This book is intended for everyone in a Web site business, from graphic designers, interaction designers, and software developers to businesspeople.
Job titles of the book's readers could include Web Designer, Interaction Designer, Customer-Experience Manager, Usability Researcher, Web Programmer, Software Engineer, Web Business Manager.
New To This Edition
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For this new edition, the authors will add new groups and new patterns to existing groups.
Three new pattern groups will be added that reflect the growing sophistication of the web since the first edition was published.
The new groups cover Web Application design,
the Mobile Web, and Online Communities.
These three new groups will contain approximately nineteen new design patterns.
In a survey of
302 prospective buyers of the new edition which authors conducted in December of 2004, over 49% of respondents asked for coverage of Web application design, 41% asked for coverage of Online communities, and 38% asked for coverage of the mobile web.
In addition, eighteen new patterns will be added to the existing groups.
These patterns cover site types such as blog sites, customer support sites, and intranet design.
These new patterns also cover key site elements such as site maps, style sheets, wish lists, customer profiles and more.
Features and Benefits
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This book contains the most comprehensive collection anywhere of web site design patterns.
Includes clear visual organization with color-coded sections for easy reference
Focused on customer needs -- teaches designers to discover these needs, design Web sites for them, and evaluate designs to ensure needs are met
Table of Contents
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ForewordIntroductionPart I: Foundations of Web Site DesignChapter 1: Customer-Centered Web DesignChapter 2: Leveraging Web Design PatternsChapter 3: Principles and Techniques for Knowing Your CustomersChapter 4: Involving Customers with Iterative DesignChapter 5: Processes for Developing Customer-Centered SitesPart II: PatternsPattern Group A: Site GenresPattern Group B: Creating a Navigational FrameworkPattern Group C: Creating a Powerful HomepagePattern Group D: Writing and Managing ContentPattern Group E: Building Trust and CredibilityPattern Group F: Basic e-CommercePattern Group G: Advanced e-CommercePattern Group H: Helping Customers Complete TasksPattern Group I: Designing Effective LayoutsPattern Group J: Making Site Search Fast and RelevantPattern Group K: Making Navigation EasyPattern Group L: Speeding Up Your SitePattern Group M: Mobile WebPart III: AppendicesAppendix A: Running Usability EvaluationsAppendix B: Sample Web Site Evaluation PlanAppendix C: Sample Consent FormAppendix D: Sample Observer FormAppendix E: Online ResearchFurther ReadingGlossaryIndex
Preface
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Four years ago, we began this book with a story of a man who discovers a talking dog. When asked what the dog said, the man replied, 'Who cares? It's a talking dog!' For several years after its inception in the early 1990s, the Web was the talking dog, fascinating in its very existence. Then, businesspeople discovered that they could sell things using the Web, without paying the huge graphic design and production fees that print advertising required. Web sites became commercial ventures almost overnight, and a period of rapid evolution began for this new medium. As the Web evolved, the problems faced by its developers were the same ones faced by any industry as it matures. People started to care more about factors like value, convenience, and ease of use than the novelty of the technology itself. A new term, customer-centered design, was coined in an attempt to deal with this change in priorities.
For Douglas van Duyne, James Landay, and Jason Hong, customer-centered design wasn't always a hot topic for e-business. Eight years ago, when we were just a business guy with a software design background, a Berkeley computer science professor, and a doctoral grad student, we had a vision to provide much needed customer insights to businesses developing for the new medium of the Web. Although the vision eventually resulted in a thriving Web development business and this book, we had many questions to answer along the way. As part of our research into why most Web sites failed to meet customer expectations, we became very interested in how typical design agencies went about their work, and why companies hired outside Web site design firms, instead of creating sites themselves.
To help answer these questions, we sent researchers to interview Web designers and their clients. We learned that companies hired design agencies based on their previous work building recognizable brands. At the time, Web designers distinguished themselves through awards and accolades, not by measured success with real customers. This pattern only began to make sense when we learned that most Web designers got into the business after working in print design, a non-interactive medium. It was also a time when few tools existed to help designers understand the Web customer experience. In fact, when we studied a new client's site, we could see their business was suffering, but now we knew it was because of the original designer's blindness to the distinctions of interaction design, and a tradition that often put form over function.
