Maybe i had been greatly influenced by Dr Theng about the emphasis on HCI. Whenever i visit any web page, i can't help but to evaluate its usability. This was exactly what happened when i was browsing through others' Web pages in the Blogger, looking at their design before deciding on my own layout. I've also visited some blog template Web sites, trying to "steal" some good designs from others... The discovery really confirmed what Dr Jakob Nielsen has always said -- we have way too many badly designed Web pages on the Internet!Nielson has been an advocate of simplicity over style in Web site design.
He has come up with some guidelines, which some people adhered to it like a Web site design bible, while some others simply sneered at it. I'm not really his biggest fan but i do agree with his idea of minimalism. Things i really hate about some Web pages are:
- Use of images that are so gigantic in size that it takes forever to load up the page -- it's sad but true that there are still many places not having fast Internet access and to waste the time in waiting for a useless image to load up is really annoying
- The whole page contains mainly (e.g. 80% or even more) of static graphic as a wall paper with just a small box that contains the main contents -- it kinda makes you dizzy if it contains long long text because you can only read a small portion of the content at a time and have to keep scrolling and scrolling
Use of light text against dark background (such as white text against black-colour background) for the main contents -- after a while of reading in such colour combination, your eyes will start to see dots in the air- Change of the mouse pointer to become other strange non-pointing shapes (e.g. a plus sign) -- how can i be sure that i've really pointed at the right targeted link?
- embedded music/song that will play by itself -- unless it is absolutely necessary like maybe a fan site of some singers, what's really the point of having it?
However, the fact is that many people still choose aesthetic effect over practicability. They just want the Web pages to look nice and fancy, even when it's at the expense of usability. Don't believe so? Check out the BlogSkin Web site. The most popular downloaded design templates were mostly those that have one or more of my hated points listed above. I presume people downloaded these designs because they found it to be nice and wanna use it. So imagine how many Web pages we have on the Internet that are actually having these user-unfriendly design.
Of course, i'm not a guru in Web site design like Nielsen, nor do i dare to say my design is excellent and user friendly. At least i do my best to make it simple and easy to read. Well, i know that i did violate some of the design rules as well like not having bigger fonts and using absolute instead of relative font size. I do hope to improve on it as i go along...
