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Issues of convention in web design - when bad design elements become the standard

Author: Dr. Jakob Nielsen (1999)

Abstract: Nielsen discusses the importance of convention in this Alert Box journal article. The article suggests the web quickly creates defacto standards in design, and the penalty for diverging from these standards is a reduction in usability - sometimes substantially.

Nielsen says in this article that web design is easy ­ look at the 20 most visited sites on the net and see how they do it.

If 90% or more of the big sites do things in a single way, then this is the de-facto standard and you have to comply. Only deviate from a design standard if your alternative design has at least 100% higher measured useability.

If 60-90% of the big sites do things in a single way, then this is a strong convention and you should comply unless your alternative design has at least 50% higher measured useability.

If less than 60% of the big sites do things in a single way, then there are no dominant conventions yet and you are free to design in an alternative way. Even so, if there are a few options, each of which are used by at least 20% of big sites, you should limit yourself to choosing one of these reasonably well-known designs unless your alternative design has at least 25% higher measured useability than the best of the choices used by the big sites.

No site works in isolation ­ users come to a site expecting things to work the same way they are used to. This is a consistent theme in Lynch, Norman and Fleming. But if it were so, would not the best web sites have navigation which mirrors the Microsoft Windows interface?

However, design is difficult because the main issues are information architecture and task flow ­ both can vary because they relate to the specific nature of the information and the problem. Users will however, expect to see some standard information in certain areas (contacts in about us is an example).

Blue hypertext reduces legibility, but it has come to mean 'click here'. Sites that change the colour conventions can observe users becoming confused, and navigation delays.

Tabs are being misused ­ they should be used for rapid switching between alternative views of the same information object. But users may lose this understanding if tabs continue to be used for standard navigation.

The 'yellow fever' style (he believes introduced by CNET in 1996) has become a strong convention ­ a coloured stripe down the left side of the page with the main nav links. Not a fan, because it takes up to 20% of pixel width. Navigation is a secondary concern for users who are on the Web for content. This aligns with Fleming, who says navigation should be fluid and simple, and indicates that its function should be functional. Should be on the right, because it allows shorter mouse movements (Fitts Law - http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html). But the penalty of deviating from the standard would be too great.

Breadcrumbs (recursive links) only work for sites with hierarchical information, but do facilitate navigation. Symbols to indicate recursive links should be either : > or /  /