This became clear in our daily work. We were brought in to assess tough site design problems and fix them. We saw client after client with site designs that were failing, despite appearing to have all the essentials in place. During one such project, when we were testing a client's large scale e-commerce site, we asked typical site visitors to locate a specific product. Our client had designed the site internally and their designers knew how to find everything, so they were confident that customers could also. But to the test subjects, the product descriptions were cryptic, the navigation controls were unclear, and trying to find a single product resulted in pages and pages of choices. When the test was complete, almost all the participants reported success, but in actuality, only a scant few had found the correct product. A site design that was clear to its designers was so confusing to the customers that they did not even know they had failed. As a result of our efforts, the client was able to see that their site had been designed in a vacuum. It was only through iterative design and rigorous testing that were we able to create a site that was as usable as it was attractive.
Well, a funny thing has happened since those early years. Customer-centered design has risen from obscurity to the forefront of Web site development. During that time, we have used the research tools and methodologies we developed to iteratively design sites for some of the best-known and best-managed companies in the world. Each in our own way, we've followed our original vision. Mr. van Duyne, the entrepreneur and software designer is founder of Naviscent, a Web research and design firm. Dr. Landay, the computer science professor is now at the University of Washington and also serves as the Director of Intel Research Seattle, which focuses on the new world of ubiquitous computing. Dr. Hong is a computer science professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. In these roles we have personally met with hundreds of executives to talk about their business models, market strategies, and, of course, Web site development plans. We have found that as Web businesses have matured, organizations have realized the need to focus on improving the customer experience. In fact, we have discovered that the more senior the executive we speak with, the clearer the mandate for a customer-centered design approach becomes.
This focus on customer-centered design is not limited to our experience. Recently, e-business analysts have started evaluating design firms less on their brand design work, concentrating more on the efficacy of their Web customer experience. However, despite the new standards, reviews of top design firms have shown surprising results. While many of the biggest Web agencies promise to include customer testing as part of their site design services, analysis has concluded their designs do not consistently provide a better customer experience. Much progress is still required.
Today, companies seem to have an almost unquenchable thirst for customer-centered design knowledge, expertise, methodologies, and work practices. The purpose of this book is to help satisfy some of that need, drawing on our years of experience at Naviscent, UC Berkeley, the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, and working on Web research and design projects for over three hundred clients. We hope that by keeping the book current with the state of customer-centered Web design as it exists today, we can do our part to ensure that the evolution of the medium continues unabated.
New in the Second Edition
After the publication of the first edition, we met and talked with many readers and instructors about their use of the book. A couple consistent threads of conversation led us to embark on this second edition. One thing people appreciated in the first edition was the breadth of topics in one place. But, it seemed, we managed to miss a couple of important patterns here and there. Readers helped us by suggesting patterns we didn't include in the first edition, like PROGRESS BAR (H13). The other big news since the last edition was the development of two important new Web technologies: AJAX-based interfaces and the Mobile Web. With AJAX, interaction techniques previously available only in desktop applications, such as direct manipulation, could now be used to design enhanced Web sites and applications, broadening designer choices. As mobile phone usage has continued to climb, so has phone browser technology improved. The Mobile Web creates new opportunities for businesses, and new design challenges. Several new patterns cover the Mobile Web space. In addition to these many new patterns, we've updated patterns to reflect these technology changes, as well as provide additional insights we have learned along the way. In fact, one-third of the content, chapters, and patterns in this second edition of the book is either new or updated.
Why Use This Book?
You are probably wondering how this book is any different from the numerous other Web design books out there. This unique book is not about programming or any specific technology. Nor is it a quick fix for all of the problems you and your team will face in developing a Web site. No single book can do that. What this book does offer are principles, processes, and patterns to help you develop successful customer-centered Web sites. With this customer-centered focus, your Web site can be relevant, self-explanatory, and easy to use.
Creating a Web site is easy. Creating a successful Web site that provides a winning experience for your target audience is another story, and that is what this book is about. And when you're finished reading it, it will be a valuable reference tool to keep on your desk. You can turn to it again and again as you design, redesign, and evaluate sites.
