I was shown the site by my mother who is one of the interviewees. She was frustrated by not being able to effectively navigate the site or send me a link to the interview (which would have been a good entry point to explore the site further). The site does not seem to remember my language preference. I won’t even go into how users with disabilities would have a very hard time of navigating or reading the site (vision impared, older users, users with mobile devices).

Good usability would in my view encourage exploration. A user is much more likely to explore when the user experience is a positive one. Generally, this would mean a website should be a. easy to learn to navigate for a first time user, b. efficient to navigate, c. memorable in the sense that when user returns he or she easily remembers how to do things on the site, d. designed so that a user won’t make errors and e. provide user satisfaction.

My professional deformation led me to leave the rant here. To be fair I work with website usability and have little or no graphic design skills. You would rightly find many of the websites I am involved with ugly. You could argue convincingly that sites that do not communicate well graphically make for poor and unengaging user experience, too.

To me this again proves that “it takes two to tango” :) Talented graphic designers need to work with information architects and vice versa to create sites that will be engaging for users. Please takes these comments not as criticism but as encouragement to make the work you do on the web spread further.