Reading Nielsen's Ch. 4 was extremely relevant and interesting for me. Currently, I am aiding in the relaunch of our website at work, while also making plans for a 2.0 relaunch for next year. The website we're working on will showcase independent musicians and bands and allow them to directly connect with industry pros in the music business that can help them out, including radio PDs and MDs.
Ever since I got to the company, I've been complaining about the usability of the site and the lack of functionality that it offers to users (when the employees complain about their own site...that's a problem!). Though artists loved it, it had some extremely limiting factors, such as the search function, design, and also lack of content necessary to jump into the program. It's safe to say that this period of relaunch has been a bit overwhelming because A) we didn't create and build the original site and B) there is just so much that needs fixing.
Nielsen actually took a bit of the heat off for me. Not everything can be fixed right out of the box, hence our relaunch and then future drafts for a 2.0. Comparing Nielsen's "Scale of Misery" (pg. 129) to his second pie chart ("Why Users Fail", pg. 132), it's easy to see that a few of the major problems users have cause both simple grief and also failure, pointing to the fact that these problems should be addressed sooner rather than later. Search, findability and Content are all high/relatively high on the same of problems users have.
I can gladly report that these are the aspects of our site that we are jumping on first thing.
We are broadening our search criteria, polishing up all our nav bars, changing out design/color schemes, and also freshening up our FAQs and About page to ensure it has the most up to date info possible. Despite general criticisms of some of Nielsen's findings, I found Ch. 4 to be quite helpful in my current situation.
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2 comments:
How do you think producers of these websites can change their websites so their users can be misery free?
I'm not sure...I do think that a site is a work in progress, 24/7. You never stop trying to figure out the grand scheme, and also as technology advances, you can do different things and add more features to your site. Even now, as my company prepares for a relaunch, we've already had quite a few meetings about the NEXT site and the NEXT relaunch. I think all of this is to aim for "misery-free" usability.
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