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Navigation Part 3: Dynamic or static navigation

by Vera Brannen on 24. Jul, 2008 in Information Architecture, Usability

For all of you who are not sure what the difference is, let me explain briefly:

A static navigation is always visible and when you click on the first level navigation the items of the second level navigation appear and stay visible.

A dynamic navigation only appears when you hover over it with the mouse and then disappears again.

There are also combinations of the two on the market.

Static navigation:
The advantage is that after the user has clicked on the first level entry all the second level entries stay visible and the user has always the overview of all the other navigation points in that category. So if you assume that your users wish to browse within that category it is advisable that you give the user the overview.

Dynamic navigation:
The dynamic navigation has the benefit that you have not to give up any screen real estate for placing the navigation so you can full the entire website with content. As long as only one drop down opens it is usually easy to navigate. The user can also “preview” the content of all subnavigation items without clicking on them which can be very convenient. However, as soon as you have several sublevel menus it becomes more difficult to control the navigation with the mouse.

Combination of dynamic and static navigation:
An excellent example for a combination of the two is the website of John Lewis. The drop down navigation is even grouped in categories and after the user has chosen an item a static left hand navigation menu appears with further details.

Read the entire series:
Part 1: How to structure content?
Part 2: How many navigation points?
Part 3: Dynamic or static navigation
Part 4: Navigation and the customer life cycle
Part 5: Global navigation

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UK usability market worth more than £200 million by end of 2008

by Vera Brannen on 02. Jul, 2008 in Usability

The UK Usability market will grow by an estimated 20% in 2008 to a value of £214 million, according to research published last week by E-consultancy. They write:

The continued growth of this sector is the result of a growing commitment within organisations towards usability and user experience.

E-consultancy’s Head of Research Linus Gregoriadis said: “The growth of this market reflects the on-going buoyancy of the digital sector and the strategic importance of this channel within businesses. The agencies and consultancies profiled in this report continue to report high levels of demand for their services while companies recruit and expand their own in-house teams.”

Gregoriadis added: “A growing desire for more usable websites from public and private organisations is not the only source of growth for the industry. Many usability experts are transferring their skills to non-web activities and are already finding them to be a significant source of income.”

Headline market trends:

-) Increased competition in digital marketing drives investment.
-) Awareness of the importance of usability moves beyond the web.
-) More organisations embrace user-centred design.
-) Accessibility becomes ‘hygiene factor’ rather than separate discipline.

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Bill Gates on usability: His personal Windows’ experience

by Vera Brannen on 25. Jun, 2008 in Humour, Usability, User Experience

Todd Bishop published in his “Microsoft Blog” http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp an e-mail, which Bill Gates wrote after having a very frustrating experience trying to download “Moviemaker”.

The internal e-mails have been turned over in the antitrust suits against the company.

So we only can wonder: “Why did he not have a stronger impact on usability issues and who will promote usability after he is leaving the day to day life at Microsoft?

Image Source:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/

images/gateswinmcnameegetty.jpg

This e-mail is from 2003:

—- Original Message —-

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

When Todd asked Bill Gates about the e-mail last week while conducting an interview, Bill answered:

“There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”

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Navigation Part 1: How to structure content?

by Vera Brannen on 23. Jun, 2008 in Information Architecture, Usability

In this series I will talk about different topics regarding navigation I have been asked over the last years.

Part 1: How to structure content
Part 2: How many navigation points
Part 3: Dynamic or static navigation
Part 4: Navigation and the customer life cycle
Part 5: Global navigation

First of all you need to define all the content:

your target group wants to know
is important for your business to be communicated

Then the crucial question is what will your target group be looking for? What are their expectations? Are there structures they are familiar with because all of the competitors are following a similar pattern?

There are several ways to structure content – By:

topic, genre, product groups
target group
activity
search patterns

1) Topic, genre, product group navigation
As the title implies – this makes mainly sense when you are selling products or services which can be grouped logically.

