10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of
Jun
Visitors to your website don’t come just to look at your design and to figure out how to get all your fancy special effects to work. They come with questions they want answered. Your job is to make that information that they seek as easy to find as possible. Anything that stands in the way of your visitor finding out what they want to know quickly and simply makes your website a nightmare to use.
Smashing Magazine has a list of 10 Usability Nightmares you should be aware of with examples from real sites. There is also a list of 8 usability checkpoints:
- Don’t use pop-ups.
- Don’t change users’ window size.
- Don’t use too-small font sizes.
- Don’t have unclear link text.
- Don’t have dead links.
- Have at most one animation per page.
- Make it easy to contact you.
- Make links open in the same window.
Do you agree with the article? Do you know of any other usability nightmares that they missed?
10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of ~ Smashing Magazine
On a side note, comment #142 for this article was very amusing:
“I think that every designer should design for their grandma. If she can get around the site, only then can you pat yourself on the back. I have had customers that when I said click on the link, they actually picked up the mouse, put it on the screen and then clicked.”
Oh, dear.
I think that 1-5 are clearly more important than 6, 7, and 8. With 7 being closer in importance to the first 5. But 6 isn’t such a bad thing depending on how much animation is going on. And 8 I don’t have a problem with and actually prefer links to open in a new tab (ok not the same thing as opening in a new window) – it’s not nearly as important as the others though. – Eric
@Eric: I like to open new sites and some other links in new tabs, but I like to control it myself. I have Firefox and the Tab Mix Plus extension set up so that new websites open in new tabs, and middle-clicking a link opens it in a new tab.