key texts

This page looks at key writings about site design: what works, the design process, models.

It covers -

• introduction
• guides
• other works
• best (and worst) of the web?

The separate electronic publishing guide explores academic, private and business publishing online.

     introduction

Despite the explosive growth in the number of websites - the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) optimistically suggested in 2000 that most Australian businesses are now "online" - the literature about what works on the web (and why) remains quite thin. Much of it is contentious.

Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (Indianapolis: New Riders 1999) is strongly recommended.

It is based on extensive empirical studies, is well illustrated, and discusses both principles and practice in language that is understandable by webheads and the people who employ them. If you have only got time for one book on web design, this is the one.

Nielsen's online Alertbox newsletter is essential reading.

It is always entertaining and frequently iconoclastic; you may not agree with what he says but Alertbox and other documents on his Useit site will make you think. His November 2000 analysis of Flash (complemented by comments in 2002) for example comments

Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web’s fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site’s core value.

Well put, but they are fighting words if your webhead's infatuated with things that move around the screen.

Nielsen and business partner Donald Norman have written extensively. Works of particular significance are Norman's The Invisible Computer (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) and Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (New York: Basic Books 2004) and Nielsen's Usability Engineering (New York: Academic Press 1993).

Norman co-edited User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (Hillsdale: Erlbaum 1986). Some of his principles are reflected in the entertaining Bad Designs site.

     guides

The second edition of Yale University's masterful Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1999) by Patrick Lynch & Sarah Horton is also recommended.

It complements Nielsen and has a practical approach to contentious issues such as the use of Cascading Style Sheets (an emerging web standard). There is an online version, worth a visit for the illustrations and for the discussion of design practices. The MIT Guide to Teaching Web Site Design by Edward Barrett, Deborah Levinson & Suzana Lisanti (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) is less engaging but of similar value.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (Sebastopol: O'Reilly 1998) by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville is a second choice after Nielsen, for us more perceptive than The Art & Science of Web Design (Indianapolis: QUE 2000) by Jeffrey Veen.

     other works

Other sources worthy of investigation are Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide by J Spool, T DeAngelo & others (New York: Academic Press 1998), the excellent collection of essays in Information Design (Cambridge: MIT Press 1999) edited by Robert Jacobson and David Shenk's The End of Patience: More Notes of Caution on the Information Revolution (Indianapolis: Indiana Uni Press 1999). The latter is more significant than his overrated Data Smog (New York: Harper 1997).

It might be supplemented with the broader How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) edited by Nelly Oudshoorn & Trevor Pinch - "how users consume, modify, domesticate, reconfigure, and resist technologies" - and Pleasure with Products: Beyond Usability (London: Taylor & Francis 2002) edited by Green & Jordan or Designing Interactions (Cambridge: MIT Press 2007) by Bill Moggridge. The latter has a companion site.

Ben Schneiderman's Designing The User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (Reading: Addison-Wesley 1998) is excellent. There is a companion site.

Schneiderman collaborated with Albert Badre on Directions in Human/Computer Interaction. The latter's Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context (Reading: Addison-Wesley 2002) is of particular importance.

Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (Reading: Addison-Wesley 2000) offers insights from one of the fathers of Apple's 'people-centred' computing.

Do not be deterred by the title - or cover - of Dust or Magic: Secrets of Successful Multimedia Design (Reading: Addison-Wesley 2000) by Bob Hughes. It is a readable and intelligent discussion of the design process and some the lessons from particular projects.

For a quick, plain-english introduction to usability we recommend Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Indianapolis: New Riders 2000). He has illustrated the tension between designer expectations and user behaviour here.

Jim McCarthy's Dynamics of Software Development (Redmond: Microsoft Press 1995) and Managing The Design Factory: A Product Developer's Toolkit (New York: Free Press 1997) by Donald Reinertsen offer other perspectives.

Fred Moody's provided two accounts of why digital projects go wrong. His I Sing The Body Electronic (New York: Viking 1995) is an entertaining and, alas, apparently accurate picture of the Encarta project and life as a Microsoft net-slave. The Visionary Position: Mapping The Virtual World (London: Allen Lane 1999) looks at VR design.

The Usable Web site provides more links to web usability resources than most people will use, although the site's structure encourages browsing and the 'aha!' that signals you have found a silver bullet. The Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) has an excellent range of resources about 'usability' in general, including exhaustive online bibliographies.

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore The Sanity (Indianapolis: SAMS 1999) by design guru Alan Cooper is exciting and insightful. Don't be put off by the glitzy title - it is all uphill after page one.

Cooper's very detailed About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design (Foster City: IDG 1995) is a classic.

Jeffrey Zeldman has one of the more entertaining and thoughtful sites promoting the work of design companies or design philosophies. Bruce Tognazzini's online AskTog column is more brash than Nielsen but good value. 

As points of entry into content analysis challenges see Sally McMillan's 2000 paper The microscope and the moving target: the challenge of applying content analysis to the World Wide Web and Salome Schmid-Isler's 2000 The language of digital genres: A semiotic investigation of style & iconology on the World Wide Web (PDF).

Collections of academic studies on design and accessibility issues include Advances in Universal Web Design & Evaluation: Research, Trends & Opportunities (Hershey: IDEA Group 2007) edited by Sri Kurniawan & Panayiotis Zaphiris, with papers by Zaphiris & Nada Savitch on 'Web Site Design for People with Dementia' and by Noemi Sadowska on 'Interpreting the Female User: How Web Designers Conceptualise Development of Commercial WWW Sites to Satisfy Specific Market Niches'.

     best (and worst) of the web?

Among the 'best of'/'worst of' guides (and 'killer' and 'turkey' awards in print and online) two books stand out. Flanders & Willis' Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design By Looking At Bad Design (San Francisco: Sybex 1998) is available online and in old fashioned multicoloured cellulose.

The controversial Creating Killer Web Sites: The Art of Third-Generation Site Design (Indianapolis: Hayden 1997) by David Siegel has a companion site. A visit to the Bad Designs site may be more useful.

Rightly criticised by Nielsen, San Francisco digital kool kat Siegel is primarily of interest for 'high end' sites, ie ones where you have a million $ for starters or a legion of turtlenecks and a passion for cutting edge design. His sites may not 'work' for your market, but they are worth exploring as an example of what can be done.

Siegel's Futurize Your Enterprise (New York: Wiley 1999) supplies Mr Cool's vision of the digital future (you can have an RFID implanted in your scalp as a remote control for your garage door), along with more useful case studies.

There is more practical guidance in the Legal Information Standards Council's Best Practice Guidelines for Australian Legal Websites (BPALW).

The large-scale Stanford University Persuasive Technology Laboratory report (PDF) on factors that affect online credibility - notably "real-world feel," "ease of use," "expertise" and "trustworthiness" - highlights why good design matters.




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