[thelist] Usability Critique - http://documents.pape.com/

mccreath mccreath at ak.net
Sun Jan 6 21:12:49 CST 2002


> hmmm, that's three people now (one offlist) that have mentioned having
> problems with the navigation not being obvious enough.

It's not obvious enough the first time through, because most people don't
expect a website to add bars to their browser window, they expect the site's
internal nav tools to look significantly different. But once you do find
them, there's no issue.

If you do want to make them stand out, you could darken that gray just a
little, from the spacing column to the left of the "Browse" button all the
way over to the right, but that would rule out using the system color
settings, so you probably don't want to go that way.

You could also put shaded vertical rule (like Windows uses to separate parts
of the tool bars) to the left of the "Browse" button, but again, depending
on what you do for color, you might end up with odd problems, depending on
the user's system setting.

> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > Perhaps lighting up the cart button after they have
> > something in their cart or making it obvious that
> > clicking that button is the next step. The same goes for
> > the Basket page...
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> crap, but if i do that then i lose the windows-esque rollover the
> button and apply color to the image effect.

I wanted to see some indication of what was in my cart, too. What about
swapping the icon for a cart with something in it?

And while we're talking about the cart icon, it looks a little too different
from the other icons for my taste. The others have dimensionality, even when
they're grayed-out, but the cart has no dimensionality, period. I'm not sure
exactly what I would do, but something to make it stand out a little more.

David





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