Idiot-Proofing a Website

Killerhands

United States269 Posts

October 28 2010 14:23 GMT

Anyone have any insight of making a website idiot-proof while at the same time making it look clean and organized? This problem has been giving me trouble for a while now. One more specific instance of this is when I make a tournament on my website. When I start a tournament it is open to all registered users and in order to join the tournament there initially a hyperlinked text below the tournament description that said "Join Tournament". I thought this was kind of hard to find, especially since the default way links were displayed in the style sheet was with no text decoration (not underlined, bolded, or any of that stuff), so I edited the template and made the text into a push button (like the "Post message" button) thinking, well, now that it's a button it should be really obvious to users on where to click to join the tournament. Apparently it wasn't obvious enough as I got a decent amount of complaints about "there is no button" and "I don't see anything other than being able to comment." It was, as you can imagine, quite aggravating.

This problem has kind of brought up the whole issue of how to make a website "idiot-proof." Does anyone have any experience or suggestions on this topic? I would NOT like to go the route of making a big ass image in paint saying "CLICK HERE DUMBASS TO JOIN THE TOURNAMENT!" or anything along the lines of that because I'm trying to make the website appealing to others, not something that looks ran by a 3 year-old.

Kwidowmaker

Canada978 Posts

October 28 2010 14:35 GMT

I saw something about a study being done to figure out how people look at webpages. The human eye focuses on an extremely small field of vision and the eye darts around subconsciously in a seemingly random way.

PS I remember where I saw it, in a documentary about fractals and their practical uses. It's called hidden dimensions and it's in the docs thread in general

meeple

Canada10211 Posts

October 28 2010 14:36 GMT

Eh... just make the website for normal people and ridicule the idiots. You don't want them in your tournaments anyways. No matter what you do, there will always be a certain about of unavoidable confusion. Having things flashing and moving in headings like what TL does for their organized tourneys is a good idea.

tofucake

Hyrule19193 Posts

October 28 2010 15:26 GMT

As a web developer I can tell you this: no matter how awesome your site is, there will always be a bunch of people so incredibly dumb that they don't know how to use a computer, despite using a computer.

spinesheath

Germany8679 Posts

October 28 2010 15:33 GMT

On October 28 2010 23:23 Killerhands wrote:
Anyone have any insight of making a website idiot-proof while at the same time making it look clean and organized?

Are you suggesting that those goals are conflicting in some way? Because they really should not.
Idiot-proof should require you to avoid all unnecessary clutter so people don't get distracted by stuff they don't need. This should pretty much always lead to a clean interface. You can't create a messy interface without stuff to act as the mess.
If everything is organized well, it is easy to find what you are looking for. One step closer to idiot-proof-ness.

Ask yourself:
"what am I looking for if I come to this website" (after being told what the site is for)
"where do I expect to find it" (sidebar to the left?)
"how can this website be described in short for people that randomly come across it" (put that in the top banner or the center of the welcome page?)

aike

United States1629 Posts

October 28 2010 15:42 GMT

Make sure your site looks fine in multiple browsers. Maybe the reason a lot of people complained is because in their browser there was actually no button?

King K. Rool

Canada4408 Posts

October 28 2010 17:16 GMT

There's always idiots who'll complain (anything UI related, not necessarily to web).

Just make sure you have a range of people look at it first, including idiots. Or read up on HCI, though I can't remember anything specific from my class.

Though if it's just about the "Join button", maybe make it bigger, or contrast the color with the background, or put it at the top.

Killerhands

United States269 Posts

October 28 2010 18:11 GMT

@kwidowmaker That's pretty interesting and makes sense. It's kind of hard to someone to focus on a lot things at the same time.

@tofucake Yeah, it's pretty aggravating. I've met plenty of people where I question their ability to know where the start button is.

@spineshealth I'm not saying they're completely independent entities. Hell I can make a website idiot proof by them entering in the URL and having it ask the user a series of questions via alert messages to point them in the correct direction without any sense of them knowing what's going on. They can conflict in a way that you can have a website look very "clean" and still be confused as how to get around because of the page hierarchy. I guess "clean" is a bit too subjective for me to have used it in the sense I did. I agree with you in the respect of if everything is organized well it is easy to find, that's pretty much a no brainer, it's just getting to that point is somewhat difficult, especially when you're website has a lot of information on it.

@aike Yeah, that's a very big problem I'd had to face. It will look fine in Firefox and Chrome, but in IE it looks like a pile of stacked images and broken links. That is the most aggravating thing in the world.

@King K. Rool Yeah, there's usually always someone to complain about something, I'm currently doing a mass survey of the members to see what the general census is and going from there. As far as the "Join Button" is concerned I'm going to try to put it in multiple places. Right now it's directly under the Tournament Information on the tournament page, which I thought would've been completely fine, but apparently not. I'm probably going to put one on the right hand side that has a block of "Tournament Details" (like amount of players, start date, free slots, etc...) and hopefully that will be a bit more obvious to the users going on the page. It's just so hard to cater to everyone's needs and pick out which is best for the community.

