What’s in a title?
For those of you not familiar with logical symbols in programming, the title of this post reads in plain English as “Interactive Does Not Equal Web”.
Say it with me. Interactive. Does. Not. Equal. Web.
Phew. That felt good. Why?
All rectangles are not squares…
In the world of math and logic, we often hear this phrase. “All rectangles are not squares, but all squares are rectangles.” This is logically true because of the definition of the two. A rectangle, as defined by our friends over at wikipedia, is a “quadrilateral with four right angles.” A square (again from Wikipedia) “has four equal sides and four equal angles.”
So, understandably, not all interactive media refers to websites, but websites are technically interactive, right?
Definitions, definitions…
In its most basic version, a completely static website with absolutely no links, buttons, or other interactive elements is technically interactive in its nature. You interacted with it by requesting it from the server, and you still have the option of viewing the site, or leaving it. Add at least one link, and you’ve already increased your interactivity by an order of magnitude, because the page linked there is just as interactive. Once you’ve created a fully developed website, with inter-related pages and a meaningful relationship between them, you have easily created at least a hundred potential points of interaction.
So what’s the point?
So few designers are completely aware of exactly how many points of interaction they are presenting to their users. Eco-content is a great example of a beautiful/useful design that is created using a fundamentally interactive media method (Flash)… but the user is bombarded with a million things they can do. How do they interact with this site? What did the designer expect people to click? Most of this site is not presented in a plain and clear English version, so it’s understandable that as an American user I had a great deal of difficulty interacting with this site. I enjoyed it, I remembered the experience, but I learned nothing. I gained nothing. I got lost multiple times, and I was never sure if clicking on something would move me to a new page or change the visual layout of the page. Being a flash site, using the back button only brought me back to the loading screen. I was baffled and angered, but this was after a few minutes of peaceful music and imagery, so it more or less comes out a wash. Maybe this was their strategy: we don’t know how to make a design that doesn’t infuriate the user, so let’s make up for it with pretty images and sounds.
What can we do?
I hate to be the kind of guy who devoutly professes love of any one platform, but we’re doing an increasing number of WordPress themes these days, so I feel confident giving an example of Usable wordpress designs. The first example here that shows great explanation of my concept is the design “Nameless” which is a perfect example of simplicity.
This design showcases the individual elements that you are most in need of showcasing, and doesn’t dramatize the various other “effects” and “flourishes” of a design. This is a useful method of web design, but the fact of the matter is that all sites don’t need to be by necessity this simplified.
Not that a more complex site cannot be usable. You can see on the site below that there are examples of basic interactive flourishes, such as mouseover effects on the navigation and images that are essentially “no-risk”. In the first example, the flash site with moving buttons, the issue became the fact that the user could easily end up on the wrong page. Here, links are clearly and sufficiently labeled, so there is very little risk of a user becoming lost. The mouseovers actually help the user to determine the clicking boundaries of a link, which is the reason for the hover effect on links. You know that if you click with your mouse in its current position, that’s the link that will direct you.
So what should I walk away with on this topic?
You must realize what your audience can potentially do on your website, for better or worse. Unless your website is supposed to be a video game or an exhibition of the latest web technology, you should make sure that your primary focus is the content. What is your site about? How do you get your users to use it? Once these questions are answered, you can move on to the design, including all flourishes or “bonuses” to your users.
