Yes, Virginia, there is a perfect Web page
(flickr tag: perfect)
[These are my notes from Steve Krug’s talk at the Jan. 16 UPA Boston meeting.]
“Yes, Virginia, there is a perfect Web page.”
(Wikipedia reference)
- There are some things that just work
- but don’t get done very often
- even in the hands of good designers
- Two things that make a perfect Web page:
- Effective “You are here” indicators
- Prominent page titles
- On average, users miss most design subtleties
- If people need to see something, it can’t be subtle
- you have to make it louder than you’d like
- Example: StumbleUpon navigation tabs
- There’s a tendency to downplay navigation
- Always put “Home” on navigation
- This establishes the navigation scheme
- and draws people’s eyes to navigation
- “Consistency kind of sucks as a usability principle”
- Clarity always trumps consistency
- Consistency is often abused
- Secondary navigation should be close to primary navigation
- Example: Download.com -> Downloads tab: Subcategories are not visually connected to main tab, so it’s hard to see they’re logically connected
- Make prominent, well-placed page titles
- Titles should clearly be the top of the heap
- Should be bigger, bolder than most content, but doesn’t have to be the biggest
- Should be on top of content space, not navigation space
- Page title should map very closely to the words you clicked on (WICIWYG - What You Click Is What You Get)
- Things that go wrong:
- Many stacked things look like they could be page titles
- Page title straddles content space and left navigation
- Not the page title (marketing talk, other words)
