It’s amazing how many times we overlook the importance of usability with objects we encounter on a daily basis. Take for instance, coins. This seemingly simple object has basic usability elements which should be considered during the design process:

1. Weight. It makes no sense to carry a coins which are heavy and are burdensome to transport in a pocket.
2. Size. They need to be small enough so that many of them can fit into a pocket, yet large enough to be easily read.
3. Material. Should be durable enough to resist wear and tear, yet not expensive to massively reproduce.
4. Art. A good coin should say something about the country and the culture it comes from.

I’d also argue there is a 5th trait which somehow seems to be lost in a survey of coins. Accessibility.

Let’s look at American coins.

There is zero logic to the corresponding value of the coin and the size. But most importantly it lacks any numeric representation. A foreigner using American coins needs to either recognize the coin or read the English text to interpret it’s value. Compare this with the Euro, which clearly denotes the value of each piece.

From an accessibility standpoint, American coins are unfriendly. They lack the universal visual data to quickly understand the value of each piece. Since we’re undergoing all this “change” lately, why don’t we just take a moment to revamp all our coins as well. Let’s make a Yankee version of the Euro.

In the spirit of my post about the HOME button, I’ve also decided to take on the question of linking visitors from site A –> B. It’s my honest belief that a website shouldn’t trap the user by tossing all external links into a new browser window. To my surprise when I posted this question question to the LinkedIN community an overwhelming number of comments were in favor of popping up new windows for any links which take the user outside of the main site.

I believe I can break web users into two major groups;

Shorties - Those who are savvy and understand how to use shortcuts.

Mousers - Those who rely only on left-mouse clicks and are still learning how to use the right mouse button.

I don’t believe we should cater to the Mousers. There is a browser back button for a reason; to return you to the page you were just on. I’m not buying the bullshit argument that users will click on a link and forget how to get back to your site. I do however think that when you force new windows upon the user you run a greater risk of the user closing your site, in which case they lose the ability to click BACK.

Let’s just agree to keep it consistent and stop the madness of new browser windows UNLESS the user willingly right-clicks or opens them in a new tab…..by choice.

Can you really build a great Web site without having the visitor click their mouse button? I think that depends on the goal of the site. Don’t Click It is virtual catnip for those of us who feel compelled to click their mouse. I spent about 4 minutes on this site and although I mentally prepared myself not to click, I accidentally clicked within the voting area, damn it!

I enjoy a good site which makes me rethink my perception of a great user-interface; however I’m not sure we are ready to give up the mouse button just yet. For me, the experience of using mouseover as an alternative to the mouseclick just isn’t acceptable for a multitude of reasons:

1. Accidental Movements - While reading text I often will move the mouse off the page to avoid the distraction when reading. In a mouseover-only interface, this causes the content I’m reading to change. In addition, when moving across these regions the interface is constantly changing. This type of interactivity feels more like a loss of control rather then user-empowerment.
2. External Sites - Mouseover-only interfaces really eliminate the ability to link to external sites from within the Web content.
3. Direct Linking - This interface type doesn’t give the user the ability to share a link location to a particular page or frame within the site.

For me the overall experience was like cotton candy; nice to try but not something I want everyday.

I’m a firm believer that Twitter has both a follow & tweet threshold which after crossed starts to diminish the effectiveness of the service. I believe it’s impossible for a user to adequately follow 300 plus Twitterers. If follows are posting a minimum of 4 tweets per day, that is over 1200 messages in one 24 hour period, far too many to create social dialog.

I smell fish anytime I see any Twitterer who is following 300+ users. Those individuals are likely “phishing for follows,” essentially following with the hopes to be followed. Arbitrarily, I believe a Twitterer starts to loose their ability to follow a community of users at around 150 follows, and it fully breaks down around 300 follows.

In just an informal survey of those I follow and respect, this number holds true.

@jasonfried - Following 55 / Followers 4643
@kevinrose - Following 122 / Followers 79,693
@randfish - Following 13 / Followers 3,213
@simplebits - Following 234 / Followers 9,781
@bfled - Following 172 / Followers 2,869
@copyblogger - Following 216 / Followers 9,532
@gruber - Following 252 / Followers 17,462
@davetaylor - Following 167 / Followers 3,656

While I’m having a hard time gathering numbers, I believe there is a certain number of Tweets which a follower will tolerate during the day. I’d love to see someone write an app to display the Tweets/Day on any user over a 30 day period. Anyone want to write that?

Speaking from my own personal experience if any of those I follow post more then 25 updates in one day, then I drop them like a bad habit. Not so much because I’m not interested but more to the fact that their constant updates begin to push down and out the others that I am following.

Regardless, I’m loving Twitter!

Today I posted this question to LinkedIN and I was floored by both the speed and the detail of the responses. Informally surveying the responses I’d say most are in favor of the HOME button call out in the main navigation.

Here’s a highlight of some of the responses.

• Sometimes clicking on the logo takes you home and sometimes it does not.
• I click on “home” links quite frequently, especially in bread crumbs.
• I personally don’t even look for a home button, though I do like breadcrumb navigation links.
• I got 4 blank stares from the very educated 30 to 50 year old normal web users in the room. “Clicking a site’s logo takes you to the homepage?” one of them asked me. Which was justification enough for me to keep the nav button.
• Maybe 20% of users are aware of the logo-as-home-link standard.
• On rare occasions I’ll use if it’s there.
• I don’t think everyone is aware that the logo goes to the site home and in any case one of the most frustrating things about many sites is that you have to *think* to navigate.

What to do?
Andy Bosselman said it best “look to the leaders”, so I did. I looked at usability leaders and well-known sites and the results were mixed.

Using It

AdaptivePath

Nielsen Norman Group

37Signals Basecamp

Adobe

There’s No Place for Home

Microsoft

Apple

Amazon

The Verdict
Clearly, there isn’t a standard that is widely accepted on the top-tier sites. In our case, for the last few years we really have restrained from using the HOME button unless the client specifically has requested it. Based on the responses and discussions within the office we’ve arrived at a decision. We’ll include the HOME option in the navigation as long as the navigation isn’t overcrowded. It just appears that the logo-clicking standard has a long way to go before it is widely accepted.