Users find websites for a variety of reasons. For the most part they are on your site to accomplish a goal. Maybe it is to find a product, learn something or download something. I can almost guarantee that they are not there to be confused and overwhelmed by information. I believe that far too many sites are much too complex and confusing for users. This happens for a variety of reasons. We hear from companies all the time how they need to provide vast amounts of information and that almost all of this needs to be accessible from the homepage. Not just on the homepage, but “above the fold.” The result of this becomes as overly complex and overly crowded mess of a site where the user is so overwhelmed by the shear quantity of choices that they simply choose to leave. As with the following example, Continental attempts to give the user access to just about everything they would want to do. As a result the user is overwhelmed and confused.

One reason for this is that there is a general sense of fear that if something is visible on the homepage, that users will not find it. Another is the use of analytics and tools that measure how far users scroll down a page which perpetuates this fear. The flaw I find in this data is that it typically includes all visitors to the site. Anyone who had ever looked at website analytics knows that a site gets a lot of very unqualified traffic from search engines. The behavior of this unqualified traffic can overwhelm and mask the behavior of users who actually intended to be on your site and have a task to accomplish. These users behave very differently and will be more likely to go a few pages deep into the site to complete their task. Target is an example of a site with a ton of content, yet they keep the content on the homepage focused to a primary goal. This makes the experience for the user much less intimidating and invites the user to explore further.

What these qualified users need is a simple experience that gives them clear information that is focused on the primary goals of the site and doesn’t try to do everything at once. One of the reasons that mobile apps are so popular is their simplicity. They are typically focused on a simple set of functions and they rarely require much of a learning curve. People are easily overwhelmed by a plethora of options, so give them the simplicity that they seek. Think about the objectives of your site and distill them down to just a few. Give those objectives the attention that they deserve and you will greatly increase your chances of accomplishing them. The secondary objectives can be pushed lover on the page or deeper in the site. A motived user will find them, especially if they are intrigued by the site and weren’t scared off by an overly complex page. This site for Billings is a great example of reducing choices for the user, and focusing on the primary goals of the page.

Users make decisions about your company within a few seconds of landing on the page. Do you want to have that impression to be one of confusion or would you rather communicate a clear and simple message that will intrigue a user and draw them into the site? So when planning a site, think about the objectives of the site, and then prioritize those objectives. If the site could do only one thing, what would that be?

Here at Imulus, we strongly believe in how important the wireframing process is for all of our projects. Recently we shifted our process in the wireframing stage to lessen the confusion with our clients. We decided not to present wireframes to the client. Wireframes are an essential step in the process for the designer, but they can be a waste of time for the client. The process can end up hurting the project and its goals.

Why?
During our wireframe presentations we noticed that wireframes can cause a lot of confusion. Wireframes that expressed creative layouts were declined by the client because they would have difficulty visualizing the design once fully designed and functional. We’re humans. We have a better understanding of something that we see rather than trying to visualize something that’s shown to us in grey boxes. Because of this, clients approved wireframes that made most sense to them — the one with a very traditional layout.

Traditional wireframe layout

Wireframes are more about content structure — what goes where within the layout. They lack the ability to convey brand-specific features and how contrast impacts content hierarchy.

Wireframes can hurt the project due to the following reasons…

1. They are static — Sure, design is static too, but has a bigger impact to the client than wireframes. Clients want to see the design.
2. They can’t express dynamic interaction — Trying to explain dynamic interaction through wireframes confuses the client even more. In some instances, we’ll prototype specific dynamic features.
3. They can be misinterpreted – Clients can change their mind once they see the design. What they understood in the wireframe can look different to them in the design.
4. They can waste a lot of time – Designers can be stuck in “revision land” for a while. This also affects Project Managers as time is wasted on back and forth with a client.

Our plan here at Imulus is to only do this for website design projects and so far it has been very successful. Web and mobile applications will require wireframe approvals by the client. These projects are complex in context and we want to make sure that the flow of user interaction is ironed out at the wireframing stage.

I recently read an article titled “What’s Next in Web Design.” The conclusion of the article states:

“Better interaction design, less graphic design. Better user experience, less debates about taste. Faster technology, more reliable design standards.”

What I find interesting is I’ve been seeing the opposite in web trends. With the introduction of more web friendly fonts and more flexibility in development, web design is starting to look more and more artistic and refined. Designers are able to explore their artistic roots with illustration, sketching, painting, etc.

When you look at a site that is so beautifully designed, it just makes you feel good. It’s the intangibles that can make a difference. Things that click tracking, heatmaps, and analytics can’t measure. I also find it interesting that, yes, of course the author is arguing the benefits of minimalist web design. Look at their site. Almost as minimalistic as it gets.

Minimalist design style has its place in web design, but it is far from the end-all for web design. Sites like Apple have been so successful because:
1. Their web design matches their brand style
2. They are able to display big, beautiful photography and not every company can afford that level of photography.
3. The amount of information they have packed into their website demands a simplistic design style in order not to overwhelm their audience.

While I agree that a design that is too cluttered and flowery can be extremely frustrating when I am looking for something specific, but why must it be one or the other? That is the challenge of web design: creating a web experience. Combining form and function so they work together seamlessly.

