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February 23, 2004
UI Debate
Peterme.com did not agree with Mark Hurst when he wrote that
On any given Web page, users will either...
- click something that appears to take them closer to the fulfillment of their goal,
- or click the Back button on their Web browser.
We know from Jared Spool's studys that users that are forced into using the back button fail 82% of the time trying to reach their goal. On our web sites, that kind of failure is a bad thing.
Relying on the back button is not a good navigation element. How many people arrive at a site from a search engine? A back button takes them back where?
Mark continues with Note 5
Consistency is NOT necessary. For years, students of UI and UX have been taught that *consistency in the interface* is one of the cardinal rules of interface design. Perhaps that holds in software, but on the Web, it's just not true. What matters on the Web is whether, on each individual page, the user can quickly and easily advance the next step in the process.
Being one of those students, this is an over simplification of what is actually taught. Jill Gerhardt-Powals's Ten Cognitive Design Principles has two heuristics that apply -- "Group data in consistently meaningful ways" and "Include in the displays only that information needed by the operator at a given time."
Mark is misguided when he states that consistency is not necessary, as his own site offers many examples of being consistent. While I was checking out the site to make sure, I did not have to use the back button because his navigation was structured in a way that allowed me to move from page to page without resorting to it. I think what he is trying to say (as Gerhardt-Powals documented in 1996), is do not include extra information on a page and make sure users can navigate in consistent ways.
Posted by michael at February 23, 2004 10:32 AM