2) Target group navigation
This one is very helpful when you offer information that is of interest to particular target groups and the all need to find information fast and directly. You often see this on websites of major banks with navigation points such as:
Private Banking | Business Banking | Press | Investors | Jobs
Sometimes it is very helpful to offer this kind of entry on the homepage in case your main navigation is structured by topic. You see this rather often on university sites. See the two examples below:

3) Activity based navigation
This one is more prominent in software where often activities are more prominent than categories since users want to fulfil certain tasks.

4) Navigation based on search patterns
In case people might look in different ways for a product this navigational structure is suitable. It basically means that for example products in a gift store are searchable by price, by category and by gender.

Sometimes combinations of the above are the best approach. However, always make sure to label the categories precisely with a short verb and noun and avoid jargon and long labels.

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First global Usability drive – Usability Challenge 1. August 2008

by Vera Brannen on 17. Jun, 2008 in Conferences & Events

From:

http://usabilitychallenge.webnode.com/

Join the Usability Challenge 2008 and participate in the world’s first global usability drive!

On 1 August 2008, we are asking anyone with a passion for usability to solve a usability problem…any usability problem at all…and help make the world a better/safer/less annoying place.

p.s. I was very busy lately – I will do my very best to be more active and write about usability and UX, UI etc. on a regular basis – expect a post every other day (at least twice a week).

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BBC’s Web site relaunch – topics regarding usability and branding on their new homepage

by Vera Brannen on 02. Apr, 2008 in Branding, Usability

On March 31^st the BBC launched its new Web site and since then they have received over 1600 comments in their blog. Many users are complaining about the relaunch.

Looking at their new homepage, I noticed three main points regarding usability and branding:

#1 Fast access to information on homepage

The main purpose of visiting a news Web site is usually to quickly learn about what is going on in the world or in the personal field of interest – for example sports. This means users want to be able to quickly scan the site and then pick an article.

BBC Homepage Usability

It is exactly this which is impossible on the new BBC home page. Counting the visible news (at a 1024 resolution) entries on the home pages of major news sites today:

BBC: 9 articles (not counting weather)
CNN: 19 headlines
NY Times: 18 headlines
Yahoo: 14 headlines

Most other news sites make it much easier to get a quick overview.

When the user personalizes the homepage he can get up to about 12 visible entries without scrolling. However, studies have shown that usually only a small percentage of users make use of personalising a site. And why can the user not move the big picture on top; the one that is actually taking up most of the space?

Studies have shown that a minimum font size of 12 px and a bigger line spacing leads to the best results in reading efficiency and information transfer. So this is solved nicely on the new homepage. However, especially on the homepage there is too much unused space. For example the weather and blog quote are huge compared to the information they transfer.

BBC Homepage Usability

#2 Accessing other topics via the homepage

In addition, the user has no chance to quickly access the topics provided by BBC. The user has to scroll to the end of the home page to find these:

BBC Homepage Usability

These links are provided as a general navigation on almost every other news Web site. They allow easy and convenient access to the user’s field of interest. BBC offers those links also on all its subpages. Why not on the homepage?

For example Yahoo has solved those points on their homepage in a good manner: The navigation to the left with easy access to the main topics and lots of information in the content area.

Yahoo homepage

#3 Visual consistency and branding

While the homepage looks like a clear attempt in trendy design with rounded corners, fading colours and light effects all the subpages have a totally different look and feel. They are flat 2 dimensional design, squared corners, no shading. What does BBC stand for?

BBC Subpages

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Usability and e-commerce Part 1: Navigation and Homepage

by Vera Brannen on 01. Apr, 2008 in Usability

The real shop

Imagine you are in a convenience store such as Sainbury’s and you are looking for batteries. Where do you start to look for them? Kitchen supplies, the area where the stationary is, where could they be? Where the garbage bags are? You might walk around for a while and then ask a sales person for assistance.

