Re the articles I cited this morning about usability and design issues,
here's a couple of things I've come across today...
On the plus side of the ledger is the newly redesigned Internet Movie
Database site, which apprently has been bought out by amazon.com.
The old IMDB was an invaluable and hugely comprehensive movie resource,
but finding one's way around it could be positively Kafkaesque in its
strangeness and disorientation. For instance, in places it could be darn
near impossible to search for a specific movie title, though you might be
able to search for, say, a given producer or actor. Anyway, the revised
site is a great improvement, and lots of fun to browse.
IMDB: http://imdb.com
On the minus side is an example of an e-commerce-related site that truly
sucks, the Cheap Fare Finder service at bananatravel.com.
Quite apart from the fact that it doesn't unearth cheaper fares than any
other regular online reservation service (didn't for me anyway), the
interface is a nightmare: a classic case of forcing user behaviour to
conform to the limitations of a Web application, rather than the other way
around.
When the front-end to the service first appears (after you slog through
four separate pages and two domains to get there), it looks kinda slick.
There's a form-based calendar that seems like it will simplify data entry,
until you read the following caveat:
Do /not/ enter dates in the 'Date-Time' fields. Place your
cursor within the field containing the arrow and use the
clickable calendar to indicate the dates and time period for
each leg. Select the desired time period /before/ you select a
date. You can change a date/time by clicking on the date you
want to change and then using the calendar to adjust your
selection.
And trust me, if you don't follow the above cryptic and ludicrous directions
to the letter, mayhem ensues... what a mess. The script also
automatically (and unexpectedly) fills in some data fields for you, and if
you try to manually change any of them the application croaks. Yuck.
Clearly some bright-light programmer was inextricably wedded to the idea
of using this snappy "calendar interface", quite regardless of whether or
not it actually works worth a cuss in the real world. This is comparable to
art directors who impose bleeding-edge graphic designs on a site without
a moment's thought as to whether anyone can actually navigate through
it.
Cheap Fare Finder: http://www.tvllink.com/
In cases like this I've got to agree with Jakob Nielsen: a majority of
commercial sites suck, mostly because they're simply not usable.
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Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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