Saturday, January 19, 2008

Tutorial Videos - Because Users are Stupid...

... at least that's what most people who design web pages would suggest. In actuality it's your job as a web developer to make a website intuitive and user friendly. If your users don't get how to navigate your site it's not their stupidity - it's yours.



We thought we had done a bang-up job with usability. Man were we stoopud. When we had our first tournament we learned quickly (by having to painstakingly guide each and every person through the processes of the site) that we needed to do something to improve user flow... and fast. It's not an easy issue to tackle. Changing a site to make it more intuitive for users can mean major design overhauls that cost a ton, take a long time and at the end of the day may not solve your problems.

Our issue is two fold: we hate clutter and we have a ton of features. We don't want our site plastered with links and content - we want it clean and sleek. But we also have a lot of features that we want people to utilize. We knew that we could have the best of both worlds - all we needed was a clever solution.

As they often do, the solution came from an odd place. We had introduced a movable bucket in the user profiles of the site that allowed people to control what parts of the profile they saw by clicking boxes. If you de-selected "photo galleries" the photo gallery thumbnails on the profile would disappear. A neat little gadget, but Francisco and I disagreed on its real usefulness. I liked the technology and how it made things more simple, but I thought it was overkill on the profiles.

So there we are... looooking for a way to make site navigation EASIER.... BAM

We got rid of the bucket on the profiles and made it a site-wide tool. We threw some of the most key site links in and even made it context specific - so that if you view another player's profile you get extra options like requesting a friendship, or sending them a message. In this way the user always has the most important links at his/her fingertips when they are NEEDED. Eureka. If we hadn't fought about that damn bucket we'd still in a hell of a mess.

We're still working on perfecting the mix of links and the user reaction, but it has made my life a lot easier already. In order to make life even easier for our clients we're making simple tutorial videos that outline the key features of our system. As we add more complex activities we think these videos will be critical to user adoption - what do you think?

If you're building a site keep these things in mind:

1) You work with your product every day. You have to be able to detach yourself from your product - step outside and take an honest look at it from a new user's perspective.

2) You were there when it was designed, when new features were piled and crammed into it and now you know every nook and cranny it has to offer - your clients stumbled upon it one way or another and have to immediately be compelled to stick around and get involved.

3) The average consumer of your product is not like you. They aren't tech savvy, they don't want to learn or look for hidden gems. They want it simple and to the point.

4) You can ignore this advice and be a snob. Good luck with that.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)