[thelist] three usability questions

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at xevious.kicks-ass.net
Thu Jul 1 22:19:39 CDT 2004


On 2004 July 01, Thursday 21:10, Erik Mattheis wrote:
> The consultant would like the text of articles to run all the way
> across the page. One of my pet peeves is websites that allow long
> sections of text to run 100% of the browser window. I find it can be
> difficult to find the next line when reading text at 100% of the
> window's width. Thoughts?

One of *my* pet peeves is a Web site set up such that no matter how wide 
I make my window, the text is in little bitty chunks of 4-5 words per 
line. So, if you don't like long lines, maybe make your browser window 
narrower?

> My second question is perhaps the most likely to be my subjective
> opinion: The site serves different audiences - for instance, there's
> stuff for kids, stuff for parents, stuff for legislators, stuff for
> attorneys. The information for each audience isn't useful to anyone
> outside of that target audience.

And you know this how? It's likely some of the information is actually 
useful to more than one group (at least outside of the stuff for kids).

> So that's how the site is organized, a top-level section for each
> audience. The consultant wishes to change the top level sections to
> conceptual categories, like "articles", "advocacy", "resources", etc.
> Am I off in thinking that the site will be less usable to visitors if
> the content intended only for them is spread out across the site among
> content not intended for them instead of in a single section with
> everything for that audience? Six one, half a dozen the other?

It's possible. The stuff for kids, at least, should quite possibly be 
split off into a separate site entirely. As for the rest of it, I'm 
sure the people will figure out what's targeted to who, as some of it 
could be more relevant to more than the originally conceived target 
group than you first realized.

> Last query: If we end up doing conceptually grouped sections, the
> site hierarchy will be pushed one level deeper to 5 levels of links
> for just a few articles. She has suggested making the second level
> links "hierarchical menus" . I think it's a bad idea! a. They're so
> "1999" b. It seems horrid usability to make site navigation go like
> this:
>
> always visible links > rollover hierarchical menus > always visible
> links > always visible links > select box for multi-page articles

Rollover menus which depend on Javascript are bad, especially in the 
absence of an alternative method of access.

> I could imagine, for instance, a lawyer finding an article for
> parents from a google search, and the "Resources for Attorneys" link
> being hidden in a hierarchical menu, and the visitor would return to
> their search results without finding all the fascinating stuff they
> were looking for. I like it better with a big fat "Attorneys" link at
> the top of every page and every link on the page visible no matter
> where they happen to have their mouse pointer!

There are people who will visit the Web site which don't conveniently 
fit into the targeted groups you have conceived (news media probably 
being one of them).

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn


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