Steve Krug, a usability expert, gave a presentation in Seattle tonight on web site usability entitled, “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Perfect Web Page.” He says usability comes down to two main things:
1. Use effective “You Are Here” indicators to let readers know where they are in a site. These should be ubiquitous and consistent, and they should be LOUDER than parallel but less important elements on the page. See the way StumbleUpon uses “live” tabs that are brighter than other navigation choices and that blend into the main content background color for a good example of what he’s talking about.
2. Use prominent, well-placed page titles to let users know what the page is about. These titles should, of course, be consistent with the link you clicked on to get there (e.g., if you click on a link that says “Green Blocks” you should land on a page with a prominent title that says “Green Blocks”).
That’s it. Use those two elements consistently across your web site and your site visitors will happily navigate your site.
In the “Stump the Chump” part of the session, he took a look at my new web site, Bodywork U, which he found no major flaws with (though I did leave the presentation with a to-do list of ways to better apply his advice to the site).
In the Q&A session after his presentation, someone asked about the best way to use breadcrumb trails. He said that any one page on a site should have only one breadcrumb trail and that if you link to it from some other place on the site think of it as a cross reference. I love this observation. For one thing it’s the way I’ve always used breadcrumb trails. For another, I love that this now well-established usage works differently than the source of the analogy - that is, a real breadcrumb trail would be a list of the pages you had visited previously to get to the current page.
I also made a small-world connection with Steve after the session. He had mentioned that he went to Boston College, and I know a bunch of BC alumni from my East Coast days, so I asked and, what do you know, it turns out he’s good friends with my pal Jim in Boston.
