It’s also British slang for annoying.

I just looked up something in the online documentation for PHP. Pages are generally clean and usable as they appear in the browser, although there are a few poor practices if you look at the underlying HTML.

However. Take a look at a typical page. Below each formal section are (often useful) comments. Try moving the focus down the page different ways—scrolling, moving the mouse, page down. One comment at a time appears in dark colors. The other comments are pale and washed out until you move the focus to them. Then, over 0.4 seconds, they become opaque and readable.

And most of the goodwill from how well thought-out the rest is is squandered.

There is no reason to make text unreadable. And less still to waste the user’s time as they’re made readable.

Since transitions are new to CSS3, my guess is that programmers were playing. As they had in 1994 with <blink>.

Playing is fine.

Then someone in the room has to say it’s great to know we can do this if we ever need it. But we don’t now. So take it out.

Signs should use words. Then color as a redundant cue. (Some people are color-blind.) Then icons. (Most icons aren’t as recognizable as .)

Use walls, end-caps, shelves, and the floor. While it doesn’t help the color-blind, I love the cue of colored tape on the ground I can follow from here to my destination. Well-designed maps, with You Are Here marked, a legend, and an index. A floor directory at each entrance, and in every elevator. Single-floor directories at the top and bottom of every escalator. A grid system.

If possible, when an item could logically be located in more than one place, put copies in both. If you can’t, put a sign in one place that directs customers to the other. This is especially useful when you have to follow a system that may not make sense to them.

For instance, since most computer books are shelved under the Dewey Decimal System near 005, have a sign that alerts patrons to the fact that some are also at 620.

There’s an exasperating fad in retail of regularly reorganizing what’s where in the store. Apparently timed to be maximally frustrating for customers who’ve just learned where everything is. Sometimes there’ll be maps of what’s where now. I have never seen signs where something was, telling me where it is now.

I understand the logic of making customers wander, in expectation that they’ll find more things to buy along the way to what they came for. That’s why perishables are at opposite ends of a supermarket—so every customer has to walk the length of the store every time.

But it also ticks people off. Who may just leave without buying anything, and go to a store that’s been designed to be helpful.

All of this applies to web sites. Do old internal links still work? Do stale links on the site redirect (HTTP status 301) to their new location? Is the 404 page helpful? Is there a sitemap? Are there both simple and power searches? Categories and tags? Bread crumbs? Are your buttons strictly icons? Or are they all accompanied by text, either always visible or as tooltip? Is color a redundant cue?

My opening was in graduate school. The only class offered was in the Department of Agricultural Engineering. One assignment: Here’s a hall of farming machinery. Analyze the ergonomics of each vehicle’s controls and displays.

But it was Don Norman‘s The Design of Everyday Things that fanned my interest into a lifetime zeal for usability. He “places before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.” (1776, book by Peter Stone.)

Thence I rage at shoddy design. Especially when those subjected to it blame themselves. Oh, I’m such a klutz. I’m not that good with technology…. No, you’re not that good with poorly designed tech.

Norman is always worth reading. But for me, that first retains the glow of first love.