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Web Design: Balancing Usability and Innovation
The following article appeared in the TESOL CALL-IS Newsletter, vol 19, No. 1, July 2001, p. 6.
Web design can be like learning a language: you learn a new trick; you begin to use it; you overuse it; and finally, you use it in the right place at the right time. With lots of new plug-ins, languages and tools available to ESL/EFL designers, it's even more important for them to remember their audience and balance usability against fancy design.
Web users are utilitarian (Nielson, 2001). If they can't use what you offer, they leave and don't come back. Their expectations are formed from where they've been. They use their back button frequently and don't like you to take it away. They don't look at moving and flashing things much. And they don't like long loading times that make them remember life outside the web.
Designers have ignored these laws at their peril. Overuse of innovations such as blink and animation is common even when these clearly detract from the quality of serious pages. Java and Javascript have been overused or used poorly; frames got a bad reputation until experience taught designers how to give users the choice of not using them, and how to stop confiscating the user's back button.
Flash is a tempting innovation, but many designers have lost sight of the fact that many users don't have it and won't get it, even though it's free and is a relatively simple plug-in. Macromedia, makers of Flash, claim that over 96% of users worldwide have Flash capability (Macromedia, 2001), but be careful; even they admit that numbers for the newer versions, which you will ultimately want to use, are down in the 50's; worse, their sample of users is so different from ESL/EFL users that you wouldn't want to apply their study to your situation. Many ESL/EFL users are using old or borrowed machines, or machines in a university or language-school lab that are locked up and unable to download any plug-in. Some are unwilling to download anything that requires reading too much; others are unwilling for the more usual reasons, like perception of crowded hard drive, lack of time, or fear of the unknown. Whatever their reasons, you can't argue with them; you can only give them the choice of getting Flash and seeing your pages, or not. If they go directly to your page and see a blank screen, they'll leave forever. In choosing whether or how to use an innovation like Flash, you should consider the people you'll exclude. Decide how you will warn them; what you will provide if they don't have it, how you will give them back their back button, and whether all this is really worth it to you.
The ability to put a movie on a page has proven irresistable to some designers, but without warning, movies have been received like flashing banners and blink, as distracting rather than enriching. For designers, the key is to use it in the right place at the right time. Give users the choice; those who have the time and capability won't mind importing and watching your movie. Video is a very effective language learning tool and will make the web a better place when it's integrated properly. Misused, though, it's just another irritant to many users.
Remember your audience; use the technology that's most effective in reaching them for what you're doing. Put yourself in their shoes, as you would in the classroom. Good design is functional and powerful, not dazzling and fancy; it's inclusive, not exclusive.
Thomas Leverett, 5-17-01
References:
Kelly, C. (2000, Mar.) Guidelines for Designing a Good Web Site for ESL Students.
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kelly-Guidelines.html
Macromedia (2001). White paper.
http://macromedia.com/software/flash/survey/whitepaper/
Neilson (2001). Are users stupid?
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010204.html
More about this topic can be seen at:
http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/ew.html
Picture: Just Passing Through, by Tom Leverett
reproducible by permission
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