incorrect decision because they are designed to work only in a certain way.

Krug chapters 7 & 8

Chapter 7: The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home page is beyond your control

The home page is the first impression most people are going to have of your website, thus it has many things it must accomplish. Several elements are commonly present on a home page, including the site identity and mission, a search option, and important deals, features, promos and teasers. The home page should also convey a sense of the bigger picture of the website and answer these four questions:

What is this?
What do they have here?
What can I do here?
Why should I be here – and not somewhere else?

Designing a home page can be hard enough considering the amount of information that needs to be present, but it is made even more complicated by the fact that everyone wants a piece of its valuable real estate and usually has a strong opinion of what it should look like.

In this chapter, Krug gives us a few guidelines to help us design a better home page. First, he talks about the use of both a welcome blurb and a tagline. The welcome blurb is simple a small paragraph or two that explains “the big picture” of the site, or what it is really all about and what you can do there. While reading this part of the chapter, I was reminded of chapter 5, Omit Needless Words. The welcome blurb should be short, sweet, and to the point, otherwise people will not read it. A tagline can also be a helpful way to inform users about what it is your site does. Taglines usually reside in the header near the logo and don’t take up much space on the site, so they are an efficient way to get your point across. And, if the tagline is short, clever, and catchy, it can help the user remember your brand. The last thing that Krug mentions about the home page is the idea of unique navigation. In earlier chapters, Krug was very adamant about persistent navigation, but the home page is the one area of the site where he says it is okay to break the rules a bit. The home page navigation can take up more space or be in a different spot on the site, but regardless of how it looks on the home page, the content of the navigation (name, order, and hierarchy of the links) should be consistent with the rest of the site.

Chapter 8: “The Farmer and the Cowman Should be Friends”

This is one of my favorite chapters in this book. Having taken classes both in design and programming, I completely understand where the arguments over usability are coming from. I think that Krug gives an excellent visual example of the different viewpoints of CEO, developer, designer, and businessman/marketer in this chapter. I think the important thing to remember when designing a website as part of a larger team is to put your ego aside. The focus should really be on what is best for the particular site you are working on.

Krug Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5: Omit Needless Words

In this chapter, Krug introduces us to the art of getting rid of needless words, particularly in what he calls “happy talk”, or introductory small talk, and in page instructions. I think Krug’s idea of getting rid of half the words on a page, and then getting rid of half of what is left, is an incredibly daunting but useful goal. This seems like a great way to really examine what you have written for a site and think critically about what is actually important information and what is simply getting in the way. A well designed website should be able to speak for itself without unnecessary happy talk and instructions.

Chapter 6: Street Signs and Breadcrumbs

Chapter 6 focuses on website navigation. Krug begins by discussing the difference between searching and browsing on the web and compares both of these strategies to shopping in a department store. Browsing can be compared to walking into a store and using posted signs to find a product on your own, while searching is analogous to asking a clerk a question. Just like in a store, if either searching or browsing becomes too difficult and frustrating, a customer (the user) will give up and leave.
Krug then discusses web navigation conventions. He divides the page into a few basic elements: site ID, sections, subsections, utilities, “You are here” indicator, and page title. The site ID and basic navigational elements are generally located near the top left corner and should persist between pages, except occasionally on the home page or on form pages. The navigation should also always include a link home and a simple search box. A page within the site should also always have a prominent page title that matches the name it was given within the navigation. “You are here” indicators can be a simple as a mark or stylistic change given to a navigational element to make it stand out among the rest. Breadcrumbs, links that show the ‘trail’ a user has traveled to get to any particular page, can also be used as a “You are here” indicator, but should be small and used only as a supplement to the primary navigation system.
Krug’s love of tabbed navigation is also discussed in this chapter. Tabbed navigation when executed correctly can be both add visual interest to a site and help the user navigate and get a better sense of location within the website.
The last thing Krug talks about in this chapter is what he has dubbed “the trunk test”. The basic idea of a trunk test is this: if you were blindfolded and locked in the trunk of a car, driven around for a while, then suddenly exposed to a page deep a site’s hierarchy would you be able to find a few key items on the page without any hesitation? Krug’s trunk test is a way to quickly scan a page and determine if it’s design is clear and understandable.
Although I think that Krug has several excellent tips about website navigation in this chapter, I would be hesitant to design a website that follows all of the conventions he lays out. I think a lot of his suggestions work best with e-commerce websites. If I were to create a personal portfolio site, for example, I would throw out some of his rules in favor of a more interesting, unique design.

