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Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The
Ideologies of Web Design
Behind a website's superficial
appearance lies its fundamental understanding of user
behavior in an interactive service. Choices such as
whether the "buy" button is red or orange or whether the
navigation menu runs across the top or down the left
side are much debated, but make at most a few percent
difference in usability. In contrast, the design
ideology can make or break a site.
I see three contrasting approaches to design, which I
have dubbed mastery, mystery, and misery.
Mastery: Empowering Users
The original ideology of hypertext and the World Wide
Web, as expressed by Vannevar Bush (1945), Ted Nelson
(1960), and Tim Berners-Lee (1991) makes individual
users the masters of the content and lets them access
and manipulate it in any way they please. User
empowerment requires perfect usability and simplicity:
only if users know what every design element means will
they feel in control of the medium.
Search engines are the archetypical embodiment of the
mastery ideology. They place users firmly in the
driver's seat and take them where they want to go. You
can get anywhere on the Web using a subservient
interface that accepts any words you throw at it and
serves up a simple, linear list of rank-ordered choices.
Not coincidentally, ever since the WebCrawler debut in
1994, users have proclaimed search as one of their main
activities on the Web. Being in control feels good.
Complying with design standards and conventions is one
of the main strategies for strengthening users' feelings
of mastery. Understanding what they're being shown and
knowing what they must do to achieve a desired effect --
that's the stuff of mastery.
In the mastery ideology, the designer's job is to
provide the features users need in a transparent
interface that gets out of the way and lets users focus
on the task at hand. Leading e-commerce sites typically
understand this; they sell more when users focus on
products rather than on puzzling out the design's
surface manifestation.
Mystery: Obfuscating Choices
Many Web designers prefer more "exciting" designs that
challenge users to explore sites using novel interaction
elements. This school of thought laments the trend of
having all sites look like Yahoo. "Killer Sites" was an
early exponent of mystery; boo.com was an archetype of
the glitzy site: more in-your-face than useful.
A simple user interface is not boring. It excites users
because it lets them connect with the content and engage
the company behind the site.
Website designers stare at their designs all day, every
day. In contrast, users visit for four minutes and then
leave. Very different experiences in terms of what's
boring and exciting. Don't aim at an exceptional
experience for yourself and your team members.
Our testing of the usability of Flash designs clearly
demonstrated the fallacy of the mystery ideology. Almost
every time a design employed a non-standard scrollbar,
users failed. Our test users typically overlooked
numerous options because they didn't realize that the
highly decorated or otherwise unusual scrollbars
actually served a function.
Users don't want to admire the scrollbars. Truth be
told, they don't even want scrollbars as such, they just
want to access content and have the interface get out of
the way.
Even designers who believe in user mastery can be
tempted to taint their designs with shades of mystery.
It's easy to delude yourself that an ornamental feature
will attract users. For example, most users disliked the
category name "lifestyle" on bbc.co.uk according to the
British government's user research. One user said,
"Lifestyle, what the hell's that? I like gardening, it's
not my 'lifestyle.'" Another user said, "I would never
have looked at a lifestyle section, it doesn't mean
anything to me." (It's long been a usability guideline
to refrain from using fancy terms to label navigation
categories; use specific, everyday language instead.)
Users don't like websites that patronize them or tell
them what to do. They like websites that support the
goals of their visit.
The website of J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter
books) might be an exception to the avoiding-mystery
rule. The site feels more like an adventure game, but
that’s appropriate because its primary purpose is to
feed fans rumors about Rowling’s next book. The site
contains many an oblique element. There's no way, for
example, that you'd ever guess that a bunch of paper
clips are a link to the FAQ. The site violates most
guidelines for hypertext links: it has no perceived
affordance of clickability and only the most tenuous of
metaphors maps the reference domain to the target
domain.
User research with children shows that they often have
problems using websites if links and buttons don't look
clickable. At the same time, using a virtual environment
as a main navigation interface does work well with kids,
even though it's rarely appreciated by adults (outside
of games). Also, children have more patience for hunting
down links and rolling over interesting parts of a page
to see what they do. On balance, the mystery approach to
design succeeds for Rowling -- just don't try it for
sites that are not about teenage wizards.
Misery: Oppressing Users
The third prevailing ideology of Web design is
oppression, as mainly espoused by certain analysts who
wish the Web would turn into television and offer users
no real choices at all. Splash pages, pop-ups, and
breaking the Back button are typical examples of the
misery ideology.
One of misery design's most insidious recent examples is
the idea of embedding links to advertising on the actual
words of an article using a service like IntelliTxt. By
sullying the very concept of navigation, such ads not
only damage the user experience on the host site, they
poison the well for all websites. Such links make users
even less likely to navigate sites, and more likely to
turn to trusted search engines to guide them to the next
page.
Like much Web advertising, embedded ad links rely on
interruption marketing, intruding as much as possible on
users and preventing them from doing what they want to
do. As such, many of these ads have been failures. The
most successful Web ads empower -- rather than annoy --
users. Examples include search engine advertising, sites
with classified ads, and request marketing.
There are times when it makes sense to constrain users'
choices, but it must be done in a way that feels
supportive and not limiting. For example, during the
checkout process on an e-commerce site, you should not
distract users by including links to all possible site
areas. Highlight the proceed to checkout button and
provide only those additional features that users might
need (such as return to shopping, privacy policy, and so
on).
Although such checkout designs drastically reduce the
number of links, they don't restrict users because
people want to do one of two things after initiating
checkout: complete their purchase or abandon/delay it.
Most misery designs feel miserable. People recognize
when they're being manipulated, and they resent it. They
resent it even more on the Web, where they're used to
freedom of movement.
Mastery Wins in the End
The mastery ideology provides the best match with the
Web's fundamental nature: it lets users go where they
want. Web users want instant gratification and have
little patience for the mystery approach's detours and
puzzles. Users are getting ever-more goal-driven in
their approach to the Web, which they see more as a tool
than an environment. Surfing to check out cool sites is
a thing of the past.
Misery may seem a tempting way to squeeze an extra
dollar out of unsuspecting and naïve users. But in the
long term, users discover which sites treat them well
and those are the sites they return to. Most of a
website's true value comes from loyal users, and mastery
sites stand much the best chance of fostering loyalty.
Designs that support user empowerment are the best way
to make money on the Internet. It's an easier sell when
you give people what they want than when you try to
cheat them. |
