the very passionate kathy sierra wrote recently about user enchantment.
huh?
we (i mean, anyone reading this is by definition a bit geeky at least) have all come across the concept of the user experience, and how getting it right brings in the bucks. see google for a great example of this. albeit a new science, user experience is establishing firm roots grounded in fact, not just marketing buzzwords. combine usability, information achitecture, accessibility and this je ne sais quoi which is the final element and you get - tada!!! - the user experience.
kathy sierra's article pins down some of the je ne sais quoi and makes it tangible. for each of us there is a reason why we use the same sites over and over, or why we try some new software and stick with it - or not. it's about the whole experience from start to finish. it's about making it easy to find the information you want with a decent site search engine. it's about transparent e-commerce procedures and faith in security when offering up your visa card, it's about an attractive design, well thought out and engaging content, it's about cross-browser performance and de-bugged, non-glitchiness. it's about all that and more. a huge part of this, for me, is standards-based design and implementation. getting it right and making it work for everyone.
what are the biggest turn-offs?
you would not believe that today, in 2006, people still use unreadable fonts in visually unappealing colours. there are hundreds of commercial or supposedly professional websites out there that still look like a personal geocities site circa 1998. flashy icons and blinking text. every type of formatting you can imagine and guaranteed 100% free from any worthwhile functionality!
i use a newsreader for most of my daily net reads, so i don't visit the site itself on a daily basis, just occasionally when i want, perhaps, to see the related images. so, when i go to the site itself i'm often offended by the swarm of adverts, many of them using bad markup or not cross-browser compatible, causing them to float over the content, with no way of "turning them off". why??? i know bloggers are trying to earn money from their writings. that's cool. pepper your pages with adwords and related links. fine. but i'm talking about serious, established companies here. come on. give me a break with these adverts that stop me wanting to visit your site. not cos they are ads as such, but because they are poorly implemented and mean that i can not successfully use your site.
then you have the sites where the poor search facility and bad navigation make it a nightmare to find what you need. by bad navigation i mean that it's either inconsistent or it doesn't break down in to intuitive categories. don't you hate when you are seardhing for something and none of the options available seem to be the right one for you? or you type soemthing into the search box and nothing relevant comes back. gah! same with those infernal automated call queue systems. none of the options are the right one but if you don't choose a number they cut you off. if you choose the wrong number you are stuck in the wrong place so you have to hang up and start all over again. *sigh*
so there you have a few poor user experience situations. let me know those places, few and far between, which give you good vibes and open the door to the golden glow of user enchantment
