I rarely write about web design issues in this column since our mandate is to write about ways to use the Internet as a reporting tool (and besides, the Poynter Design/Graphics folks and Jon Dube’s Cyberjournalist.net have that well covered). But I am making an exception in this case because I think, increasingly, how sites are designed can affect how good they are for journalists to use.
The reason non-techie journalists should know about usage and design issues (generally known as “usability”) is that they can influence how sites look and feel through feedback to PR professionals, critiques, etc. No, it’s not our jobs to improve sites, but in this evolving medium, it is useful for us to shape things to make them better for everyone. Besides, many of these tips apply to media sites as well.
When it comes to website usability, the leading authority in the world is Jakob Nielsen, whose Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., has influenced tens of thousands of site designers. Nielsen’s useit.com is a must-visit site for anyone in the web business and I think more non-techie journalists should know about it.
Take, for example, his Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003. He says sites are “getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show.”
Some of these may be too technical for most people, including me (No. 7: “Long Lists that Can’t Be Winnowed by Attributes”), but there’s no debating his take on the rest. No. 1: “Unclear Statement of Purpose”; No. 3: “Undated Content” (along with the lack of phone numbers on the front pages of sites, this is one of my pet peeves).
His conclusion: “Many of this year’s top design mistakes actually indicate a happy phenomenon: we are making progress in Web usability. Now that sites are doing certain things correctly, we get hit by second-order phenomena that only cause problems because users have progressed past the first-order issues.”
You can see the progress in web design by checking out his previous lists:
- Web design mistakes (1996)
- Web design mistakes (1999)
- Good deeds in Web design (1999)
- Top homepage usability guidelines (2002)
- Web design mistakes (2002)
- Most violated homepage guidelines (2003)
You can subscribe to Nielsen’s bi-weekly column on usability, Alertbox, at no cost here.
BONUS TIP: Speaking of mistakes, writing coach Mervin Block has just compiled some mistakes from network television.
Your turn: send me sites you like at poynter@sree.net.
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