What is and Who Defines a Good User Experience
By Coleen Bondy

What is a good user experience? And who should define what a good user experience is? The leading voices on the topic are often wildly at odds. Take Web usability expert Jakob Nielson and award-winning designer Josh Davis.

Described by The New York Times as the "the guru of Web page usability," Jakob Nielsen holds a Ph.D. in user interface design and computer science. A consultant and author, Nielson believes the Web is all about e-commerce and information, and that any site that extensively applies rich media will fail.

³Content is the reason people go to a Web site. They donıt go to a Web site to admire the appearance, says Nielson who offers book recommendations and usability standards on his Web site, Useit.com.

Josh Davis, an innovative digital designer for Kioken, specializes in developing rich media entertainment sites. The tattoo-clad designer travels around the world delivering presentations to jam-packed lecture halls on what comprises a good user experience.

"Entertainment is not about blue links," Davis asserts, in reference to Jakob Nielson's site and usability guidelines. "Something big is happening here, and it's not about standards."

Two Extreme Views
Nielson believes that site creators should strive to make the Web simple to navigate and use. And further, failing to create an intuitive experience adds to a digital divide in which people with less education are blocked from accessing the wealth of information on the Web.

"It isnıt an issue of economics so much as education," he stresses. Computers are already becoming more affordable, and Nielson predicts that in 10 years computers will ³cost the same as hamburgers. But unless computers are easier to use, a large portion of the worldıs population will still be unable to tune into the information age.

³Half the worldıs population cannot use a computer. And those that do, can barely perform the most basic computer functions, he says. ³Only 10 or 20 percent of the [computer literate] population can truly use one.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Davis sees the Web as a blank canvas on which designers are free to create. He says itıs okay to confuse users, to develop sites using unconventional navigation, and to create experiences that force people to think. Davis' site PrayStation surely forces users to think.

³Iım going to make everything enormous and confusing and not abide by any standards, says Davis, who believes that the Web will ultimately become an entertainment medium, and that e-commerce will become extinct.

Nielsen admittedly has no aesthetic aspirations for the Web or for his site, Useit.com. Far from artistic, Useit.com is laden with text and links. It loads quickly and features news, columns, and lecture information as well as a section titled "Why this site has almost no graphics."

Who Controls the User Experience?
Davis and Nielsen disagree most passionately when answering the question: Who controls the user experience?

Nielsen believes that the end user should control the user experience, not the Web designer. ³The user composes their own experience as they are interacting with the content, he asserts.

As far as the Web designer is concerned, Nielson says "the most important goal of creating a Web site is to figure out what the user wants to accomplish and to determine how she will try to accomplish it, and then make it easy for her to do so."

On his own Web sites, Davis is definitely in control of the user experience, and his goal is often to confuse. ³The Internet for me is just basically a man-made version of the universe, where everything beautiful and horrid exists. I think it should be chaotic.

Davis recently asked his wife what she thought the Internet is, however. ³She looked at me and said, Œshopping.ı And this is my wife, who knows what I do!

Of course, Davis and Nielsen represent the extremes. One advocates stripping the Web bare of any superfluous objects and making it easy for all to use. The other says the Web should be rich with graphics and that itıs okay for a Web site to challenge individuals to think.

Beautiful Site or Sales?
Usability experts tend to focus primarily on e-commerce and information-oriented sites, which depend on users getting what they want right away so that they will frequently return to the site for more.

Mark Hurst of Creative Good, a Web consulting firm that has helped dozens of clients increase online revenues by tens of millions of dollars, says Web sites can be both artistic and usable. But according to Hurst, if you want to increase online sales, the art should not interfere with usability.

The Banana Republic Web site is a case in point, Hurst says. The fashion site went for an artistic design, but Hurst hosted a demonstration in which several ³mega Web geeks tried, and failed, to figure out how to buy something on the site.

³Do you think Banana Republic would rather have a beautiful site and no sales, or tone it down and get sales? Hurst asked rhetorically. According to Hurst, most companies would rather tone down their sites and make money.

Few Sites Get it Right
Nielsen could only name two sites that he thinks work well, e-commerce site Amazon.com and search engine Google.com. ³The sad thing is thereıs not too many sites that I really like. I am unfortunately very critical, he says.

Nielsen was recently quoted saying that Web sites that donıt follow his rules will fail. While Hurst says he almost always agrees with Nielsenıs tactical Web site usability advice, he charged that there is ³plenty of room for other voices in this debate.

³I donıt think there are etched-in-stone rules, whether they belong to Jakob or myself. It depends on what Web sites want to accomplish, Hurst says.

Steve Krug, author of ³Donıt Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, (and a panelist at Macromedia UCON) admits freely that he has no idea where this is all going. But he does offer lots of sound advice for making Web sites more usable.

On his site, Advanced Common Sense, Krug says the best way to test the usability of a site is to ³ask your next-door neighbor to try using it, while you watch. (You bring the beer).

Or you can read the witty ³advanced common sense advice in his book, and then create your Web site. Youıll probably increase your chance of creating a good user experience, and will ultimately spend less money on beer.

The End

Want to learn more about creating great user experiences? Subscribe to the EDGE and read Coleen Bondy's monthly User Experience article. Bondy talks to the experts and shares their opinions, as well as offers tips and tricks on how to improve and champion the user experience.