There is an area of grass opposite my house and a section has become worn away due to people walking across it. I’ve watched people take that route and I must admit I’ve done it myself when I’ve been in a hurry. It’s simply quicker and easier for me to walk across the grass than it is to take the intended route and walk around.
As you can see from the photo and satellite photo I’m not the only ‘user’ that finds it quicker and easier to cut across.
What does this have to do with design?
Most things are designed with the user in mind – in fact whilst I sit here I can’t think of a single thing that has been design without the user in mind… except Lotus Notes.
Talking about website design in particular, I have an interest in how users behave on sites I’ve designed and I also make notes of my experience on other sites I use too. When LinkedIn decided to include a captcha form as part of their standard login process I used the site less as it was annoying and tricky to use and I started question why I had to keep doing it. Thankfully it looks as though they have sorted ‘their’ spam problem and I can easily login now… phew.
All sites are different and have been designed to accomplish different things but I sometimes wonder if we split up content unnecessarily and in particular ‘Contact’ and ‘login’ pages. I’m guilty of creating a separate contact page but I also include a textual contact email and number on each page too – do I still need that separate page? Have users become conditioned to look for it? The fact is that more people click ‘Contact’ on my navigation bar than they do on ‘Blog’ for example. With that being said, I don’t know how many people have called me up from reading my number at the top of every page.
LinkedIn could make a slight tweak on their homepage that would allow for a login box for existing users to enter their details and log straight in:
And Audio in Brighton could save a user click and include contact info at the top of each page and then re-name the contact page to ‘Find us’:
I’ve only really started to become more aware of these issues since using my iPhone for browsing whilst out and about. It seems I need the information quicker and easier to find on a mobile device while on a slower 3G connection.
Am I talking rubbish? What sites do a good job of organising their content? What sites do a bad job? Please comment below and let me know.
Just found out that there is a term called ‘Desire Path’. See Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/desire_paths/
“The key to the desire path is not just that it’s a path which one person or a group has made but that it’s done against the will of some authority which would have us go another, rather less convenient, way.”