Would you hire an architect to design a building that meets the needs of keeping you warm and a roof over your head but is a plain box? No. You hire an architect to create something beautiful but still functions as a well structured building.

Bottom line, the minimalist approach works, but not for everyone, and not as often as many people think. Personally, I am seeing more creativity and interesting visuals than something flat and boring but usable. Pairing usability and beauty is a web designer’s job. So rather than casting off graphic design as unnecessary, I foresee it becoming more and more crucial.

Having used computers for almost 30 years, and as a designer of interfaces, I often wonder what’s next. The mouse had been declared dead year ofter year, yet they continue to reign supreme. The recent videos from Microsoft have prompted a lot of discussion and there are often stories about the latest ideas in interface design. Many of these, including the Microsoft vision often champion a Minority Report like interface where the user manipulates an interface in front of them through touch or gestures. The Microsoft videos have tons of this type of interaction. While this is really cool to look at and may actually come to pass for certain applications, I don’t foresee anything like this for the typical desktop user being effective.

The simple reason is laziness. Well, that may be a little harsh. It’s really a matter of muscle fatigue. Touch screen interfaces while very effective on phones and tablets have a serious flaw when it comes to traditional desktop work. Imagine having your arms constantly extended in front of you touching your screen for everything that you now use a mouse for. By the end of an 8 hour day you would be unable to lift your arms. If you put the screen down on the desk to alleviate the stress on your arms than you end up with a strained neck from looking down all day.

The reason keyboards and mice have been around for so long with little change is because they work. They allow the user to rest their arms on the desk and use very little muscular effort to interact with the computer. Any replacement for this arrangement must meet this need. I do see merit and opportunity in touch and gesture interfaces on the desk as an input for an upright screen. This still allows the user to look straight ahead and rest their arms on the desk, yet may allow for a more customized and varied system for input and manipulation. This type of system is explored in the Microsoft video and aspects are seen in ideas like Mouseless and the EXOpc.

The major advantage of this system is that it allows the interface to change according to the needs of the user and the context of the work they are doing. The options available when a user is working in Photoshop could be completely different from what would be available in Microsoft Word. And while touch interfaces are useful, they really won’t reach their potential until they gain a tactile element. A desktop that was adaptable and tactile would offer a much better experience for users and might finally spell the end for the venerable mouse. Until that day comes, mice will continue to inhabit the desks of the world.

A few weeks ago Microsoft released a video showcasing their idea of what the future of technology might look like. Some weeks later, Bret Victor wrote a rant about how unimaginative Microsoft’s vision is. The thrust of his argument is that the ubiquitous touchscreens depicted in the video are uninventive because it disregards the most fundamental and powerful tool known to man: our hands. He explains that the physical interfaces of today don’t take advantage of our hands’ ability to both feel and manipulate things.

All this talk about hands and feeling and manipulation got me thinking. Given the current state and inertia of technology, it should be our foremost goal to make our interfaces feel good.

Feeling is often the indescribable property that separates a good interface from a great one. It’s the gap between the pixels and your finger (or mouse, by extension). You hear people mention this all the time when talking about software; “I don’t know, it just feels good”. Of course they’re not actually talking about how it feels, they’re talking about how their brain perceives it would feel if it were a physical interface. They’re talking about how well it responds to their input.

Without tactile feedback, as is the case when using a touchscreen or navigating a mouse cursor around a screen, our brain can’t depend on our hands and instead relies on our eyes to proxy visual feedback. We use this information on a subconsious level to confirm our last action and plan our next one. How an interface feels is the fidelity of the visual feedback to how our brain predicts it should feel.

It’s easy to see how important visual feedback becomes to the user experience in the absense of tactile feedback. It explains why skeuomorphism has prevailed as a common user interface design approach: it’s comforting to us as users when what we see and feel in the virtual world matches our perception of the physical world. This is why buttons often look like buttons and calendars often looks like calendars.

But how an interface feels goes deeper than the pixels on the screen; it’s all about trust. As an interface designer, you enter a contract with your users. Your design implicitly guarantees the user: “When you click X, the software will do Y”. It’s the job of your interface to back this guarantee by providing the feedback necessary for the user to feel assured you kept your end of the bargain. The gap between what your UI promised and what was delivered is received by the user as negative feeling. We’ve all experienced it, that brief moment of cognitive dissonance when you beckon the software to do one thing and it appears to do something different, or worse, nothing. That’s broken trust.

I have long preached that every clickable element (links, buttons, etc) deserves at least three states: idle, hover and click. I also encourage additional states for active-hover and active-click, but they are less necessary. Even novice designers know to make the idle state of their links obvious, but it’s surprising how many neglect to provide the user proper hover and click states. The hover state signifies that the element is clickable at this moment and the click state confirms that the element was clicked, both of which are crucial to keeping up your end of the UI contract.

The very best user interfaces are those that have a two-way conversation with the user, with equal transmission amplitude from both parties. When the visual feedback provided by your interface falls short of what the user expected, you’ve subconsciously broken their trust and left them with an indescribable feeling of doubt.