"Reaction [beta]"
RHJR on "Instructive Design" 12 Dec 2006
Fellow Vitamin Correspondent Robert Hoekman Jr. shows you how to educate your visitors about the features of contemporary sites and web apps through instructive design.
It's a great read, however it's probably worth pointing out that in our experience instructive design always requires you to strike a delicate balance between learnability and usability. That is, you have to make your designs easy to grasp for new users, without patronising or getting in the way of experienced users.
We're reminded of the time when Windows used to pop-up an annoying speech bubble from its "Start" button saying "Click here to begin" etc. every time you booted up your PC. This, of course, performed brilliantly in user testing as every new user that encountered it knew exactly what they had to do to get going. Having used it more than once however, they quickly began to hate it. By making these bubbles appear time after time, users felt that Microsoft was treating them as though they had the learning capacity of a goldfish. "It's OK, I get it already - 'Start' means start!" they collectively yelled, but the message continued to appear.
Of course, Robert isn't suggesting you patronise or obstruct more experienced users in his article, but it's something to bear in mind nevertheless.
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1 comment so far
Robert Hoekman, Jr. 12 Dec 2006 05:48 PM
Thanks for the plug. :)
I completely agree with you here. From the article: "The goal of instructive design is to teach users about an interaction as effectively and efficiently as possible, without getting in the way of the experienced users who already ‘get it’."
I talked at more length in the book (Designing the Obvious) about how to create instructive elements that adapt to users as they learn, and how to get rid of the "sacrificial lamb" elements once they've done their job of getting users up to speed. I had limited space in this article, so I appreciate your reiteration of that point here.