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DESIGNING WEB USABILITY: THE PRACTICE OF SIMPLICITY
by Jakob Nielsen (New Riders, 2000 ISBN 1562 058 10X £34.99 [£40.66 inc p&p*])

HOMEPAGE USABILITY: 50 WEBSITES DECONSTRUCTED
by Jakob Nielsen & Marie Tahir (New Riders, 2002 ISBN 0735 711 02X £30.99 [£37.55 inc p&p*])

DON?T MAKE ME THINK: A COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO WEB USABILITY
by Steve Krug (New Riders, 2000 ISBN 078 9723 107 £25.50 [£29.24 inc p&p*])

BOO HOO: $135 MILLION, 18 MONTHS? A DOT.COM STORY FROM CONCEPT TO CATASTROPHE
by Ernst Malmsten (Arrow, 2002 ISBN 0099418371 £7.99 [£11.14 inc p&p*])

The ?dot.com? years have rightly been called the ?dot.con?. Despite being behind us now, the economies of the world have yet to fully recover from the period when capitalists, developers and web designers lost their heads. And not all the lessons have yet been learned. Jack Schofield, The Guardian?s On-Line Editor, is exceptionally hard on web designers for the failure of many websites to function satisfactorily and meet users needs: ?Unfortunately we have hired a generation of web designers who don?t know anything about computing, or the principles on which the web is based, or the reasons for its success.? How and why did they ever they think they were going to get away with it?

Jakob Nielsen is undoubtedly the guru of web usability and he argues simply that the web is not a graphic design medium but needs engineering: ?I believe that the main goal of most web projects should be to make it easy for customers to perform useful tasks?. His books ?Designing web usability: The practice of simplicity? and ?HomePage usability? (with Marie Tahir) are entirely practical and should be on the desk of anyone working with web designers and developers. Packed with detailed commentary, examples and explanations, Jakob Nielsen essentially sets out the philosophy that will achieve effective websites and provides intensely useful help.

Steve Krug takes a similar practical perspective and his ?Don?t make me think? is firmly based on the fact that ?People won?t use your website if they can?t find their way around it.? His focus is on navigation and usability, setting out to help you ask the ?experts? the right questions so as to achieve a design that works aesthetically and practically. He?s humorous and straightforward: probably the book every arts marketer should get his or her boss to read, though the US style may grate.

You won?t want to skip a page of ?Boo hoo?, Ernst Malmsten?s paperback about the rise and fall of fashion site BOO.com. Despite the fact that we know the ending, it reads like a thriller in which we follow every twist and turn and Vodka Martini. There is an extra twist: Ernst Malmsten was a humble arts marketer in Sweden and, with childhood friend/lover Kajsa Leander, went from promoting and publishing poetry and organising arts festivals to blowing $135m of other people?s money. This cleverly tells the human story behind the madness.

Reviews by Roger Tomlinson of ACT Consultant Services.

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