I have been told that AOL can be seen as an experience. Are there other ways of thinking of AOL? Could it be thought of as an island in a sea of html? I’d like to explore its topography.

The welcome screen is seen as the ‘shop window’ of the service. The challenge therefore is how do you let it give you the widest view of our island and what will enable the user to take in the whole view and not just a slice?

Navigating is of course essential. Navigation being one of the great challenges of web design. As Jacob Nielsen points out your navigation interface needs to answer three basic question ‘Where am I? Where have I been? Where can I go?’

As there are conventions on the web for navigation, it makes sense to follow them. Its what the user expects. One of these is, ‘to include your logo on every page. The logo should have a consistent placement (preferably the upper left hand corner if the page is in a language that reads left to right) and should be made into a a hypertext link so that the user can get to your home page from any other page.’ Designing Web Usability p.191

Uncle Jacob devotes pages to this sort of common sense stuff and even if I don’t like his style, its great stuff and I’d never leave home without it.

This is the desert island disk conundrum. What would you want if you are stranded on a desert island? It’s an unfamiliar landscape and appears to go on forever.

Well you need some tools. But not too many. As Donald Norman puts it, ‘The basic idea is simple: Make it possible to have all the material needed for an activity ready at hand, available with little or no mental overhead.’ When he worked at Apple they called this approach ‘Activity Based Computing’ (ABC). Don Norman has moved on a bit, and is now preaching , ‘human centered development’.

This is in response to what he sees as ‘creeping featurism’. This reflects his analysis of the computer industry’s business model.’In the computer industry, the answer is to convince the users that whatever hardware and software they are now happy with is, in actuality unsatisfactory. This is done through the introduction of new features. The strange thing is that this strategy appears to work.’ His example is in 1992 Word had 311 commands by 1997 it had 1,033, has it made the programme easier to use?’

As often happens in a new environment you get lost.In the internet you can Search your way out. Alas on AOL island that just throws you into the sea of html around you. You are no longer in AOL. If you got lost on AOL wouldn’t it be good if you could search just AOL. I would also like to think that an index would be handy. It could be an A-Z listing.

Sometimes its good just to stroll around, taking in the view.

Mihaly Csiksentmihaly describes this as ‘flow’. By which he means, ‘Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. the ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitability from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using all your skills to the utmost.’

Enjoying the view is always a pleasure, and it is possible to aid the users eye.

‘As with all layout, whitespace is not necessarily useless, and it would be a mistake to design overly compact pages. Whitespace can guide the eye and help users understand the grouping of information.’ p.18 Jacob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability

In his book The aesthetics of Computing David Gelernter, discusses at length the shortcomings and success’s of the macintosh operating system. It is an analysis of ‘elegance’ in computing. He concludes, ‘ In the end, the desktop’s inventors were, of course, largely right and the rest of the world largely wrong – until, at long last the thing caught on. The inventors knew they had a beautiful item on their hands, and beauty wins in the end.’

Writing in the Invisible Computer, Donald Norman outlines the Six Disciplines of User Experience. One of which is, ‘Graphical and industrial designers Those who possess the design skills that combine science and a rich body of experience with art and intuition. Here is where “joy” and pleasure” come into the equation.’

It’s important to enjoy yourself.