Krug Chapeters 1-4

Chapter 1 : Don’t Make Me Think

This chapter introducing what Steve Krug believes is the most important usability rule: “Don’t make me think!” A good site will be self-explanatory and any user should be able to instantly ‘get it’. Krug gives a couple examples of simple design and wording choices that can trip users up. Though a user may only spend fractions of a second puzzling over a button or textbox, enough of these inconveniences may drive them away. Even though some users will tough out sites that frustrate them, the best websites are those that are clear, self-evident, and create as little confusion as possible.

Chapter 2 : How We Really Use the Web

In chapter 2, Krug points out three important facts about how people generally use the web. First, users tend to scan web pages rather than read them, all the while picking out relevant or interesting words, phrases or links that catch their eye. People generally do this because it is quick and efficient. Second, users often satisfice, or choose the first reasonable option they find. By satisficing, web users risk very little, as they can always click the back button and start over, and making the first reasonable choice is easy and takes little effort. Also, when using the internet, people often just ‘muddle through’, using sites without necessarily understanding how they work. Many people don’t care enough to figure out how things work, and they prefer to stick to what they know even if there may be a better way to get the results they need.

Chapter 3 : Billboard Design 101

In this chapter, Krug gives a few tips on how to design for how people really use the web, or ‘billboard design’. A good website should have a clear visual hierarchy. Important items on a website should be more prominent, and related items should have a similar visual style. Elements that belong to other elements should be visually nested to show their relationship clearly. Web conventions can be very useful when applied correctly and enable users to figure out the organization of a website without reading a word of it. Designers can also improve the clarity of a site by dividing up a page into clear, distinct areas, making clickable objects obvious to the user, and minimizing the amount of noise and unnecessary distractions.

Chapter 4 : Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?

Web users like mindless choices. They will generally tolerate navigating quite a few clicks deep into a site as long as these choices aren’t difficult or ambiguous. Clear, mindless choices make for a website that is easy to use.

The Memex

With the invention of writing, the human race created the ability to permanently and concretely store its memories, ideas and information. Throughout our history, as new technologies have been devised and better, more efficient ways to communicate and keep records have come about, we have reached a saturation point. What do we do when we have too much information and an inadequate way of sorting through all of it? In the article “As We May Think”, Vannevar Bush proposes a new way of finding and storing our vast amounts of collected human knowledge in a machine he dubs the ‘memex’.

The strange thing about Bush’s memex is that, though written before the invention of the computer, it seems to closely resemble a modern internet ready desktop computer system. When reading through his description, the first thing that immediately went through my mind was wiki surfing. Bush hoped that his machine would more closely resemble the human mind in that it would browse through data using “selection by association, rather than indexing”. With Wikipedia, users often find new information by clicking on links within other articles, creating their own unique “associative trail” through the website.  He also talks about being able to name an information trail within the memex (the equivalent of bookmarking) and the ability to take a trail and pass it onto a friend “for insertion into his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail” (much like with email or social networking sites today).

As someone reading this article in 2009, I could go on and on about the eerie similarities between Bush’s memex machine and my desktop computer, but I think the important concept Vannevar Bush was trying to get across was not a new, theoretical technology, but the idea of the power of collective human knowledge. He believed that the human mind was only flawed in it’s ability to remeber. His machine seemed to be a step towards a sort of artificial intelligence based on the workings of the human mind. If we could combine our own ability to use free association,  the brain’s natural system of organization and retrival, and a mechanized way of concretely storing that which we may otherwise forget, we would be able to accomplish so much more.  Since we have  already invented a sort of ‘memex’ machine with the modern computer and the internet, we know this to be true. Never in our history have we had access to so much information so quickly and easily. This big question is: what’ s next? Will our technology ever catch up with the complicated, natural design of the human brain?