One of the cardinal sins of web designers is developing a web interface that is too artistic or clever to be functional. It’s an easy trap to fall into – we get too obsessed with something new and shiny, and not how usable it is for the end audience.
A prime example of this is the Australasian Writers and Art Directors Association showcase website, which showcaes award winning advertising design for the year in the region. The design uses a navigation system which Vince Flanders defined as “Mystery Meat Navigation” – links with no contextual clues unless you mouse over them. In this case, each entry is represented by a slowly moving dot that expands to show the award winning entry if clicked on.
The site does have a more traditional menu, but this is only rendered if one clicks within the loose central circle, and then still appears as circular text, meaning some link titles are upside down.
Now Vince would tell us that this site falls into a realm of vanity site that is unaccountable for goals, such as a movie site which exists only to promote a film in theaters. But it should be more than that. Shouldn’t a show reel for the best that the advertising community has to offer be easily searchable by anyone with a rudimentary level of web skills? The easier and straightforward the navigation, the easier it is for the head of a company or marketing department to look through the examples and find a company that meets their immediate needs. A clever, unintuitive interface gums up the process of discovery and consequentially makes this site useless in bringing new clientele to the companies involved.
