The Usable Web Site: Concise, Scannable, Objective

It's Taken a While, but general principles for Web site construction are emerging through a democratic, consensus building process that determines what works on the WWW and what doesn't.

It Has to Do With Technology, and the restrictions and freedoms that computer hardware and software impose on users.

And It Has to do With People, and how they best respond to, and operate within, available technologies. New ways of communicating and sharing information are most open to democratic consensus building processes when they are formative and generally available, i.e., affordable. During such a time, it is easy for people to share opinions and experiment with the new technology, but because of the confusion caused by the sheer number of opinions, ideas, and attempts to mold and control the technology, it is difficult to determine what does and doesn't work.

What Works Within a new communications technology is always measured by how many people go to it for information. The approaches used by the greatest number of people are then analysed to identify principles that can be used by others to test and develop additional approaches.

Web Site Design, And Web Writing, have so far identified the principles of precision (being concise and economical), scannabiltiy, and objectivity as those best able to marry the charecteristics of Web technology with the ways people go about viewing and manipulating information on computer monitors.

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But the Principles Are Not Equal, because precision and scannability are really means to ends, while objectivity is but one (albiet, important) of any number of possible ends, such as manipulation, economic and political domination, and fraud.

Ultimately, the Utility of the Web will be determined by whether it remains an environment in which the principle of objectivity can be embraced and nourished through the application of other pinciples such as being concise and scannable.