Usability or Lack Thereof
February 21st, 2010
I had the pleasure of spending several hours today with my family (each on separate computers) doing a search for college scholarship and grant monies for our two oldest children. One of the things that totally frustrated and annoyed me was the complete omission of certain web usability features that would make the funding search experience, well…nicer.
What I mean is: simpler, faster, and easier to navigate. (I’m not even going to discuss how butt-ugly most of these sites were—that’s another rant!)
Nope, I just do not understand, why, why, WHY? the simplest of things were ignored when coding these sites. Really, rudimentary, web design 101 stuff!
Don’t Underline Unless you Mean It!
I was on one site (lost the link) fishing around for money. And, stupid me! tried to click on some of the underscored text–you know, like it was a LINK or something. But it wasn’t! Not even. Just some stupid emphasized text! Not meant to be confused with the other underlined text on the page that were clickable links.
Wake up! It’s 2010. If you underline the text, they WILL click!
NOKWTFYAM
But you know what my acronym stands for. Why? Because I used the acronym element when I coded it! So all you (the user) had to do was hover over it with your mouse. Just look at this list of acronyms for which I had no clue:
- SCA
- DMI
- PTA (OK, I knew this one!)
- WWII (ditto)
- NBFAA
- GRCF
- ASHA
- NPG
- ALBA
- UGH (that’s mine!)
26 letters. Endless combinations. Use the acronym element!
Déjà Vu…Already Clicked That Link!
And when god created the internet, he gave us 16+million colors! One of which, if coded into styles as a:visited { color: DIFFERENT; } would alert the user that they’ve already been there and done that. And the user could ignore that link and move on in the quest for grace and college funding.
And the user would be pleased and in harmony with the universe.
16+ million colors. It is perfectly OK to use multiple link state colors. Really.
Anyway, just sayin’. Sometimes it’s the little things that make—or break—user experience!
