Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (Interactive Technologies) [Paperback]

Jeff Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Interactive Technologies | Publication Date: April 28, 2003

The dot.com crash of 2000 was a wake-up call, and told us that the Web has far to go before achieving the acceptance predicted for it in '95. A large part of what is missing is quality; a primary component of the missing quality is usability. The Web is not nearly as easy to use as it needs to be for the average person to rely on it for everyday information, commerce, and entertainment.

In response to strong feedback from readers of GUI BLOOPERS calling for a book devoted exclusively to Web design bloopers, Jeff Johnson calls attention to the most frequently occurring and annoying design bloopers from real web sites he has worked on or researched. Not just a critique of these bloopers and their sites, this book shows how to correct or avoid the blooper and gives a detailed analysis of each design problem.

Hear Jeff Johnson's interview podcast on software and website usability at the University of Canterbury (25 min.)

* Discusses in detail 60 of the most common and critical web design mistakes, along with the solutions, challenges, and tradeoffs associated with them.

* Covers important subject areas such as: content, task-support, navigation, forms, searches, writing, link appearance, and graphic design and layout.

* Organized and formatted based on the results of its own usability test performed by web designers themselves.

* Features its own web site (www.web-bloopers.com)with new and emerging web design no-no's (because new bloopers are born every day) along with a much requested printable blooper checklist for web designers and developers to use.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jeff Johnson's sharp eye for usability, coupled with plenty of examples and recommendations, can transform even the dullest and most complicated site into a sleek example of Web usability."
--Nina Malakooty on Firstmonday.org

"Engaging, Educational, Enjoyable, Erudite: Excellent!"
--Dr. Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group

"Many of the examples are priceless - just reading them made my blood boil with recognition."
--Howard Tamler, Principal, HT Consulting

"If you are part of a Web team, Web Bloopers is a must-have book. If you know anyone who is developing Web sites, give them this book as a present. It's fun and it's informative...Get and read this book. Give it to your favorite Web developers--and to your least favorite Web developers. You'll all learn from it."
--Ginny Redish in Technical Communication

"Each section puts a name to a common mistake, gives several real-world examples of its occurrence, and then explains what the site's designers should have done instead." - C/C++ Journal

Book Description

Provides web designers with the do's and don'ts of designing web site graphic-user interfaces (GUI)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (April 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558608400
• ISBN-13: 978-1558608405
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 9.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeff Johnson is President and Principal Consultant at UI Wizards, Inc., a product usability consulting firm that offers UI design, usability reviews, usability testing, and training (http://www.uiwizards.com). He has worked in the field of Human-Computer Interaction since 1978. After earning B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities, he worked as a user-interface designer and implementer, engineer manager, usability tester, and researcher at Cromemco, Xerox, US West, Hewlett-Packard Labs, and Sun Microsystems. At Xerox he worked on successors to Xerox's famed Star workstation. At Sun he worked for the "skunkworks" that produced Java. Jeff has taught at Stanford University and Mills College. In 2006, he was an Erskine Teaching Fellow at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch New Zealand. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in Human-Computer Interaction and the impact of technology on society (see http://www.uiwizards.com/portfolio_publications.html). He frequently gives talks and tutorials at conferences and companies on usability and user-interface design. He is the author of GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Dos for Software Developers and Web Designers (2000), Web Bloopers: 60 Common Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (2003), GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos (2007), Designing with the Mind in Mind (2010), and Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design (2011, co-authored with D. Austin Henderson).

He is married to Karen Ande, a documentary photographer who works for relief organizations in Africa that support children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, and who is also the author of a book (see http://FaceToFaceAfrica.com).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent reference and check-list, August 22, 2003

By 

Jessica Sant (NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (Interactive Technologies) (Paperback)

If you get paid to develop a website, you should have this book. As the title says, "Web Bloopers" details 60 of the most common (and annoying) design mistakes committed by web developers and then tells you how to avoid them.

Each blooper is explained in words as well as in pictures (snapshots are taken of various sites around the web), and then the author explains why the blooper is so bad and how to avoid it. As with any design, there are trade offs, sometimes you have to commit one blooper to avoid another, but as long as you realize that's what you're doing, you're gold. This book is very well organized. The title of each blooper is a good summary of the problem. The index in the back helps you to quickly find examples both good and bad (and it also lets you see if you're company has been made an example of). The author even points out some blooper's in his own publisher's website.

If everyone who is responsible for creating websites took the time to read this book, think about the user, how intuitive their site is, and how easy it is to glean information from it, the Internet would be a much nicer and friendlier place. I highly recommend this one.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Other usability books are better, September 16, 2004

By 

M. Chabot (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (Interactive Technologies) (Paperback)

I found this book to be a bit lacking. I have read most of the usability books on the market, and this book did not cover anything new. The author did not go into the science behind the bloopers and does not cite any studies that were conducted. Rather, he uses pictures to back up each blooper. The book is 60-70% pictures. The layout of the book made it hard to read, since the pictures constantly interrupted the text flow.

You can find the list of bloopers on the author's Web site and I do not think this book adds much additional value, since most experienced Web developers have already seen examples of each blooper. You can find better descriptions of usability problems by doing a Web search. This book would be appropriate for a new Web designer/developer, or someone who has not already read much about usability.

In conclusion, most Web developers would be better off with the book Don't Make Me Think, a Jakob Nielsen book, or an Information Architecture book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, well-illustrated resource for web usability., June 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them (Interactive Technologies) (Paperback)

Jeff Johnson has become known to a wider audience through his book GUI Bloopers, in which he describes common user interface design sins. His new book Web Bloopers continues on this track and offers a list of 60 common Web design mistakes.

The author not only illustrates the mistakes through examples but also gives advice on how to avoid them.

The overall sequence of parts and chapters starts with deep issues of Website content, operation, and task flow and proceeds to more surface-level presentation issues.

Every blooper is followed by hints on how to avoid it.

The book is supplemented by a Website, web-bloopers.com. Among others, readers will find there a very useful list for checking Websites before publishing them on the Web.

It is an excellent, well-illustrated resource for anyone whose work touches on web usability issues.