TheWayoftheWeb

When colleague and chum David Cushman and I compiled The Rock Stars of Web 2.0 list on Ditto.net is was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way to play with an interesting website from the company for which we both work, and on which  help with some marketing.

We thought it may turn up something interesting, but we really didn’t know what…

Voting is still continuing, but it’s already teaching us a number of things about how people are using the site, how they’re ordering information, and about how the people in question are perceived.

And it’s also starting to become a valuable resource for information. Ditto itself is a social entertainment guide to help find right signal in the increasingly noisy world of entertainment, and it allows you to add relevant videos. Which is just what has happened, started off by David!

So now it starts to be more than a popularity list, and also becomes somewhere to find the best bits of information/entertainment from those on the list. It’ll be interesting to see if it has any bearing on the voting!

My interest in web design is generally based on usability and accessibility, due to the fact I’m not the most artistic person in the world. I can appreciate attractive designs, but there are far better people than me in the world at creating them.

But something has struck me that I think could be a good rule for web architecture and design, based on my own experience of website redesigns, and trying to cram an awful lot of information onto a homepage in the fear that if it doesn’t appear, no-one will ever see it or find it. So here it is:

If you’re forcing homepage contents on your users keep it simple. If you want it to be cluttered, let your users pick how they organise it - or what it on it.

This is backed up by a few examples. For instance, Google is the oft-quoted archetypal example of a very simple homepage. And one that could make more money for the company if it was covered in banner ads - but that would wreck the essence of it’s success.

Meanwhile users can be overwhelmed by busy homepages - but when was the last time you saw an empty Facebook or Myspace profile, or an empty Netvibes page? Users are happy to have a cluttered page, as long as they’ve been able to create and organise the clutter - just the same as people are happy to work at a cluttered desk if they’ve worked out the clutter themselves.

The recent BBC homepage redesign is a good example of moving in this direction -without hopefully overwhelming too many users. Personally I was disappointed it’s still a walled silo of BBC content only - but it’s a start.

There’s a difference between successful new technologies and websites, and ones which fail.

All the successes are able to answer a problem, or solve an existing one, in a simpler, easier, faster way than before. If what you’re planning needs explaining in more than a sentence, or needs instruction for a consumer/visitor to use, then it’s probably not quite right. After all, if someone came to your house for a meal, would you expect to have to explain how to use the doors, use the stairs, go to the toilet, flush the toilet, and walk down the stairs again?

If you need a comprehensive take on this…or a handy reminder, see ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ on the book list, right…it’s full of things you might forget in the excitement of site building.

This was brought home to me for the umpteenth time today when I went to the doctors. I’m sure many people have already seen this with their doctor, but when I went in, I was amazed to find that I no longer had to queue for ages to speak to a receptionist to tell them that I had made the trip from my bed to doctor’s surgery without accidentally ending up in the pub.

Instead, I just had to type my sex and birthday on a touchscreen, and in return I got a personalised welcome, plus a rough idea of the current delay between my appointment and the time I’d be seen.

It saves a line, it saves receptionist time (which means they can be doing more complex tasks), and it gives me a rough idea of whether I can nip to the loo or not before my appointment….