Usability Question

[kevin_standlee]

If you are kproche or anyone else who has worked on the 2009 World Fantasy Con web site, you're ineligible for this question because you already know the answer.

If you wanted to find you whether you were a member of the 2009 WFC and you went to the convention's web site, where do you think you would find this information, if anywhere? If you can't figure it out, what would you suggest changing to make it easier to find? Update: To do this in the spirit intended, I ask that you don't look at the comments until after at least trying with or without the hints below. The comments essentially give the game away, and I'm trying to learn something.

Hint 1: I assure you that the membership list is on the web site, and it is linked from one of the pages that is linked to the top level; that is, if you are at the home page, you're only two clicks away from it.

Hint 2: When you click on some of the menu items, a second level of menus will appear below the first level if there is more information available.

The underlying issue is that if you label the section "Membership" then people will ask (and they have) "How do I register to attend?" or "How much does the convention cost after I've bought my membership?" or "Why do I have to buy a membership when I only want to attend?" or something like that. If you label it "Registration" (which is what I did after getting those questions too many times), you get people asking "I can't find anything on your web site about membership." And if you label it "Registration/Membership," you use up too much real estate and probably confuse both groups of people.

Some people solve this by linking everything from the home page, but that turns the home page into a sea of nothing but links, and it causes a lot of people's eyes to glaze over. I prefer a heirarchical style, but it's not good for people who don't see logical relationships between the subject headings and the items under that subject.

My basic problem is that I want to make everyone happy, and I think it's impossible to do that because of the significantly different ways that people look at information.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at other comments yet.

Thank you! That's what I hope people do. In fact, I'm going to go back and edit the message and ask people not to read the comments first.

Okay; I follow the link to the site. After looking over the first page, go to registration from the top menu bar. First screen doesn't look hopeful,...

So I take it the "Membership List" button that appears as the second row of buttons after you select "Registration" isn't visible or you didn't notice it? (I'm not trying to be critical; I just am seeing how people viewed it. You'll notice that other people had difficulty seeing those buttons.)

...scroll down, and there's a heading saying "Are you already registered as a member?" ("as a member" is redundant in that heading.)

Actually, it's not. Remember, the underlying issue is that some people react to the term "membership" and others to "registration," and the two groups don't completely overlap; therefore, the only way I can see to catch the union of the two is to use both terms.

I'd rate this A, myself. I probably overrate people's ability to scroll beyond what instantly appears on their screen, though; maybe it's only a B+.

Thank you! I don't take much credit for the overall site design, which was done by others. But if things get screwed up, it's my fault because I'm the one mucking around with the individual pages.

I would have clicked on a "membership" link first if I'd seen one for this task; I remember consciously thinking "nothing here points directly to what I'm looking for; so, what page points in the right general direction?" and that was of course "registration". A top-level link directly to the list would, I hope, be "members" or "membership list"; but I don't think that's really a top-level item.

Neither do I, but some people apparently do based on feedback here and in e-mail.

In a large group there will always be people for whom a page design doesn't work, you're absolutely right. Doing actual user testing (as this is, at a low level) is a good way to find out how actual people actually interact with the page, considerably better than just a few people's mental models....

I'm glad that, so far, everyone commenting seems to be taking this in the spirit intended, and nobody has risen up and yelled "The entire site is garbage! I could do a better job with my eyes closed!" and so forth.

Thanks for the feedback.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Nope, didn't see the membership list button, or that anything had appeared there. I was looking down in the page body. The heading layout doesn't look like one that changes by page, is part of it. In fact the discussion of "buttons" was bugging me, because I didn't remember there being any buttons on the page. Looking again, I see that all the header nav links are flat buttons; I tend not to call something a button unless it's 3d and maybe even depresses.

I see what you're trying to do working in both "registered" and "member", but that's still an obvious redundancy when put together that way. How about just "Are you already a member?" (remembering that we're on the "registration" page already).

Well, the entire site is certainly not garbage. I didn't look much elsewhere, so perhaps there are steaming piles concealed under some other heading; but really I doubt it. And your question was quite specific. And I know you well enough to guess that you actually wanted the response to the specific question you asked. The site would have to be really outstandingly bad for me to override that and say "never mind what's there now, nuke it from orbit and start over; quickly!"

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you. Again, I can't take credit for the overall design, or even a lot of individual content. I'm just the one doing most of the new content these days, to give the other members of the team more time to work on more pressing matters. I'm not too bad at maintaining existing WordPress sites that don't have a huge amount of structural changes needed.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

How about just "Are you already a member?" (remembering that we're on the "registration" page already).

That makes sense. I'll change it that way. If they make it this far and still haven't figured out that "registration" and "membership" are functionally the same thing, it will be difficult to explain it any further, I guess.