Usability • Web Design

5 Keys to a Bad User Interface

posted by Dan Baker @ August 25th, 2008

Remember when the Web was young? Everyone just jumping on there, throwing dancing babies and blinking text and mystery-meat navigation all over the place? In the bad old days, user interfaces were often designed as a postscript by whatever programmer was building the web site. These days however, beautiful User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design is too important to be an afterthought. Your website is much more than an online brochure, but it should also be much less than a NASA control panel. Here are five things to avoid for your next redesign:

Hide Important Destinations. The biggest offender: drop-down menus. Drop-down menus were designed to choose options (in a form) or to trigger an action like “Save As…” or “Paste” (in an application), but they are unacceptable as a navigation aid (I’m looking at you Dell). Navigation should never be invisible. Extra points for having drop-down menus inside drop-down menus.
Inconsistent Art Direction. Standardize your design - colors, fonts, icons, layout, positioning. It’s all important in communicating a cohesive brand. Keep the menu in the same place on every page. Use headers that are the same color and font. Be consistent with updates to the site (this can be helped tremendously by the development of a Site Style Guide). Hey, Pepsico, is that a submenu with scrollbars and big stars for buttons?!?
The Wall of Words. A good UX means a usable and a readable site. Writing for the web means concise statements of fact. Don’t get caught up in jargon or marketing-speak. And don’t drop huge blocks of copy on your readers. And proofread your site.
Too Many Options. When designing an interface you must balance the needs of the user with the complexity of the interface. The more options you offer, the more difficult and/or time-consuming it is to choose one. Many options on a single screen makes an interface inherently more difficult to use even for frequent users. Don’t believe me? Google vs. it’s latest and most monolithic competitor (Microsoft).
Ignore the End User. A good partnership between the UI designer, the UI developer, and the client has to take into account the end user. This is why we do focus groups and UX testing. As the developer I am not the end user - things that make sense to me will not necessarily make sense to others. I’m not designing the site for me or for my client, but ultimately for my client’s end user.