SAP DESIGN GUILD

Book Review: Web Bloopers

Book | Author | Review

By Christine Wiegand, SAP AG, Product Design Center – 05/21/2003

This review takes a personal look at Jeff Johnson's new book Web Bloopers.

 

Book

Jeff Johnson Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2003 ISBN: 1558608400 Usability: Web Design

 

Author

Jeff Johnson is a consultant at UI Wizards, Inc., a product usability firm (www.uiwizards.com). He has worked in the field of human-computer interaction since 1978 as a software designer, usability tester, manager, and researcher. Besides the GUI Bloopers and his new Web Bloopers book, Jeff Johnson has written numerous articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in Human-Computer Interaction and the impact of technology on society. (From book cover and GUI Bloopers tutorial, modified)

 

Review

If you surf the Web you will encounter usability mistakes on nearly every Website. There are also a few cases, where a designer has to commit a design mistake in order to avoid a worse one. The rise of the Web has thrust many people into the role of user-interface designers – for better or worse. Therefore, most sites are designed by people who lack training and experience in interaction and information design and usability. Consequently, many sites offer a poor user experience.

Jeff Johnson has become known to a wider audience through his book GUI Bloopers, in which he describes common user interface design sins. His new book Web Bloopers continues on this track and offers a list of 60 common Web design mistakes.

The author not only illustrates the mistakes through examples – thankfully, the SAP Design Guild has not been on his radar screen – but also gives advice on how to avoid them. We must admit that we added a statement to the SAP Design Guild home page telling what this site is about (Web blooper 1: home page crisis) after taking a first look at his book and the corresponding Web Bloopers Checklist.

The book has four main parts:

• Part I, Bloopers in the Content and Functionality of the Website, contains two chapters: Content Bloopers and Task-Support Bloopers.
• Part II, Bloopers in User Interface of the Website, contains three chapters: Navigation Bloopers, Form Bloopers, and Search Bloopers.
• Part III, Bloopers in Presentation of the Website, contains three chapters: Text and Writing Bloopers, Link Appearance Bloopers, and Graphic Design and Layout Bloopers.
• Appendices: Extra information some readers may find useful: Memo to Managers, Website Cited, How This Book Was Usability Tested, and Related Books and Websites.

The overall sequence of parts and chapters starts with deep issues of Website content, operation, and task flow and proceeds to more surface-level presentation issues.

Every blooper is followed by hints on how to avoid it.

The book is supplemented by a Website, web-bloopers.com. Among others, readers will find there a very useful list for checking Websites before publishing them on the Web.

Figure: Jeff Johnson presenting his Web bloopers at the CHI Fringe session (CHI 2003; photos by Gerd Waloszek)

At CHI 2003, Jeff Johnson appeared as the "evil Web designer" in a CHI Fringe session and presented some of the most striking Web bloopers from his book. My colleague Gerd Waloszek took a few photos of this event and asked Jeff to sign his book.

See also GUI Bloopers, by Jeff Johnson and the corresponding review.

 

top