Big, Famous Sites: Which Design Patterns are Good Enough to Borrow?
- New York: Thursday, March 25
- Chicago: Saturday, April 24
- London: Wednesday, May 19
- San Francisco: Monday, June 14
- Toronto: Thursday, August 12
Celeste Buckhalter
Marieke Obdeyn
Kathryn Whitenton
Full-Day Tutorial
Big and famous websites must have done something right, but that doesn’t mean every site should copy their designs. Here’s why:
- You are not Amazon. The companies behind the big sites have characteristics, such as a large inventory or low prices that compensate
for any bad designs the site has. People may be willing to overlook a shortcoming on the website if the company offers something else
very valuable.
- Even famous sites make mistakes. They may do many things right, but what if the feature you copy is one of their design blunders?
- Even rich companies have limited resources and can’t accomplish everything they want to in a design project. The feature you copy may be
one they know they should fix but haven’t gotten around to yet.
- Sites have different contexts. Some features may be great for the big and famous site, but they would work poorly on a smaller or less-famous site.
What You’ll Learn
After this seminar you’ll know when to use design patterns from big and famous websites and which ones to avoid.
“Let’s copy Amazon (or Yahoo! or Facebook).” This suggestion is heard time and time again on Web design projects. That tactic might save you hours of labor, provide a good solution that will work for your customers, and maybe even increase business on your site. But a big site’s feature design might not work for your users and thus cost you business. This seminar will help you avoid choosing poorly designed features from big sites and teach you how to decide when emulating famous sites would be a good thing to do.
We have usability tested many large sites to discover how the main design features work for actual users. This behavioral data will not only help you directly in deciding what to borrow from these sites, but it will also give you the foundation for analyzing other features of successful sites.
Course Outline
We share with you the usability findings — empirical user data — from tests of websites for large, successful companies:
- Amazon
- Apple
- BBC
- Chase
- Cisco
- CNN
- Flickr
- iGoogle
- Johnson & Johnson
- Kayak
- Netflix
- WebMD
- The White House
- YouTube
For these widely known sites, we’ve analyzed how successful users are when they try to use typical features similar to those you might be considering for your own projects. Some of the features we’ll discuss are:
- Shopping and creating wish lists and gift registries
- Profiles and personalization that help customize the user’s experience
- Integrating videos and images with site content
- Navigational elements such as tabs and drop-down menus
- Search bars, filters, and advanced search
- Contact Us, About Us, and other common features
- Content and tone
- Contact, registration, and transaction forms
- Guides and wizards for complex user actions
Format
This full-day tutorial includes lectures, exercises, and video highlights from our usability testing.
Handouts
Copies of the presentation slides
Who Should Attend
This seminar is for anyone working on the design of both public-facing websites and intranets, including those for companies, government agencies, non-profit organizations, healthcare, entertainment, and any other sector. If you’ve ever had your boss say, “Let’s just copy the big boys,” this seminar is for you.
Instructors
Celeste Buckhalter is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group.
Prior to joining NN/g, Buckhalter worked as a Usability Analyst for Delta Air Lines. At Delta, she conducted
user research and usability studies for the kiosk interface redesign and the airline’s website. Buckhalter
previously worked as a music educator within the public schools, where she conducted action research in the
classroom. Buckhalter earned an M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from the Georgia Institute of Technology
and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Marieke Obdeyn is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Before joining NN/g,
Obdeyn was an Information Architect in the Digital Media Group at the National Football League, where she worked
on several large-scale website redesign projects. She has also worked as a psychometrician at Massachusetts General
Hospital. Obdeyn holds an M.A. in Cognitive Science from Johns Hopkins University, where she explored the use of
neuroimaging to study human behavior and cognition, and a B.S. from University College Utrecht, in The Netherlands.
Obdeyn is based in Los Angeles, California.
Presenting in New York, Chicago, London, and San Francisco.
Kathryn Whitenton is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Prior to joining NN/g,
Whitenton worked as a Usability Engineer with the University of Washington Libraries, where she led user research
and usability testing for the Libraries’ website. She also worked as a psychology researcher at the University
of Texas at Austin, where she managed a clinical research study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Whitenton
holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in Psychology
and Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin.
Presenting in New York, Chicago, and Toronto.
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