When it comes to creating a corporate intranet, extranet or public website that’s easy to use, it’s important to consider two usability factors: affordances and a sense of place.
So, what are affordances? Affordances are action possibilities. Users need to be aware of which design elements are interactive and be able to accurately anticipate the interaction.
Think about what happens when you go to open a door in your office. Before trying to push or pull it open, you usually look for visual cues: a doorknob, handle or panel of some sort. And you’d be surprised and frustrated if something that looked like a doorknob didn’t actually open the door. That’s an affordance problem.
In the same way, the interface for a corporate intranet shouldn’t be a puzzle or require additional training. A usable interface needs to be intuitive and unobtrusive. Unfortunately, some design decisions that arguably improve a site’s visual appearance also lose the affordance and hurt usability.
While the trend toward “flat” design is generally a pleasing aesthetic, for example, you need to make sure that these choices don’t eliminate affordances. In older web designs, buttons tended to have depth and provided visual cues for how to interact with them. In flat designs, you use a flat rectangle as a button – this doesn’t provide the same clear sense of functionality. Even subtle effects or textures can guide users in their interactions.
Another affordance problem arises when link text doesn’t follow the design conventions that people expect. In some designs, links don’t have the traditional underline, or the difference in color from the body text is too subtle to stand out to users.
Any time you make people stop and think about how to proceed it creates lag time and the interface becomes more tiring for your users. Doing some quick usability testing is a good way to make sure that people aren’t pausing to think during steps that should be quick. If they’re slowing down to hunt for a link, for example, that suggests an affordance problem.
The second important usability factor is a sense of place. A user needs contextual elements that provide a sense of where they are both within a single page and across multiple pages. For example, if you’re asking a user to go through a series of pages to complete a task, you might want to provide context and meaning by using a progress indicator bar or text like “you’re on page 3 of 4.”
Good page headings are another way of providing a sense of place. In information design terms, a heading has good “information scent” when it describes the content in a meaningful way. The terms used to describe the page, category or section should have descriptive value for the user.
Another related term is “information foraging.” When a user is looking through your intranet or website for a specific piece of content, they need to have a sense of when they’re going in the right (or wrong) direction. For example, you want users to have a sense of place as they move from general to more specific categories in your navigation to prevent them from getting frustrated or having to backtrack. It’s a common mistake to use generic headings like “tools,” “utilities” or “resources.” While these may seem useful, they don’t provide much context for users.
When you’re creating a corporate intranet, extranet or public website, paying attention to affordances and sense of place helps ensure ease of use and, ultimately, the success of your site.
To learn more about create a usable corporate intranet for your organization, contact Portal Solutions.
Contributor: Adam Krueger, Creative Director at Portal Solutions
