Interview - Vincent Flanders of Web Pages That Suck

SitePoint: What aspects of usability are most commonly ignored by designers? And, conversely, where have they excelled in adopting usability and accessibility guidelines?

Well, I'm not sure exactly who gets the blame. Is it the client, the project manager, or the designer? It's hard to tell. But the biggest mistake I'm seeing has to do with navigation, and I suspect the designer doesn't have much to do with figuring out the navigation scheme unless it's a one- or two-person shop.

Designers are still making their pages too big, they're using Flash in the wrong places, using splash pages at all... the usual mistakes designers have been making forever.

The biggest mistake is that people design sites without thinking about their audience. Why? They don't have enough information. One of the most fascinating/disturbing facts I discovered writing "Son of Web Pages That Suck" is that people using WebTV -- or whatever it's called -- comprised 2.4% of one site's paying customers. I'm not talking about visitors. I'm talking about paying customers. I saw the log files. This company was getting 150 orders a day from people using WebTV. Their Web designers had to make sure their site was usable by WebTV users or they'd lose $10,000 a day.

I suspect most designers have no idea who comprises their audience and what browser/system they use to visit the site. While the statistics on visitors are important, it's even more important to find out the statistics on paying customers.

I'm not sure designers are at the point where they're "excelling," but at least they're concerned with the issue and that's a good sign. Thank the dot-con fallout; otherwise, I suspect it would be design as usual -- or "unusual."

SitePoint: How would you refute the argument that usability is a philosophy that prioritizes the experience of a minority over that of a majority? What can a designer do to ensure that, while they address the needs of users whose access to Web content is challenged in some way, they don't undermine the user experience for those in the target audience who are not challenged at all?

Actually, that's pretty easy to refute. It's the wrong question. You're confusing usability with accessibility. Usability has nothing to do with inflicting the minority viewpoint. Usability is about meeting the needs of the majority.

SitePoint: OK, then. How would you refute the argument that accessibility is a philosophy that prioritizes the experience of a minority over that of a majority?

I'm not sure I can refute it. My question is, "How much money will you lose if you alienate this group of people?" I was having lunch with Michael Willis, who co-authored the first book with me, and I chided him for not using the ALT= attribute on his home page so it would be more accessible. He said, "Blind people aren't going to come to my site -- I'm a graphic artist and Web designer." Can't argue with logic like that.

One of the comments that got cut from the new book was where I said, "The smart Web design firm will "convince" their client they need to pay for 1) a Flash version of the site 2) a higher-end graphics version of the site 3) a lower-end text/graphics version of the site and 4) an accessible version of the site. Four different Web sites for the price of five. <g>.

It will be interesting to see what the government does. They're the biggest proponents of accessibility. It wouldn't surprise me to see them say, "Anybody who does business with us has to have an accessible version of their site." That'll certainly help the design firms make more money.

SitePoint: How important is color to the user experience? How would you go about developing a color scheme for a site? Does the Web safe palette represent the boundaries of color, or can we now safely move beyond this spectrum given the advent of graphics-enabled computers?

The color scheme is very important, but one of the big problems is the color scheme of a site may well have been decided fifty years ago. IBM is known as "Big Blue" and they have to use "Big Blue" in their color scheme. They aren't going to a orange/brown combination in my lifetime. It's the same for a lot of companies. The color scheme is already determined.

My response to "have we gone beyond 256 colors? would have been "Yes," except someone at a very large firm recently told me, "All our purchasing agents are on crummy computers with cheap graphics cards." Once again, you've got to know your market. Like I say all the time in "Son of", "It depends." Look at your log files. Nobody who uses WebTV visits my site. I don't take them in consideration. Personally, I don't like color limitations and screen limitations.

SitePoint: What kind of role does rich media (and the use of associated technologies like DHTML, CSS, Javascript and Flash) have in shaping the user experience? These technologies were once shunned as usability no-nos. What happened to change that?

I'm not sure I agree they are now usability yes-yes's. Seems like 12-16% of Web users have Javascript turned off; 2-4% aren't using Flash; unless you get involved in some pretty fancy coding, CSS is a wreck because of the non-compliant browser situation -- read: "Netscape 4" with 10-15% market share, and all sorts of hacks are necessary; DuHTML -- as I like to call it -- also has browser compliance problems. Once again, it comes down to your audience. How many people will you alienate and do you care? Yes, these techniques have their place, but I'm speaking as a marketing person who likes shiny things.