Your target customers will differ. Depending on your business, they might be members in a club, students of a university, concerned citizens, or paying shoppers. The goals of each of these audiences will also vary, but the challenge for you is the same: creating an interactive interface that provides tangible value to the people who go to your site.
The patterns in this book provide you and your team with a common language to articulate an infinite variety of Web designs. We developed the language because we saw people solving the same design problems over and over at great time and expense. The patterns examine solutions to these problems. We present the best practices from our consulting experience, our research experience, and our Web development experience--gathered in one place. In The Design of Sites we give you the tools to understand your customers better, help you design sites that your customers will find effective and easy to use, shorten your development schedules, and reduce maintenance costs.
If you do not have 'customers,' think of target audiences. One focus of the book is the design of e-commerce Web sites; however, you can successfully apply the majority of the content to make any Web site better.
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is written for anyone involved in the design and implementation of a Web site. Its focus is tilted more toward Web design professionals, such as interaction designers, usability engineers, information architects, and visual designers. But this book is also written to be a resource for anyone on a Web development team, from business executives to advertising managers to software developers to content editors. The best possible team will understand and buy into the customer-centered design philosophy because every person on the team influences how the Web site is shaped and formed.
Web Design Professionals: Start with Chapters 1 and 2 to understand the motivation for customer-centered design and the patterns approach to Web design. If you already have a strong background in the principles (Chapters 3 and 4) and processes (Chapter 5) of customer-centered design, you can skim these chapters and move quickly to the patterns themselves (Part II of the book). If you have less experience, the three chapters on customer-centered design and development (3 through 5) should prove useful for whatever kind of Web site you're developing.
Business Managers: Read Chapters 1 through 5 to understand the business consequences of ignoring customer-centered design, as well as to learn the principles and processes required to build a customer-centered site. E-commerce sites pose the greatest risk of project failure. These chapters show techniques you can use to reduce this risk, decrease feature creep, and minimize implementation and maintenance costs. Customer-centered design will also help you shorten development schedules and increase overall customer satisfaction--and consequently client satisfaction too.
Business Clients: If you are the client who funds development of a Web site, read the first five chapters. Because you are paying, you will be especially interested in why there is such an urgent need for a strong customer focus, and in what steps design teams can take to ensure that your customers' needs are met. You will see why these steps will actually reduce your costs and give you happier, more loyal customers.
Benefits of Using The Design of Sites
We know that improving your customers' Web experience will take more than reading this book. The principles, processes, and patterns in this book are not a magic solution to your problems. However, by putting them into practice in the design and evaluation of your Web sites, you will improve the overall customer experience. Success requires an extreme focus on customer needs, but one that will pay off in the long run. Your work will result in improved customer satisfaction, a balanced approach to Web design, and incremental improvement of design practices, as described in the sections that follow.
Improved Customer Satisfaction: By focusing on your customers throughout the development process, you will discover their needs, design Web sites for those needs, and evaluate your designs to ensure that those needs are met. You will test your site iteratively with representative customers to make certain that you work out the majority of problems before they cause serious problems and before they become expensive to fix. Customer-centered design concentrates on making sure that you're building the right features on your Web site, and that you're building those features right!
A Balanced Approach to Web Design: Too many books read like ancient scripture, as in, 'Thou shalt do this' and 'Thou shalt not do that.' Such approaches are too dogmatic for Web design, which needs to be flexible and adaptable to a wide range of situations. The Web has led to more customer diversity, as well as a wider range of customer goals and tasks than was commonly seen in the past. We acknowledge, however, that customer needs must also be balanced with your business goals, usability requirements, aesthetics, and technological constraints.
That's why we have aimed for general principles, processes, and patterns that can be applied to many Web site genres. We have integrated the three in one book because each is part of a comprehensive solution: The patterns provide a language for building Web sites; the principles and processes provide instructions for how to use the language.
Incremental Improvement of Design Practices: It is unlikely that anyone has time to read and put into practice an entire book about designing customer-centered Web sites in a short period of time. So we have divided this book into many small, digestible parts. The first five chapters describe the key ideas behind customer-centered design. The rest of the book is devoted to Web design patterns that can be applied to practically any Web site. You can skip around, mix and match, skim, and sample what you need. This is not a book that you must read from cover to cover.
