Re: Formula1.com has changed
- From: Bjorn Borud <borud-news@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: 01 Jul 2007 04:40:01 +0200
[WebSlave <webslavenews@xxxxxxxx>]
|
| > no, people who have no real understanding of how users relate to
| > user-interfaces *believe* they need all the glitz to look
| > professional. the more money they have, the more inclined they are to
| > buy into this. this is why big brand names in lifestyle products
| > invariably end up with websites that look like print ads and have
| > defective user interaction.
|
| Of course this is also a client problem.
well, indeed it is a client problem. clients with fat wallets and
valuable brand names tend to not like being told that they are wrong.
| But I wasn't talking about that. The end-users too want the
| eyecandy. Especially those who come to the site the first time.
I often find myself losing interest in a product if the official
website doesn't provide me with what I need in terms to make a
decision. I'll go there once, not buy anything and then not come
back.
airlines and financial institutions are about the worst when it comes
to horrible websites. I tend to pick airlines based on how good their
on-line booking is -- ditto for financial institutions.
| The first impression counts. If a site looks outdated or
| "undesigned", it looks uninteresting.
it depends on what the site is for. if it is a "one-shot website"
where you don't expect or want return traffic, then by all means. but
I can't imagine why someone would spend money on a website that
doesn't encourage return visits.
and it doesn't need to be ridiculously overloadeed with links and
details and blinky stuff and visual noise to look professional. to
me, clean is professional. clean tells me that the site owner takes
the site seriously -- and not least: takes the user seriously.
| I know this contradicts the usability studies, but I've heard from
| several people similar comments on sites they bump into. Outside any
| usability research, where people are given a task to
| fulfill. Somewhat works for me too. If a site looks like it's made
| 10 years ago, I suspect it's value to give valid information.
I don't think the choice is between "clean and dated" and "modern and
noisy".
| > most of the time users are not consciously aware of what user
| > experiences they prefer, so asking random users what they think
| > doesn't really provide a good sample for evaluation.
|
| You mean it's not beneficial to ask the impression of most users?
no, not really. if you, as a website designer, are looking for
feedback, you aren't going to get much useful feedback from the
ordinary user. if you *ask* people, it matters too much how you ask,
who you ask and what you ask them. the web industry isn't exactly
full of people who are scientifically-minded, so you can't expect them
to understand how to gather, interpret and act on information.
that being said, I have seen some companies that do rather good
usability testing -- who use "heat maps" based on eye-tracking, who
gather lots of data and try to go about analyzing it properly. but
not too many web companies do that.
again, most users are not consciously aware of what they like or even
able to put any percieved friction into words in a precise manner.
| Random users represent the demographics. The users are the people who
| bring the cash in, not the dinosaur coders who think they know
| better.
well, that's not entirely true. the web 2.0 frenzy did not start in
the high-profile website creation houses. it started among the much
more technical-minded sort of companies.
| We know better, if we listen to what people want. Otherwise we're just
| dinosaurs.
the dinosaurs are the ad-company-cum-website-designer companies.
the novelty of just having a website has worn off. the sites that
still look like print ads aren't really what people are looking for.
| > you want the opinions of people who care about these things and have
| > the capability of verbalizing any friction they feel.
|
| No, we don't want the opinion of those, who are verbal and
| enthusiastic enough to actually have the time to send them. What we
| should want is the opinion of those, who left the site right away. The
| enthusiast will use the site despite the flaws, the random users are
| the ones we want back.
that would make sense if first impressions was all that counted.
I have to interact with a lot of stuff during a normal day where I
haven't really got a choice. for some of those things, I have a
pretty good idea why they don't work particularly well. more so than
if I had given up after 5 minutes of clicking around.
| > ah, so this is why the F1 site reminds me so much of MySpace :-).
|
| I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not, since I haven't used MySpace
| nor am I interested in it. The MySpace homepage looks alienating.
| Which bring me back to trends. MySpace, YouTube and Flickr are popular
| sites/services, but I find their UI very poor.
well, MySpace just makes my head hurt and I can't really understand
why it is so popular. then again, social networking sites are a sort
of special case because it has very different factors driving adoption.
I happen to like flickr though. it has some really stupid UI problems
(like the popup boxes when you've added something to a Set or a Pool,
asking me to either change my mind or click "OK" -- why on earth do I
need those?), and the performance is abysmal, but it works. not
least because you can use third party tools to do things.
| > now compare the situation in the US to, say, Japan, where handheld
| > devices are king. the cashflow is *immense*.
|
| Japan is a coherent society. The USA isn't. It's also easier to get
| standardation passed in countries where there's some governmental
| power over commercial powers.
well, the reasons why the US is in a sad state when it comes to mobile
telephony is a long and complicated story.
| As a personal note, my approach is that since the computer-browsed www
| has long been the de facto standard, the handhelds should do their
| best to emulate that. They should give the same user experience as the
| computers. So, bigger screens with proper resolutions and a qwerty-
| keyboard.
what I found really strange is that even the companies that
manufacture and sell handheld devices seem to have no idea what they
are doing. I got a Fujitsu-Siemens PDA a while ago, and the irony is
that those people are so way behind that you couldn't even browse
their site from their own device. even sillier: you needed access to
a windows machine in order to install PDA software they had available
for download on their site. you couldn't just download and install it
directly by browsing the site from the PDA and downloading software
onto it.
those people just do not understand even their own products.
-Bjørn
.
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