Thanks everyone for the replies, I really appreciate it!

unbal3

Korea (South)131 Posts

October 28 2010 18:31 GMT

Here is a simple and elegant answer, if you can pull it off. I hope I'm not jumping on too late...

[image loading]

lol. Link:http://xkcd.com/810/
Follow the link and look at the alt-text (aka mouse-over text) to see how this applies your problem..

well, i guess it doesn't apply to your situation in particular that much, but as for idiot-proofing websites, it's pretty genius.

sorry for off topic

T.O.P.

Hong Kong4685 Posts

October 28 2010 18:58 GMT

#10

It's impossible, there are a certain amount of dumb people in this world. You can tell them that this tournament starts at 23:00 (Local Time). Next thing they'll ask is whether 23:00 is am or pm. I got that question asked once a month.

Killerhands

United States269 Posts

October 28 2010 19:27 GMT

#11

Lol, I love xkcd.

Yeah, It's baffling how dumb people are...

TossFloss

Canada606 Posts

October 28 2010 22:30 GMT

#12

Here's what I notice about your website:

I really don't like the high-contrast glossy black/white headings. My eyes uncontrollably focus on them, diminishing my ability to read the content. Now I really think the headings look 'cool' and I like that style for an iPhone app or a program, but not for this webpage.

The navigation bar (Home, Forum, StarCraft 2, Application, ...) is not easily visible. The average user spends only a few seconds appraising a page. Normally, I wouldn't even have known it was there.

It's hard to determine what your website is about. When someone visits your site for the first time, you've got only a few seconds to "make a sale". I can figure out that you're a clan, but why should I care? What why would I want to join your clan? Do you have a large membership, host weekly tournaments, boast all-star members, etc..? Essentially, your landing page needs to answer the question "Why do I care?" in 10 seconds or less.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/timeframes.html

BottleAbuser

Korea (South)1888 Posts

October 28 2010 23:14 GMT

#13

I love the Google home page. I just love it.

Compare to Yahoo. Naver. (Fuck it, add every single Korean website.)

99.9% of the visits are for searching, so they give you the search interface. The .1% can click on the tiny buttons at the top.

Now, I can't find your page link, so I can't see what it looks like. But can't you have a big image with a graphic and the text "Tournament Name Here!" with big buttons below it (Join Tourney, Tourney Rules, etc)? That would be hard to not figure out in 2 seconds.

Killerhands

United States269 Posts

October 29 2010 16:07 GMT

#14

@BottleAbuser I could have a big ass image on the front page, but the user still have to physically find the button on the tournament page and click "Join tournament" They way the brackets are done, they're done automatically with everyone who signs up for the tournament (user override if you want to have a seeded tournament).

@TossFloss Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure how to make the nav bar "pop" more, but as far as "making a sale" I guess I could find some sort of way to incorporate that kind of stuff on the page. I mean, I already have the banner ad advertising our "eP Monthly"site update which has all the information on upcoming tournaments, site changes, newest members, etc.. but I guess that's not obvious enough to users.

I started making mini banners for the news posts I do. If I post a game night I use the "Game Night" banner. Tournament, I post the tournament one, eP Monthly, etc... you get the idea.

I just don't want to have it turn into a bunch of "pop-out-at-you" images advertising something different because it's hard to make that look good and be able to display all the information you want without some sort of user overload.

Emperor_Earth

United States824 Posts

October 29 2010 17:16 GMT

#15

As an amateur in WebDesign, I can tell you that you should pore over the lessons of 2005-2008, the Flash phase where every webdev decided that splitting the user's attention twenty different ways was a fantastic idea.

If there are twenty people in a room and nineteen of them think that something is hard to find, and the one that disagrees is the one that placed it... the damn thing is probably hard to find.

Wolf

Korea (South)3290 Posts

October 29 2010 17:43 GMT

#16

My sponsor thought it was pretty funny to make an image guide for Open Wolf Cup signups. http://ggsna.com/tournaments/sign-upapply-for-tournament

Emperor_Earth

United States824 Posts

October 29 2010 19:49 GMT

#17

On October 30 2010 02:43 Wolf wrote:
My sponsor thought it was pretty funny to make an image guide for Open Wolf Cup signups. http://ggsna.com/tournaments/sign-upapply-for-tournament

Yeah. No... Do we really have to give our email address all sorts of identifying credentials just to satiate our curiosity?

Killerhands

United States269 Posts

October 30 2010 01:03 GMT

#18

Can you direct link to the image Wolf? I really don't feel like having to sign-up. :-\

Wolf

Korea (South)3290 Posts

October 30 2010 03:07 GMT

#19

On October 30 2010 10:03 Killerhands wrote:
Can you direct link to the image Wolf? I really don't feel like having to sign-up. :-\

http://ggsna.com/images/stories/warn.png

Here you go

Killerhands

United States269 Posts

October 30 2010 04:26 GMT

#20

Haha, nice! Yeah, actually a little while back we were thinking about making a video PSA type thing for the website and how to use it. XD

I'll look into make a "Tournaments/Ladders for Dummies" type image, thanks for the info Wolf!

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