Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself, Molly E. Holzschlag and Bruce Lawson, editors. glasshaus, 2002, 279pp. US$44.99, CAD$77.99.
As Molly Holzschlag points out in the introduction, "This book exists to help web professionals gain perspective, not from the usability pundits that have popped up like so many mushrooms after rain, but from real practitioners." Since we've been warned we're entering a pundit-free zone, this should make for a less intimidating, and more entertaining, way to learn about usability.
What exactly is meant by the term usability? Well, when it comes to the web, there is no agreed-upon definition, but Holzschlag helpfully points out that three disciplines that have longer histories than the web have come to contribute to our understanding:
Each of these separate disciplines, informed by computer science and engineering as well as by design, have come together in the amalgam that is currently referred to as "web usability." Despite all the lofty sounding terminology, we can provide a fast and dirty definition: Web usability encompasses anything we do to help our site's visitors more easily use the site for its intended purpose. An important point made in the introduction to the book is that our thinking about usability must be flexible, firstly because we are dealing with a huge variety of users and platforms, but also because the technology is constantly changing.
The bulk of the book consists of chapters written by the creators of several different kinds of sites. There are two commerce sites represented (eBay and SynFonts), two content sites (BBC News and Economist.com), and two community sites (evolt.org and MetaFilter). Each of the creators discuss issues of usability not in general terms but in specifics. The challenges that faced them are unique to each site's audience and purpose. I like the fact that they've included two of each type. This helps us to avoid reducing the book to cookie-cutter methods for commerce sites, for instance, or for community sites. Even within each category, widely different approaches were used and have been successful. Far from punditry, the book's answer to each question is, "It depends."
Jakob Nielsen, in his online usability newsletter (www.useit.com), has condemned the use of Flash on websites as "99% bad" (Alertbox, October 29, 2000). Don Synstelien is either in the one percent left or else he is just out to prove Nielsen is wrong. You see, Synstelien's site, SynFonts, is Flash-based. And far from being just a personal or portfolio site, SynFonts is a commerce site, selling fonts directly to the user. Let's take a look at one of the more interesting chapters in the book.
SynFonts began in 1994, with Synstelien selling his fonts through AOL, CompuServe, eWorld and local bulletin boards. By 1995, he had created a downloadable font catalogue using Macromedia's Director software. During the next few years, the SynFonts web site was created and tweaked. Synstelien experimented with plug-in technology, including FutureSplash, the forerunner of Flash, but discovered his users are "almost violently opposed" to having to download plug-ins and so reverted to alternative content. By late 2000, he redesigned again, this time using Flash to restore some of the interactivity of his earlier, downloadable catalogues.
Of course, since not everyone can be expected to have the proper plug-in, he had to design multiple versions of the site (Flash 5 and Flash 4, at the time, plus a non-Flash site), and test each of them on a variety of platforms with a variety of browsers. Synstelien involved many friends and family members in this process, at every stage, and found that it cut down on final testing when he felt the site was ready to launch. He found that although he couldn't build the same functionality into every version of the site, it was a compromise he was willing to make. For instance, the heart of the site is a type browser built in Flash. Those with only the Flash 4 plug-in couldn't change the text's color, and those without Flash at all were presented with only simple JPEG images of the typefaces.
One of the strongest pieces of advice given by Synstelien in this chapter is to aim for liquid design. That is, don't design to one particular resolution or screen size. Not only are your site visitors using different sized monitors, they may also want to resize their browser window. Since Flash uses vector graphics, scaling the Flash movies up or down doesn't distort them in any way. Designing non-Flash sites to be liquid is slightly more difficult, but the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) goes a long way toward making this task easier.
Another useful piece of advice given is to design for your audience, and not for yourself. This seems especially apt when directed to Flash designers, who tend to want to show off their mastery of this powerful program.
At the end of the chapter, he provides a list of nine "rules" for usable Flash design. Chief among these are the exhortation to drop animated introductions, probably among the biggest pet peeves of web surfers. Although I'm still not a fan of sites designed in Flash, if a few more designers followed Synstelien's guidelines, I'd be willing to reconsider.
Following each chapter of the book, the editors have asked each contributor to furnish examples of usable design. Among the items pictured, perhaps the most amusing include disposable diapers, Velcro, Lego, and duct tape.
Though books like this one aren't designed to present an overarching manifesto, if I had to distil one piece of wisdom from it, it would be, "Listen to everybody." For every commandment, find an exception. The more examples of successful usability you can examine, the more you'll realize that no one is going to do the hard work for you. One book, no matter how good, isn't going to teach you everything you need to know. Find out who your audience is and ask them for feedback. Find other designers who have faced similar challenges. Read some of the pundits. But in the end, your usability solution (or your firm's) will need to be as unique as you are.