When you get in a car to drive somewhere, do you think about what you are doing any more? When you make a cup of tea in the kitchen, do you need to think about where you keep the cups, spoons and milk?
One of the keys to making something usable is to also make it memorable and consistent. When someone visits your website or uses your product, ideally they should only need to do so once to learn their way around it or learn how to effectively use it. If they have to keep relearning a method or location, it reduces how effective they can make that product be for them and increases the time allotment they need in order to use it. We live in a busy society, people like to be able to accomplish things quickly.
As a general rule, people don’t like change. When they visit a familiar website, they want to be able to navigate it instantly without having to rethink any of their steps. If you do need to make changes, make them simple and announce them first. Be sure to let your customers know that things will move and make it easy to find what they are looking for. Change things infrequently. It is better to do a major overhaul once a year than to move something to a different location every other week.
Don’t make your users think about the choices they are making!Make sure that all of the paths on your site are clear, concise and simple to navigate. Pick a point deep within your site and see how many steps it takes to get there and whether the directions are clear the whole way through. If you can’t remember how to get to something, how will your customer remember how to get there too? Avoid making things overly complicated.
One of the most important things a designer can do is to listen to a customer. Asking for feedback about the navigation on your site or how to use your product can open your eyes to things that you never imagined were there.
People look at the world differently and you can only see it as a designer who understands your own intentions. Find out how other people are interpreting what you’ve created. Make sure that it is consistent and simple to everyone and not just for you. Not everyone who uses your site will be as internet or computer literate as you are. Not everyone who uses your product will be experienced with it. Ask customers what they think and really listen.
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There are well-known proverbs that imply (or state outright) that beauty is superficial and limited in what it can accomplish.
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Great article. I got some good ideas from it. I’m definitely adding a request for feedback to my site.
very important information, thank you..
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@Wattagiva: What version are you running, we’d love to look into the problem you’re having.
Great article. Im the beginning level in Usability. I got some good ideas from it.