Now online

Image the same scenario online. You click here, you click there. However, there is no sales person that can help and the competitor’s site is just one click away. That is why especially for e-commerce sites good usability is so crucial.

Usability E-Commerce

The above study shows, that a bad online shopping experience does not only mean that you have lost this one sale. The customer is also rather likely not to buy from you at all.

You suffer from:

Lost sales,
a weakend reputation and
it harms the perception of your overall brand.

Some common issues on e-commerce sites are:

Navigation and start page

You need to consider that you have to types of people visiting your online shop:

The ones who already exactly know what they want. They need to be guided directly to the product they are looking for. Structuring and clustering of the shop items in a clearly visible navigation bar is essential for them.
The others are the users who just want to browse your site or inform themselves. They might be looking for the special offer, new products or seasional trends. Visual teasers and images usually guide those the best.

Give the visitors also a chance to concentrate on your main items. Cluttered sites are likely to overwhelm the user. In an online shop users prefer structure and visual guidance and do not want to feel like being on a flea market.

Creating the right structure

Competitors’ analysis: Do you know what they are doing?
Your users are very likely to also use other e-commerce sites. Over the last years, patterns of structuring, organising and labelling content have evolved. Your users have learned those patterns. Therefore we recommend not to re-event the wheel and to stick to conventions. The best way to find those patterns and conventions is a competitors’ analysis. In addition, a regular competitors’ analysis gives insight in new trends and strategies. You can only become the benchmark by knowing what your are up against.A competitors’ analysis can be done at any stage of the project. We recommend to perform it in regular intervals. Depending on the market every 1-3 months to at least once a year.
Card sorting: How would your clients structure the content?
One basic method is card sorting. Card sorting is used to develop the structure of Web sites. How does it work?
Product categories or product names are written down on individual cards. Then (potential) users of the site are asked to structure the cards into groups or to sort them into predefined metacategories.
- Structure: This gives valuable insight into how your customers would structure the content and therefore where they would be looking for the information when navigating through your site. This aids to define the ideal placement of individual products and how to create useful product categories. Recall the example with the matches from the beginning? Where would customers look for them the most likely?
- Wording: Though it is not always the wrong structure that misleads customers. Equally important is to find the right wording for the individual categories and navigation items.

In the next entries the following topics will be covered:

Part 2) Product overview

Part 3) Product presentation

Part 4) Search

Part 5) Check out process

Part 6) The shopping basket

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Benefits of Good Branding

by Vera Brannen on 30. Mar, 2008 in Branding

Consistent and targeted brand communication in all communication channels strengthens trust in the company and increases the brand’s value.

The more the branding strategy is in accord with the corporate identity, the stronger the brand will be reinforced with the target group in the long run. By focusing on brand essentials, unnecessary wastage can be avoided and a strengthening of the brand image and therefore also of the brand value can be achieved. The total expenditure for branding activities will not be increased though the overall branding impact will be improved.

The three pilars of Good Branding

Trust in the brand
As soon as the communication strategy in all media is built upon the corporate identity, the user receives a consistent image of the company and its products: with each contact, his trust in the brand is reinforced and affirmed.

Information transfer targeted for your audience
Appeal to the intellect of the user by enabling him to find all the necessary information that he seeks about a service or product. Communicate your company’s message using concise language which is based on the user’s level of experience with your products or services; avoid using trade jargon. Make additional information easily accessible.

Emotional communication
The distinct use of colours, fonts, wording, forms, and images creates the desired emotions and virtual experience of your brand, which should always be based on the company’s corporate identity. The resulting corporate design needs to follow the same rules in all media.

Product and web experience
A user’s interactive experience with the website strongly influences his perception of the company. Flaws in usability and branding can therefore easily lead the user to conclude that the services and products are also inadequate. In contrast, ease of use highly influences the brand

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Benefits of Good Usability

by Vera Brannen on 28. Mar, 2008 in Usability

Usability increases the success of your website since it focuses on the expectations and needs of your target groups and fulfils certain standards and success criteria.

