RE: STC Annual Conference trip reports?

[Janet Valade <janetv -at- systech -dot- com>]

	      > One very interesting point they made was that studies
		> show that, contrary to our visual instincts, it's
		> actually better ergonomically to have clickable TOCs
		> and links on the right side of the page rather than
		> the left for easier mousing.

	<<That *is* interesting. It makes sense, but did they say if they
had done any
> usability testing? I wonder if the left-side index is so ingrained that
> you would
> lose more than you gain by moving it to the right. Did they have any
> examples of
> sites that use it?>>
> 
	Here's what Jacob Nielsen has to say. The following is an excerpt
from his web site. (http://www.useit.com/)

	---------------------
Web design is easy: If you are thinking about how to design a certain page
element, all you have to do is to look at the twenty most-visited sites on
the Internet and see how they do it. 
*	If 90% or more of the big sites do things in a single way, then this
is the de-facto standard and you have to comply. Only deviate from a design
standard if your alternative design has at least 100% higher measured
usability. 
*	If 60-90% of the big sites do things in a single way, then this is a
strong convention and you should comply unless your alternative design has
at least 50% higher measured usability. 
*	If less than 60% of the big sites do things in a single way, then
there are no dominant conventions yet and you are free to design in an
alternative way. Even so, if there are a few options, each of which are used
by at least 20% of big sites, you should limit yourself to choosing one of
these reasonably well-known designs unless your alternative design has at
least 25% higher measured usability than the best of the choices used by the
big sites. 
Admittedly, the percentages in this list are my own best estimates. There is
currently too little research on consistency theory </jakob/constbook.html>
to know exactly how many sites it takes for a certain design element to
reach the level of a convention or a standard. Similarly, we don't know
exactly how much it harms users to deviate from the two levels of
expectations, though it is absolutely certain that it does hurt. 
Therefore, I recommend following the conventions even in those cases where a
different design would be better if seen in isolation. The fact is, no
website is seen in isolation: users come to your site expecting things to
work the same way they are already used to.
-------------
Nielson clearly believes in consistency across web sites.
Janet
Janet Valade
Technical Writer
Systech Corporation, San Diego, CA
mailto:janetv -at- systech -dot- com