Glamour obscures basics of net use

By ADAM GIFFORD

We have all endured websites with the elaborate splash pages, flash animation, pop-up screens and pretty pictures that web developers use to demonstrate what artistically refined beings they are.

"I call them 'skip intros' - as in you want to skip them as fast as possible," says usability expert Jakob Nielsen from Silicon Valley's Nielsen Norman Group.

Web design has a glamorous image but it is only a means to an end, he says.

Nielsen has been working on computer usability for more than 20 years, after his studies in computer science in Denmark taught him that the more powerful computers were, the more horrible they were to use.

In 1994, he joined Sun Microsystems as a "distinguished engineer", or guru, with a brief to do what he thought needed doing about usability. But his four years of work on improving web browsers was undone by the browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape.

Nielsen said that although it was possible to build a much better web browser than Microsoft Internet Explorer, the defeat of Netscape meant it would not happen.

Simplicity was increasing in importance because the productivity losses in business applications were astounding.

Successful sites such as Amazon, eBay and Google gave people what they wanted in ways that used the collective intelligence of the internet.

Nielsen said vague descriptions and non-standard terms were a big no-no in web design. "Some companies make up words for things. Computer companies are the worst. Just be clear and simple and call things the same as everyone else.

"Another common problem is sites with no pricing - particularly the business-to-business ones.

"There is often no way to tell whether a product is supposed to be for 10 people or thousands."

Categories needed to make sense. The New Zealand Government portal, www.govt.nz, has a link to "Government Services" which turns out to be information for visitors.

That links to what looks like a printed brochure which has been scanned in, with a fancy underlay that makes the text unreadable.

"That is one of the worst things I have seen. It is a classic example of taking something that may have worked in another medium but doesn't work well on the web."

Nielsen said bad interfaces were physically damaging, which was a serious problem when combined with the addictive nature of the web.

"We have a concept of conditioning rats by giving them a lever to press for food. The best way to keep the rat pressing the lever is if you randomly reward it.

"The web is exactly like this. Every now and then you come across great stuff, and you think, 'If I only click once more I might find something.' So you keep going longer than you should."

useit.com

Nielsen Norman Group