[thelist] survey says...

[Keith]

>
>2. Web applications are different. But for most cases do NOT try to mimic
>a windows applications. Users will expect to be in a browser and have the
>back button work.

I'd like to see someone put some stats to this knee-jerk generalization.
Since it's a slow Saturday -

I have a website that high school students use to access thousands of
historical newspaper articles. Students can access the collection from
school or from their home. They can select to navigate the collection in 3
different interfaces that use the same number of clicks to get to the articles:
1) a plain vanilla web page navigation scheme
2) a snazzy DHTML interface that works only on Win/IE5+ & Win/N6+
3) a full screen interface that mimics a Windows application, uses Windows
default fonts, colors etc and looks like a typical Windows app. Works only
on Win/IE5+

Our expectation: most students would select the snazzy DHTML inteface for
their default. That interface was built to mimic a very popular custom XP
theme used by that age group (Subterfuge). Surprise!

The stats: 92% of all Win/IE5+ users select the Windows app interface as
their default, 5% select the DHTML interface and 3% prefer the vanilla web
page interface. Of all users, 94% are Win/IE5+ users meaning that 6% are
non-Window OS or non-IE5+ browsers. That 6% uses the vanilla interface. We
have requests from schools heavily populated with Apple to develop a
Mac/IE5+ Mac app interface!  Why? Because once the user is in the app
workspace they never leave it - all query responses from the server are
flowed into the workspace without ever leaving the "page". It doesn't just
*look* like an app, it *works* like an app.

We found that the interface which competed least with our produce for
attention was the most preferred. It also raised the question, do people
actually prefer the "website" concept of hopping to different pages
accessed through hypertext, or do they just tolerate pogo-sticking around a
site because it's all they've ever seen?  We can imagine, and build,
websites that work like a unified application, but try to imagine someone
writing an application that looks and works like a website!  Imagine every
time you click to do something in PhotoShop that the app presents a
different page to do that task, and a "Back" button to take you back to
continue where you were. Imagine PhotoShop working like most shopping carts
do!?!  Perhaps I've missed it, but has anyone, other than a handful of
misbegotten BEOS apps, a ever produced an application built to work like a
website?  Imagine Homesite as 46 static HTML pages and hundreds of ASP
response pages with 6 inch query strings, and a Back button - instead of as
a unified workspace.

Food for thought, the hypertext href link is today older than MSDOS was
when Windows replaced it - when do we leave pogo-sticking href navigation
behind us and go on to more useful designs? And, why would we ever resist
doing so? Imagine, if you can, how the web will work in 2010 and you'll
begin to realize the inadequacy that we regularly force our visitors, and
ourselves, to tolerate by clinging to our current design paradigm. Imagine,
if you can, building a JPG at C:\> and you'll begin to realize how
desperately we seem to be keeping ourselves from wondrous things to come.

Does anyone else have statistics/experience on the success or failure of
using a Windows app interface instead of a web interface? Or any interface
other than click-ity-click hop-ity-hop hyper-linking?


Keith
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