March 12, 2001 New Thinking:
The Web for dummies

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• They come from a traditional visual design background and they think that Web design is all about graphics, color, space and balance. They want the page to look good, to look different. They want the reader to have an experience. The more extreme want Web pages to look ‘cool’.
• They come from a technical background and they think that Web design is about pushing technical boundaries. They want everyone to have fast machines, lots of bandwidth and loads of plug-ins. They also expect that everyone has a degree in technical engineering and thinks that playing with Web gadgets is ‘fun’.

How can clever people be so stupid? It’s like giving someone a sweeping brush and they use it to brush their teeth. It’s like giving someone a TV and they use it as a mirror. Eight years on, how come so many people who design for the Web are still getting it so fundamentally wrong?

Cool technology and poor design is killing the Internet. The classic example of this thinking taken to its extreme is WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). “The Internet on your mobile phone” is a slogan I have heard again and again. Who in their right mind would want to access the Internet over their mobile phone? Yes, maybe very specific services such as timetables, but the whole Internet?

The Web is like a mixture of a library, newspaper and directory. A defining characteristic of this list is that they all tend to have a very similar functional design. All libraries have bookshelves, chairs and tables. All newspapers have straight columns of text and pictures. All directories have an underlying A-Z structure.

The design of libraries, newspapers and directories has changed very little in the last twenty years for the simple reason that it works. It is boring, but useful. After all, when was the last time you said about your telephone directory: “I wish it would jazz up its design. A-Z is so boring. How about Z, Y, X, W, V, U, for a change?

A major study by Alexa Research found that, “an alarming number of Web users are not particularly efficient at reaching their online destinations. Rather than entering a uniform resource locator (“URL”) into the address field of their Web browsers, millions of Internet users enter the name of the site they want into the search box of their homepage or other search engine.”

Millions upon millions of people are new to the Web. Millions more will only use it once a month, or whenever they want to find a specific piece of information. They want a website to treat them like ‘dummies’, not because they’re stupid, but because they want a simple design that’s quick to understand and easy to navigate around.

On the Web, boring is good. Cool is stupid.


Gerry McGovern

 

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