A Quick Critique: Vitaly Friedman’s Web Developer’s Handbook Home Page
February 7th, 2006
Over on the SIGIA-L list, (a discussion list for information architects,) I was asked for my opinion on the page design of the Web Developer’s Handbook, a nifty collection of links put together by Vitaly Friedman.
In general, I think the overall layout of the links is fine. The quantity of links on the page isn’t where this site has problems. The spacing seems to work well. If I were to observe users working with the page, I think the layout and quantity of links would stand up quite fine.
Where I think users will have problems is in the actual categorization and naming of the links. Some of the categories work to distinguish their content from the others, such as “Fonts”, “Usability & Accessibility”, and “SEO references”. Others (at least to me) seem a little less distinguished: I wonder if people will know where their target content will be located. “Miscellaneous Tools”, for example is one of the largest categories. To me, it’s always a red flag when something is labelled “Miscellaneous” — especially when it’s a large group. (“Miscellaneous” is synonymous with “Random Crap”. If you’re happy with the label “Random Crap”, then “Miscellaneous” may just work for you.)
Categories can be a problem in most schemes, so one way to solve it is to have descriptive content under each category to explain it. Links, when descriptive, can be very useful. However, I fear that the links on this page really aren’t very descriptive. They are, for the most part, page titles or blog names. For example, under “Usability & Accessibility”, (a category I pride myself in knowing a little about,) most of the links are the names of sites, such as “Access Matters” and “Siteusability.com”.
This is fine if you are looking to find the site. But the only scenario I can think of for that is that you already know the site name (and therefore can find it via it’s URL or Google), I’m not sure that adds value. Instead, the user is forced to pogostick to identify if the content contains what their seeking.
So, I think that if I watched users with the site (the only way I can determine whether it works or not), I’m betting I’d see pogosticking because of the links and categories.
[If you're interested in us reviewing your site, you might consider attending the upcoming UIE 2006 Roadshow. At each session, we'll take a look at several sites owned by attendees. Yours could be one of them.]
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February 8th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
I agree, to some extent. But I think it is very, very important to remember that people have different type of information-seeking tasks. I’m sure there are plenty of times that people will use this site to find something that they know they want (known item) and in those cases, the miscellaneous tools and lists of sites are probably not much good.
But there are different tasks. Someone (like me) may be poking around to see what tools other people are using just to see what’s around. Or they may be looking for stuff on usability but don’t know enough about it to know what they need to find (exploratory). They also may be there looking for something they know they need to know and spot something they didn’t know about (serendipity). Now if everything was hidden beneath the headings, the site wouldn’t work at all for these type of tasks, but because the content is exposed, I think it would work fine.
One of the problems with usability testing is that it almost always focuses on known-item tasks – “find out how to check your HTML is valid”. It much less frequently focuses on the more exploratory tasks. So a usability test might see pogo-sticking, but real life may not….
Anyway, I have a half-written boxes and arrows article on this, so have been thinking about it a lot
February 8th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I never intended to suggest that anything be hidden under categories.
On the contrary, my thinking is the user is better served if *more* information was brought to this page. In addtition to just saying “Access Matters”, what if a brief synopsis or relevant tags were also presented for the user.
The goal would be to prevent needless pogosticking, even if the user is just exploring.
In our testing, we try to use more natural tasks, often gleaned from interviewing the test participant. That way the tasks are actually activities that particular user would do in the language they’d use. Using this type of task formulation, more exploratory tasks can (and do) emerge.
I’ve had it on my list to write an article on our interview-based task techniques for a while. Maybe I’ll bump that up a few notches on the priority list.
February 9th, 2006 at 5:48 am
No, you were clear. I just gave the hiding under categories as an example (so I probably wasn’t clear
And I know you try to use natural tasks – I remember reading a long time ago your e-commerce testing where you gave people money to spend. I taught usability testing for a couple of years and *always* told people about this as I thought it was such a great way to get natural behaviour.
But just because you do it, doesn’t mean everyone else does
That sounds like a great article to get out there…
February 9th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Hi Jared
(Given my earlier post here about negative feedback from users, this comment may seem a bit ironic… apologies… anyway…)
This whole topic of link order, grouping, info seeking behaviour… isn’t it a bit like “low hanging fruit” to the UX field?
Do people who make websites NOT know about this?!?
I’d be a rich man if I had a pound for every occasion I have explained your labelling example about “Miscellaneous” = “Random Crap”! (Interestingly though, people still do it…)
At what point do we stop treading these fundamental yet well worn avenues and get on to the more challenging and perhaps more forward thinking questions, e.g. domain or sector specific user experience, usability of podcasts, RSS feeds, multi-channel e-commerce and so on?
Regards
DJ
March 6th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Dear Jared Spool,
thank you very much for your critique. I really appreciate it. I have added few new categories and I am going to work on “Miscellaneous” category. As you can see, it isn’t a “Trash”-category; mostly, the resources listed there just don’t fit in any other category, although they are valuable for me as a web-developer.
And by the way, UIE Brain Sparks is listed in the Web Developer’s Handbook, too.
With warm greetings from Saarbruecken, Germany,
Vitaly Friedman