The bottom line in developing effective Web experiences is that practical considerations are just one of the several categories of considerations that must be employed in the design of online resources that properly address a visitor’s consumptive, social, and emotional needs. Sure, we want people to know where to type in their credit card numbers when transacting with our Web enterprises. I don’t argue points such as this. But before they’re going to care about where to enter in their credit card numbers, we’re going to have to somehow help them care about what it is we’re trying to sell them! In light of this, why is it that many usability consultants give preferential and sometimes exclusive consideration to the practical aspects of experience design and then condemn those of us who attempt to design more holistic experiences?
One explanation lies in the word attempt. Historically, most who have attempted to go beyond mere practicality with Web experience design have failed. The fact is that amateurs design most online resources, and we’re ALL amateurs when we start. The industry has only been viable since about 1995, for heaven’s sake! Many organizations simply haven’t attained enough insight to do a proper job of designing effective Web experiences yet. Many, in fact, have innocently or naively created online resources that appeal to their own, unrefined sense of aesthetics. As a result, the experiences they design use media and interactivity inappropriately to emphasize the wrong types of things.
The practical result is that their Web enterprises are hard to navigate, take forever to download, and in the end haven’t succeeded in using media or interactivity to add much value to a person’s overall experience. We’ve all been guilty of this, but this is no time to give up on our ideals. It’s time to apply ourselves as serious students of the arts and sciences whose disciplines we employ in our pursuit of crafting appropriate, elegant, and effective Web-based interactive multimedia. We can do better than we have done in the past. We’ve learned and are learning from our mistakes. The purpose of this book is to aid in that learning process. ;-)
01.04.01 Our industry will evolve just like every other industry has before us–through the natural selection of a free-market economy.
Do bad television shows, commercials, films, or video games ever get produced? The answer is yes–but they don’t last long because they prove to be ineffective. More successful efforts rise to the top and extinguish the others. And although certain projects will always stand out as both positive and negative examples, eventually all efforts will settle into an overall equilibrium where quality is more homogenized. It will be the same with Web enterprises. Let’s just make sure that that homogenized equilibrium isn’t as boring as usability standards are currently constraining it to be.
In light of this, it seems inappropriate for usability consultants to tell designers to stop using rich media and interactivity based on the fact that others have used it and have failed. Can you imagine where the entertainment industry would be if, for example, sci-fi movies were never allowed to evolve into a legitimate art form simply because some early attempts weren’t very convincing?
No; usability consultants shouldn’t be pressuring Web enterprises to quit trying to make online experiences more dynamic, engaging, and therefore more meaningful. Instead, these experts should instead be drawing upon their own experience with and wisdom regarding the studies of perception, cognition, emotion, persuasion, and the philosophy of aesthetics (if any) to show Web enterprises how to properly employ the more elegant aspects of experience design.
The laws of natural selection do apply to the Web just as they do to real life; and the fact is that natural selection favors the strong and the beautiful. The Web enterprises that see it this way will be the ones that will not only survive, but thrive.
01.04.02 We must stay on the road of progress and out of the ditches of mediocrity.
My gripe with those who condemn the use of sophisticated media and interactivity on the Web is that they offer nothing better than a fleshless skeleton as an alternative. They’re in effect pressuring the industry to exchange one set of mediocrity for another–to drive from the ditch on one side of the road right smack-dab into the other!
The Web development world is oversaturated with consultants who are experts at efficiently getting people to relevant content but are amateurs at helping people either relate to or make sense out of that content. Why is this? For every usability expert advocating sterile, stifling Web experience design, there are at least as many credible design and interactivity experts advocating experiences that reach deeper inside people. It’s an injustice on the part of usability experts when they group design and interactivity experts with the amateur crowd and blanketly condemn all attempts to employ high-concept media or sophisticated interactivity.
We can do better than we have done–and we will. Not because we limit the scope of our work, but because we refine the quality of our understanding. We must therefore do the hard work that’s necessary to hone our abilities to represent our ideas on the Web with passion, meaning, elegance, and clarity.
01.04.03 We must qualify our experience design recommendations with appropriate analysis.
To put it simply, good design is good design no matter what it consists of–be it simple or elaborate. The same can be said for bad design. But what makes a design good versus bad? What are the criteria? The purpose of this book is to explore these questions.
In order to judge the quality or value of an experience design, we must be at least somewhat familiar with the various disciplines that are employed to formulate that design. In our exploration of these disciplines, it’s important that we keep an open mind. The important thing to remember is that there’s no one solution to every problem. Our solutions should be situationally appropriate.
Is HTML text better than rendered-graphic text? Are full-color animated images preferable to monochromatic stick figures? The answer is–it depends on the situation. What’s the purpose of the online resource? Who are the primary audience sets and subsets? What’s the nature of the content? How engaging is the content on its own? How difficult is the subject for the average person to comprehend?
The answers to these types of questions have a lot to do not only with determining how content elements relate to one another, but also with how the content chunks themselves are put together.
01.04.04 As Dr. Donald Norman says, humans are ‘active, creative, social beings.’
Dr. Donald Norman offers some good insights in his book, Things That Make Us Smart, that should give other usability consultants some food for thought:
"We humans are thinking, interpreting creatures. The mind tends to seek explanations, to interpret, to make suggestions. We are active, creative, social beings. We seek interaction with others. All of these natural tendencies are thwarted by the efforts of the engineering approach to efficiency. The danger is that things that cannot be measured play no role in scientific work and are judged to be of little importance."–Chapter One
"If we are to be able to use [digital media] easily and efficiently, the designers have to provide us with assistance, with an understandable, coherent structure. Design should be like telling a story. The design team should start by considering the task that the artifact is intended to serve and the people who will use it. To accomplish this, the design team must include expertise in human cognition, in social interaction, in the task that is to be supported, and in the technologies that will be used."–Chapter Four
"It is also the social side of technology that is least well supported. After all, the technologists are not social scientists or humanists; they are researchers and engineers. They can be excused for not understanding the social side of their handiwork. However, they cannot be excused for not acknowledging their own lack of understanding and having some social experts join their team." –Chapter Eight
01.05 Summary
Yes–people use online resources, but we’re more than mere "users" and are motivated by more than mere practical considerations. Far from it. People have very complicated and interrelated, consumptive, social, and emotional motivations which we desire to somehow satisfy through more holistic online experiences.
- What do these motivations lead us to desire?
- How can we help to satisfy these desires through Web experience design?
- What are the broader cognitive, social, and emotional principles that we must consider?
Web enterprises must begin to grapple with and answer questions like these if they’re ever to pave experiential pathways that are not only easy to follow but also are natural, meaningful, and enjoyable for people to journey along in pursuit of their goals.
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