Many graphic design magazines and web sites give awards for outstanding web design. Rarely do these awards take usability into consideration. Graphic Design is very important factor in web design, but there are more considerations to be made when building a web site. What is usability, and how does it factor in measuring a site's success?

Any item that you interact with has an interface that you use, and usability is a measure of how easy it is to use that interface. For example when you get into a new car, how easy is it to figure out how to start it. The same usability principle can be applied to a website: How fast can first time visitors find the information they need?

Of course there is more to it than that, so here are a few ways to rate these award-winning sites beyond their graphic design. First we need a goal to accomplish, like starting a car. Since every site has different goals, you may want to pick you goals depending on what industry the site is from. Regardless of the goals, it’s important to have them before you visit the site. The scoring, methods are based on you having five suitable tasks for a site in that industry. A common goal may be to find a phone number. As you are trying to accomplish these goals rate the site on the following points using a scale between one and ten. The results will be different for everybody, and will only be accurate if you’ve never seen the site before.

Site location - How easy is it to find the site?

Ease of learning - How fast can you learn to use the site sufficiently well to accomplish basic tasks?

Efficiency of use - Once you have learned how to use the site, how fast can you accomplish tasks?

Memorability - The next time you visit the site, do you have to start learning everything over again?

Error frequency and severity - How often do you make a mistake while using the site? How easy is it to recover from these errors?

Subjective satisfaction - How much did you like using the site? Was it informative? Was it fast?

Graphic design - Does the site look professional and appropriate for the industry? Is it visually appealing?

How did the site score out of a 70-point total? I have visited award-winning sites where I couldn’t figure out how to get past the first page. They scored 10 on the graphic design, but zeros everywhere else. If these sites followed basic usability principles when they were built, they would at least score 5 on everything.

When you are proceeding on a site construction project, consider usability first, then design. Graphic design should not be sacrificed, but limited to the realms of what is usable. Every site will have reasons to break usability principles, but weigh those reasons carefully. You might not have an award-winning site, but you’ll have happy users, and that is the true measure of a site’s success.

As a side note, I have found an award for usability from Macromedia. http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/special/designasite/
Macromedia is despaerately trying to fend off all of the bad publicity it's been getting from usability advocates, and in doing so has created some very interesting usability guidelines, similar to if you had just used HTML in the first place.

Joel

OMG, horrible flashbacks and nightmares of the stuffy "former employer" corporate atmosphere where the marketing team dictates what the client wants. It's all coming back to me now, oh no, now celine dion flashbacks of that hurting song. Now look at what you've done Joel. Now I have to go back to therapy.

I think any good designer should be able to balance 'form and function'. :)

No one does it better than the dolphin :)

Totally agree with you Joel. Most of the same principles go for any type of design (especially print). Even business cards have useability and most of the ones I see would fail.

Though I usually get clients that know what they want and what they want looks real bad. I just wish I earned enough that I could just say "no, BAD client". :)



freakyclean

No one does it better than the dolphin

*mails Joel his cheque* :)

freakyclean: I find the 'involved' client can be tough to handle sometimes, but I find it easier nowadays to 'change' their minds. You just have to have them fall completely into your confidence and you do this by suggesting what they like is not going to reach their target effectively, then you incorporate something I like to call 'client buy in' by using one element or suggestion they made during the process. It gives them some feeling of being part of the design and sometimes you can be quite surprised at the quality suggestions they can make.

But its just like anything else, the client comes to you because you are a professional, and in the end hopefully they will defer to your judgement.