User-centered web design
When organizations set out to create a website, they tend to focus on look and functionality as ways to impress their visitors. For example, they might ask for something “slick and flashy”, or come up with a long list of trendy features, like podcasts, video and Ajax. Although look and features are important, working on them is a complete waste of time unless you create a great user experience. If your users have a bad experience, it’ll reflect poorly on your organization, however pretty the look, and however clever the features—and they’ll probably never come back.
Design an experience
Bad experiences are common on the web. Think of the websites you’ve used over the last week—you probably got frustrated, confused or found something difficult to use at least a couple of times. To design a good user experience, you need to focus on the user throughout the design process—an approach known as user-centered design.
Opening up, letting go
Two of the most difficult aspects of user-centered web design—for organizations that aren’t used to it—are opening up, and letting go. To create a good user experience, you need to be genuinely open with your audience—which means speaking in a language they understand, and avoiding inflated marketing-speak. Neither company jargon nor bullshit work online.
The self-guided, non-linear nature of the web means that the publisher has much less control of a user’s experience than, say, in a print publication. You might remember the “splash screen”, the abomination of early graphical websites—an introduction that made you wait before getting to the content, while subjecting you to a flashy animation. The people who created splash screens misunderstood the power balance—the user is in control, and they will decide what to do, and when. If you try to dictate an experience by making them wait, restricting their navigation or popping up windows everywhere, they’ll leave.
Start a discussion
Although it’s often approached as a way to push a message out, the web is a pull medium. Well actually, it’s more than that—web communication is two way—which is what most of the fuss over “Web 2.0” is about. To be user-centered, you need to start a discussion with your audience. This can be scary—there’s a risk that people will make negative comments, and you can’t control what’s said—but the benefit is direct communication with your users—and hopefully between them too.
A head start
We think you’ll need to start the conversation at some point, so you may as well do it soon, on your terms—and hopefully, before the competition. You can’t control the discussion, but you can give it structure—which gives you the best chance of portraying your organization in a positive light.
Joel Bobeck is a multi-discipline designer who specializes in creative thought and problem solving through art direction and graphic design for digital media.
