I found that in Krug's first seven chapters the material was highly relatable. My gut reaction to most of the points was " I agree with this completely!" Especially the points and graphs made to explain consumers and web users reactions and frustrations. I can honestly say I'm not an avid web user. I'd rather spend two hours in the library looking up books for a project than spend five hours on the internet looking for useful resources. Despite this I often find myself taking the "easier route" online; aka the one I don't have to leave the room for, and the one I can do at three in the morning. Everyone knows, or says at least, that the whole world is only a click away; bringing new meaning to the term "the world is at your finger tips." With this in mind most of us internet users expect to find information easy and clearly assessable. Instead we are met with sites that confuse and seem to lead nowhere. One example is our school website. When trying to search for a specific faculty member you have to go through several confusing steps before-hand and then finally you reach a page made to search for faculty staff, but your only two options are "name contains" or "sounds like" neither of which work appropriately the majority of the time. I've had such a hard time looking up professors on the school site that I always use Google instead.
Krug makes a good point of stessing the importance of being able to return to a specific area of the site once you've found it. My example for this is finding your phone pictures on your online Verizon account. I've been doing this for several years now, and I still to this day get confused when trying to click through the options. I've learned to just bookmark the page, but without the bookmark I am lost and extremely frustrated. I think reading these first seven chapter will also be helpful in designing my website for class. Many of the points may seems small, but I think can help make or break a website.
EXAMPLES:
school example:
verizon example:
Hi Beckah,
ReplyDeleteI think you raise a good point about the social contract we enter into with website designers and what happens when there is a breach of that contract--we are left lost, frustrated, having to rely on bookmarks... I think this could be described in terms of ethical communication as well.
What do you think you will take from the book to apply to your own website?
PS--I like the green and blue type; easier on my eyes than white. Did you change that?
ReplyDeleteI did! but I was worried it looked juvenile.... so I changed it to grey words and finally now I have this plan black color.
ReplyDeleteDo you think this is more sophisticated?