The ideas in this book do not require wholesale adoption. You can take small parts at a time and try them out to see what works for you. In fact, we encourage many small steps instead of a few big leaps because it takes time to become practiced in the many ideas presented here. For example, you could improve your design practices by using the design patterns that make up the bulk of this book. Or you could use just some of the techniques described in the first part of the book, such as observing some representative customers using your site. Though often a humbling process, making such observations will help ground your intuitions of the way your customers think, and in the long run improve the overall design of your site.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Web pages and Web sites that we reference are set in blue text.
Pattern names are identified as follows:
PATTERN NAME (A2)
where the letter in parentheses represents the pattern group and the number is the pattern number. In this case 'A2' means the second pattern in pattern group A. Each use of a pattern in the text is also accompanied by a color-coded, circular icon in the margin. The color indicates the pattern group. These icons are also shown on each page of the respective pattern.
Chapter and pattern group names are also represented in the book by color-coded icons. The first five chapters use square icons with the chapter number inside the square, and the pattern groups use circular icons with the group letter inside the circle. Throughout the book, such icons are shown in the margin of the text wherever a specific chapter or pattern group is mentioned.
HTML tags and code examples are set in constant-width type.
Disclaimer
We use many screen shots of Web sites in this book to illustrate examples of good and not so good design. We offer kudos to the Web teams and companies that made the good designs. However, the examples of not so good design should not be construed as attacks on the Web sites in question or the companies responsible for those sites. Wrestling the technological, economic, and organizational beasts can be quite an endeavor, and change can be slow, even in Internet time. Besides, we are all still learning. We are all in this together.
We Would Like to Hear from You
Please send us your comments, questions, and any errata. Although we cannot update your copy, we will organize your feedback at www.designofsites.com/feedback.
We are especially interested in finding out how well particular patterns worked for you and hearing your suggestions for improving them. We plan to share new patterns that you have discovered with other readers of the book!You can reach us at doug@naviscent.com, landay@cs.washington.edu, and jasonh@cs.cmu.edu.
About the Authors
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Douglas K. van Duyne is founder and principal of Dune Design Group, a strategic digital product design and consulting firm. The firm provides "practical innovation" for web sites and electronic products through customer-centered design and team-driven innovations. In 2004, he sold his company, NetRaker Corporation, a leading provider of customer experience management solutions, to Keynote Systems. He was NetRaker's president, chief executive officer, and cofounder. With 18 years of experience in software design at companies like GO Corporation and KidSoft, he has been an innovator in online shopping, e-commerce, and software and multimedia development. He has also developed web site designs for companies including Intel Corporation, Safeway, healthshop.com, cooking.com, and ejobs.com. He holds a degree in computer science from the University of California, at Berkeley.
James A. Landay is an Associate Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, specializing in human-computer interaction. His current research includes Automated Usability Evaluation, Demonstrational Interfaces, Ubiquitous Computing, User Interface Design Tools, and Web Design. He is also the Laboratory Director of Intel Research Seattle, a university affiliated research lab that is exploring the new usage models, applications, and technology for ubiquitous computing. He was also the chief technology officer and cofounder of NetRaker. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from Berkeley in 1990 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. His Ph.D. dissertation was the first to demonstrate the use of sketching in user interface design tools. In 1997, he joined the faculty in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, leaving as an Associate Professor in 2003. He has published extensively in the area of human-computer interaction. He has also consulted for a number of Silicon Valley companies.
Jason I. Hong is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is researching ubiquitous computing from a systems and a human-computer interaction standpoint, specifically in location-based services, privacy-sensitive ubiquitous computing, end-user programming, prototyping tools, and deployability. Jason received his B.S. in both computer science and discrete mathematics from Georgia Tech, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 2005. Jason has worked at IBM Research, Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Laboratories, and Xerox Research, where he investigated topics such as collaborative Java applications, paper-based user interfaces, and techniques for viewing and navigating Web pages on cell phones. Jason is also a consultant to numerous web businesses.
