Don't Make Me Stink!

On Friday, May 12, I’m attending a web usability workshop being held in Austin. It is being hosted by Steve Krug, author of the book, Don’t Make Me Think. It must have been heavily on my mind, because the anticipation of the workshop caused me to have a dream the other night.

Actually, it was more of a nightmare, and a potentially embarrassing one, at that.

I found myself at my computer, desperately needing to use the restroom. The normal reaction in the real world would be to get up from the computer to find the nearest water closet. In my little dream universe, however, instead of simply excusing myself, it was a well-known fact that all you had to do was click on the little toilet icon that was typically located at the bottom of every web page.

On the site that I was on, however, this icon was missing. On top of that, there was no search feature to be found anywhere on the site.

I opened up my favorites window, but someone nefariously deleted all of my saved Web pages! I was getting antsy as my situation grew direr by the second. Every moment would count. The pressure was building in my bladder as sweat started to form on my upper lip. I knew I was going to go soon; I just didn’t know where.

Thankfully, through a series of clicks and jumps, I finally found the blessed toilet icon and quickly selected it. At that precise moment, I awoke from my slumber and dashed to the restroom in the nick of time.

Here’s my point:

This sort of thing happens in the real world all the time, although the culprit isn’t a hidden toilet icon, but hidden contact instructions, item descriptions, or purchasing information. As Web professionals, we ought not make the sites we build esoteric in an effort to be cute. People come to the site looking for a particular thing, and we should make it easy for them to find it.

This does not mean that we must sacrifice on design or innovation. If an approach or business venture is truly innovative, then users will gladly accept a reasonable learning curve in order to share in the innovative product or service.

My dream as a metaphor works in a different way, as well, because if I can’t easily find what I’m looking for, I will either go somewhere else or… look… in both my dream and in real life, I can only stay in that state for so long, right? Once my goodwill has been exhausted, I will make waste of the site one way or another. And businesses have to do a lot of work to wash a way the smell.

Do you have a usability horror story? Please share it with me. -Cam Beck