Part 3: Bandwidth, the User Tour and Flash

Do you think you will ever be out of a job?
In some ways, yes, it would be great if we actually arrived in the world where everything is very easy and natural and human beings never have any difficulty. That's my goal. The question, "Is that going to be achieved in my lifetime?" No. One of the reasons is that we've only scratched the surface when it comes to the Internet. For each thing that we open up, there are new problems with usability - for instance high-end bandwidth a lot of people dream about that. One thing it will eliminate is the problem of the speed of download and that's very good. So in ten years that will put me out of job just on that one thing, but it also opens up a completely new issue in how to do all the media design that's easy to use. People get lost the richer the media form, and that's going to be huge.

Another thing is when the Web is being used for more advanced features and complicated tasks. As we're trying to do more sophisticated things on the Net, the harder the usability and the more it's important to do it just right. Also, the move to a more mobile Net, for example the PC screen, my ideal for the screen I want is the size of the New York Times, and we will have that in ten years. But the screen size in a mobile device needs to be by its design very different. When you have to design a website for a very small screen for a pocket or a purse, you have to be very careful in your design. The user must have the right choices because you have so much of a smaller space to provide them those. So I don't really think I will be out of a job anytime soon.

Can you talk about the User Tour and the differences in European and American views on usability?
Yes, the first thing that is interesting is to say it is really growing overseas and the really successful ventures happened in Europe. I can only speak to those because that is where we have been, and there were a lot of excited people and thrilling interactions in the breaks. People were really motivated about usability issues. It's finally taking off in Europe and in the past when I would go there usually the audience would think, "This is really an American idea" and that would be a drag.

But now there's a lot more interest in Europe and even beyond into non-computer design. For example, interactive television is very big in Britain and mobile Internet is really big in Scandinavia. The PC is much stronger in America. There's also much more attention on the multi-lingual and multi-national websites.

How does that impact on the web design and the English language as the second language?
Well, it's much more difficult to do this and a lot of Europeans are facing this. The Americans are too, but they're just in denial of it, they just keep thinking, "Well, we'll put it out there, it will be ok." And it used to be ok, because it was just the high-end users hitting the Web. But you have to look at Germany and Japan and Asian countries and you have people who don't know English very well and they've got to provide for that. The Europeans are ahead in this arena because they have been forced to get into multi-lingual websites earlier.

Tell us why 99% percent of Flash on a user website constitutes a usability disease?
You've been reading my work! I think because it tends to encourage a focus on the wrong aspect of web design, it encourages the "flashy" design instead of the useful design. But it doesn't have to be that way. You could take animation and make something that focuses on what people need, but it tends to be focused on something people don't need that the company is trying to push at them.

When people go to a website it's because it's something they want to do, that's why they clicked. The way the Web works is that you go there, a website just doesn't happen to you. You choose it. People on the Web are very goal driven. They are only at a website because they chose to go there and there's something they want to achieve. Then this flash comes up "Boom, before you can use this website you have to look at this little movie" and that annoys people and that's why they click on the skip intro button.

I do that all the time, but would a movie site be a good example of a site where a user might expect and want flash?
That's a great example, because you are giving the user what they want at your site. You're giving them information that they came for; they want to know about the movie, they might want to see a trailer for the movie. So multimedia has its role on the Web, it's just that its role is not to block people's movement or get in their way. That's the problem, it's not that it's inherently bad. The problem is that feature usually encourages people to think about the wrong thing, to get in the way of users rather than facilitate the use of what the users want to do.

It's like throwing up another wall in the maze for users to get through.
Exactly and that's just the underlying problem. The way flash is done is that it's a little bit of a complicated additional thing on your website. It's often handed off to, let's say a "flash" expert and that often leads to lack of integration. It leads to not having very valuable content. It's not content driven by the information needs of the users or the products, or the type of thing that the company is really truly about. So it encourages the kind of thinking that they use for television commercials, "Let's just hire someone and they'll make up something funny." Now, that works very well for traditional advertising because it's separated out from the company. You watch the television commercial, not while you're actually at Hertz trying to rent the car.

You don't actually have the Hertz guy jumping over the counter and showcasing the car for you while you're renting?
Right! So therefore the creative fancy movie director for the television commercial is a great way of doing it. But you do not want, let's say you take the rental car as the example, you don't want it just done by random creative people saying, "Oh, I'm doing the sign, and another guy is doing the counter, and another guy will design the uniforms." If you do that on a website it just becomes a complete mess and chaos. Actually renting a car has to be confined to the goal of getting me a key and getting me on the road as soon as possible and maybe getting me a map to my hotel.

And thinking of that as a user experience is a good way to look at a website. When I'm on the website it needs to be an integrated experience that helps me accomplish my goal. It shouldn't get in my way and that's why this notion of "Let's just get some creative person to do this and just smack it on the website," as a non-integrated component doesn't work. And yet, that is what flash encourages because it's a separate medium. It's usually done in the manner of, "I'm going to just write a big check to some creative agency who will make it really flashy." But then it doesn't work with the rest of the website and therefore it doesn't give any benefit to the users.

Continued...