Week 2 Reading

As we learn more about designing interfaces we learn more about the average human population’s tolerance and aptitude with an interface. Krug, narrows down the immediacies of what should be the first things a user sees.

1.     A visual hierarchy on every page.

2.     Conventionalism 

3.     Definable areas

4.     Obvious clickability

5.     And minimum noise.

The hierarchy of a page portrays the relationships between the different subjects on the page. For example, variation in size relationships prominently show was is more important on a page: the bigger it is the more important it appears on a page. Even changing the density, color, negative space, or position on a page can move the viewer’s eye along the map that you create with a visual hierarchy.

Another way to create relationships among different groupings is grouping the similar groups and nesting an array of portals to compliment each other. Like a picture relating to it’s written description: similar to a newspaper.

Conventionalism is a tool for designers to make landmarks easy to find- because viewers have found it there before. Or, it is so similar to what they already know that they can assume that it is the same sort of thing that doesn’t need an explanation. They reassure familiarity in a new place for a viewer. This is a helpful tool even though designers don’t like to use them- almost afraid that they’ll being doing the same old thing and not creating a new, better design. The rule of thumb for dilemmas like that for designers: use what works unless you know you have a better idea.

Definable areas of an interface allows viewers to ignore the unnecessary parts that don’t apply to his/her needs.

Keeping the background noise and information that bottoms the hierarchy scale not only doesn’t overwhelm the reader, but it allows the clickable areas of a website to be more communicative and visible.

After starting in Chapter 4, I realize I like how Krug explains it’s not how many clicks it takes to get to page, but how hard it is to get there- how much brainpower it requires. It is also described as the “scent of information”- the ability to apply multiple mindless clicks to get to exactly where you’re going.

In the words of Krug in his 3^rd law of usability: “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” I thought to myself, ‘Yes. This is what most websites need. I’m tired of reading fluff.’ And the sub-topic of this law: “Happy talk must die.” I just about popped a lid. And it’s pretty much self-explanatory.