Fulfilment of expectations
It happens rather frequently that websites are a direct reflection of internal company structures, since the website creators are themselves very familiar with the topics. As a result, internal needs and expectations are prevalent. Good usability assures that the site focuses mainly on the expectations and needs of your target groups and functions in accord with their habits regarding online behaviour.

Usability

High quality
Every website must achieve its intended purpose – providing information, entertaining, selling products, building a user community, etc. In each of those cases the user does not want to think about the interaction itself. The more intuitively a user can use the site, the better. If the site meets user expectations, a feeling of trust and quality is established. This is a great opportunity to distinguish the site from the competitor’s.

Increased retention time
The better the site’s concept caters to the target group and the more intuitively it can be used, the longer the user will stay. The focus is, for example, on how the user can be stimulated to look at further content on the site and on how fast central questions of the users are answered.

Higher interaction rate
Intensive use of a site is the result of a targeted structure as well as information and good interaction design. The site’s benefit is obvious to the user, and he can easily find valuable information. How quickly and how intense does the user get involved with your site? What are the incentives to visit the site again? How are interactive elements used?

Reaching a broader audience
By complying with certain design and publishing guidelines the website can reach a broader target group. The site will be accessible for the elderly as well as for the physically or visually impaired.

Joy of use
Over the last few years, the notion of “joy of use” has received increasing attention. It describes the degree of experienced joy of use of a site or software and indicates the personal satisfaction and motivation to interact.

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Personalized start pages: Why I fulfil my information needs otherwise

by Vera Brannen on 18. Feb, 2008 in Branding

Have you heard of those great Web sites, so called “Personalized Start Pages”, which will make life so much easier? There was a big hype starting in 2005, and almost all the big portals and news providers jumped on the band wagon – now we can see more failures.

The idea behind the concept sounds tempting at a first glance:
Personalized start pages allow their users to get all of their favorite websites, blogs, news, weather, maps, events, address books, to do lists, email accounts, social networks, search engines, video and photo networks – you name it – in one place, and users then can share the page with their friends.

What are the flaws
Have a look at the screenshot below: E-Mail, Flickr, Youtube, maps, etc.
Now consider the following scenarios and the users’ needs:

He wants to check his E-Mail: Where does he go?
His start page or his E-Mail account?
He wants to check out the news on Youtube: Where does he go?
His start page or Youtube?
He wants to upload some images to Flickr: Where does he go?
His start page or Flickr?
He needs directions: Start page or Google maps?

You get the pattern.

So what are the benefits?
That is the big question. Users will fulfil their needs directly. The obstacles of configuring the start page and the loss of time do not match the benefits. A simple start page where a user can assemble all his favorite RSS feeds can offer a quick overview of all the sites’ news, and weather info is a feature many users appreciate. However, most features offered on those sites only mean a click more for the user, and therefore the user would rather go directly to the desired target such as Youtube, the E-Mail account or Flickr.

This is also why Flickr, Youtube, delicious, Facebook and many others got sold or received substantial venture capital. Despite the fact that several Personalized start pages got impressive media coverage, there is little business hype heard.

Lessons learned:
One of the most important factors for being successful is creating a business strategy that fulfils a concrete user need.
And yes, I am still wondering about the business models of today’s personalized start pages.

Who are the players?

Live

http://www.live.com/ Yahoo

http://my.yahoo.com/ Google

http://www.google.de/ig Netvibes

http://www.netvibes.com/ Start

http://www.start.com/ Protopage

http://protopage.com/v2 Pageflakes

http://www.pageflakes.com/ Inbox.com

http://inbox.com/ My AOL

http://feeds.my.aol.com/ My Lycos

http://my.lycos.com/ My Netscape