By Jennifer Kyrnin

The second day of the conference was as fun, or more, than the first. If you have been reading my updates on the bulletin boards, you know that I went to see two usability sessions and a session about Web navigation.

The first session I went to was put on by Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering of Andover, Mass. They did a study on how people use the Web to find information. What he found was that while cool graphics and layout may win you awards for design, they don't help your readers find the information they are looking for. Thus the title of his first session, "Cool Doesn't Cut It". I also went to a second session by Mr. Spool in the afternoon that expounded upon the results of his study.

This session was somewhat frustrating, as a lot of the things that we "know" about Web Design, Mr. Spool found to be untrue in his study. He was studying information retrieval on Web sites, and found:

• Less white space seemed to imply more knowledge of the subject, and so more trust
• Readers don't find information from search engines on sites
• Graphics in general don't enhance or decrease the likelihood of success when readers are looking for information
• Graphical fonts do, however, increase the likelihood of success

The second session of the day was by Jennifer Flemming, author of a book about Web Navigation. She spoke about how readers navigate across your site. Many times, when you design a site, you are thinking about how you navigate around, and not what your readers are looking for. It is very important that your navigation be planned. The final decisions of how to implement that navigation (frames, tables, buttons, text, etc.) are not nearly as important as determining how your users use that navigation.

All photography on this page courtesy Jennifer Kyrnin, ©1998. Taken with a Sony Digital Mavica camera.

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