Notes from 47th International STC Conference
Orlando, Florida, May 21-24, 2000

Heuristics for Communication Effectiveness in Web Design

Judith A. Ramey
University of Washington

Dr. Ramey is professor and chair of technical communication at the University of Washington. She is a Fellow of STC. With Ginny Redish, she conducted a research study on the value added by technical communicators to a product or process, the results of which were published in a special section of "Technical Communication" in 1995.

Session Description: This workshop presents five heuristics (guidelines) for designing or evaluating the communication dimensions of Web sites. The heuristics cover design of textual elements, visual elements, navigation, interactivity, and the designer/user relationship.

Handout: "Overview and Exercise: Guidelines for Web Communication," co-published by the University of Twente, The Netherlands, and the University of Washington, USA. Presents guidelines for authoring comprehensible Web pages and evaluating their success. Downloadable from the archives of the Technical Communication Department at the University of Washington.

• Guidelines were developed by a joint team from the University of Washington and the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.
• Heuristics = the study or practice of problem-solving by exploratory procedures that use self-educational techniques to improve performance. --Webster's 9th Collegiate Dictionary.
• An STC grant helped fund the project.
• The project drew initially upon existing research, but the researchers soon found a need to break new ground. They developed 5 sets of guidelines for designing effective Web sites:
   
• Text comprehension
• Visual display of information
• Navigation
• Interactivity: role-playing on the Web
• Designer/user relationship
• Results will be published in Technical Communication in August 2000.
• Developing effective and practical guidelines is a lot harder than meets the eye.
• Small groups applied the heuristics to a number of Web sites. The first site examined (for text) was the IRS Web site (your "new, kinder, gentler IRS"!). See http://www.irs.gov/.
• Criticism (focused on text) included:
   
• What a waste of tax dollars!
• Newspaper metaphor tends to backfire, because it obscures the links to the real data (second page); in fact, some people might not even realize they were on the IRS site.
• The Willie character is rooted in the 1950s; it would be hard for anyone under 40 to relate to this character, who was a dead ringer for Ward Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver fame!
• Site almost looks fake--people might not want to send their taxes here!
• Next site evaluated (for visual elements) was the Beyond site at http://www.beyond.com.
   
• Clear contrast, legible
• Too cluttered...designer got "greedy," tried to pack in too much. Less is more.
• Confusion with yellow...too many different things are yellow.
• Tabs are good, but triple tabs are overkill.
• Excessive duplication in linking.
• Welcome to site gets lost (minuscule type size).
• "What's Hot" is buried at the bottom of the page.
• Too many links...almost every word of text is blue...intimidating...too much.
• Grouping like data and organizing hierarchically would improve the site's usefulness.
• Next site evaluated (for navigation) was IBM's home page, NetVista All-in One. See http://www.ibm.com/.
   
• Site should have a downloadable, printable version that doesn't drop anything out and is multiplatform-compatible...PDFs are a good solution.
• Massive graphic button (photo of laptop) consumes an inordinate amount of space.
• It's best to use a simple tree structure with dropdowns and rollovers for sub-menus, rather than a highly complex, imposing-looking tree with thousands of branches.
• Final site evaluated (for role-playing) was the Edmark site. See http://www.dearparents.com/.
   
• If the logo is not a button to the home page, then Edmark does not provide adequate credentials to justify its role as advisor for teaching the users' children. Even if it is, a short credentials summary (beyond "we've been doing this for 27 years") would be appropriate for this page. They say "you" and "they," but they never say who "they" are.
• Tone is patronizing.