06.18.09
Yahoo! Hurray!
The world wide web has leveled the playing field in so many ways for individuals & companies. You no longer need a 6 figure budget to market worldwide. You no longer need to spend thousands to connect a group of like-minded people. You no longer need to be a designer or programmer to develop a digital experience for hundreds, thousands or even millions of potential users. Oops! Maybe that last one isn’t a good thing.
That’s right, the “everyman’s web” mentality also means that there is no skill set entry requirement for the designer or developer of the everyman’s web. Anyone who has spent any significant time browsing the web will have seen countless bad design ideas with confusing & disorienting user interfaces. And this holds true for some business & municipal sites that should know better (and have the budget to do better). So, you may ask, what should be done to remedy this problem?
The answer to this dilemma is standardization. That’s right. We need to standardize the user interface of the web so that a web interface is immediately recognizable and understandable. Much like we are accustomed to the interface of programs on our computers, we should be accustomed to a standard look & feel for a web interface.
Now, I’m not saying every website should look the same. What I am saying is that any user should be able to visit any website and all the interface elements (everything the user will interact with) should be obvious and familiar. Think about the menubar on your computer. For a Mac user the menu bar sits atop the screen and never moves, providing all the necessary functionality for whatever program you may be in. The same holds true for the Windows menubar, though it lives atop each window (a slightly poorer use of Fitts’s law, but it seems to be serviceable enough).
The problem is, not enough graphic/web designers realize they are not interface designers. Most don’t even realize that there have been volumes written about human interaction with objects in 2D and 3D space, going back to 1954 and a certain Paul Fitts.
It’s a monumental task. Who’s going to take on the challenge? Yahoo!, that’s who. I have to applaud Yahoo! for stepping up to the plate and beginning a process that is long overdue: standardizing the user interface of web sites, particularly in regards to interactive items. They saw the problem and are providing a solution. And while I am not saying they have perfected their user interface library, they are at least starting down the path to a clean & consistent web experience. The Yahoo User Interface project is a giant step in the right direction and I hope more developers and designers jump on the bandwagon of clean & consistent user interface.
So, the next time you sit down to design a website interface, do everyone a favor and take a few hints from the helpful folks at Yahoo! by implementing their user interface library where it makes sense to. I even downloaded all the YUI stencils from Graffletopia for OmniGraffle so I could be sure to have all the interface elements available to my when I wireframe and design a user interface.
