I’m guilty of this problem. I assume because it makes sense to me it will make sense to others. Hey, I’m logical - it must work like this for everyone, right?

Denial is a powerful thing indeed. When it comes to looking at an interface I’ve created and designed, I can’t successfully be the final judge. I can make arguments about why I did something, placed an icon here, set this link to be in the first position, and made the wording like this and not like that… but ultimately, I need someone else to look at it and try it out, and to be honest with me.

What’s worse is I’ve read a great many books on usability. I’ve lectured on it. I’ve been paid good money to give my feedback. But still, I’m just one voice. Good usability has to do more than simply make me happy.

This doesn’t mean that good usability test has to be expensive or costly. Just planned and well thought out and done quickly. The best usability studies are the ones that don’t involve the stakeholders - only the observations of people interacting with the interface. (I need to write a blog entry on doing a usability study. I’ll add that to the list.)

I plan on adding to this entry over the span of this week (Jan 7th to the 12th) with listing the most important usability lessons I’ve learned as a developer.

Here are some of the lessons I have learned over the past 10 years-

- Make links obvious and not obtuse.
- Keep a consistency in your link colors throughout the site. It’s okay to have some links be a different color - say in the footer - but have a reason for doing so, and be sure that they still look like links.
- Please, please, please don’t use a link color on something that isn’t a link, and don’t underline text that isn’t a link.
- Use high contrasting colors for text and the background over which it is displayed.
- Keep navigation simple; remember the Rule of 7 plus or minus 2.
- Group navigation items according to context. Keep a single context under one main navigation link when possible.
- Don’t assume that people will use a site like a hub and spoke model with the home page as the hub. There could be multiple entrance or landing pages. Provide a context for the site no matter where the user lands.
- Bright colors tend to be overwhelming and make the content take a back seat to the color. (Just compare the Windows operating system to that of a Macintosh. Apple got this right - subtle hues work better.)
- Don’t expect every user to follow the paths you would follow. For example, what if you have a pop up window somewhere on the site - what happens if they click the parent window? Does the pop up close? Does the user lose data then? Does the window live on as an orphan? Just because you would close the window first, doesn’t mean every user would.
- Keep it simple. Similar to remembering the Rule of 7 Plus or Minus 2, remember that people don’t treat web pages like they do printouts, or books. They scan web pages. There’s a reason the application used for the web is called a browser, not a reader.

The list above is my guidelines for building a website based on my experiences over time with websites that have worked well, improved sales, and had fewer customers calling for help or directions. As noted above though, even following these ‘guidelines’ won’t replace doing a usability study. Look for a blog entry soon on how to do a cheap, quick, and highly effective usability study.