In general, we believe graphics have a place. When they effectively communicate scent or communicate content, they are valuable to the users experience. There’s no evidence to suggest designers couldn’t create link-rich pages with effective graphics.

When the designers switch back and forth, between having some links underlined but others not be underlined, that makes even more work for users. Work that doesn’t add any real value. We think the visual design element of the underline is not required, but it is cruel to make users work extra hard because you can’t decide.

To discern the trigger words, you need to know why users are coming to the page in the first place. When talking about a site’s home page, that means you need to know why they are coming to the site and what they hope to accomplish.

If you’re attending our first UIE Virtual Seminar today, you should have received the connection instructions in your email. If you haven’t, you can find a copy of them here.

We’re very excited about our first virtual seminar. The number of registrations has, so far, been twice what we’d hoped for. People seem really excited learning about our latest thinking on home pages.