CIO sat down for a discussion on website design with Jakob Nielsen, cofounder of the Fremont, Calif.-based consultancy Nielsen Norman Group, and Vincent Flanders, creator of WebPagesThatSuck.com. Nielsen, a respected usability expert, and Flanders, known for his sharp commentaries, agree that there are a lot of poorly designed sites on the Web. But the two experts don?t always see eye to eye when it comes to theories of how websites should look and feel and how they can stand out.


CIO: You have both said that websites should meet certain design criteria. Should they all look and feel the same?
NIELSEN: There is a difference between the look and feel of a website. Feel is what happens while you?re using a site, and it is important to adapt the site?s task flow [organizational structure] to the individual user?s problems.

At the same time there are a lot of conventions for screen design, and I would say?just follow them. For example, users know that blue underlined things are hypertext links. With conventions, site visitors can use their brainpower to think about their problem and how to solve it, rather than how to use the website.

FLANDERS: People expect certain things from certain sites. They expect to see a logo in the top left corner of the page, and they expect links to do certain things. Overall, users expect navigation to be in a certain place, and their expectations should be met.


CIO: So website design should always be the same?
NIELSEN: Yes, the design elements should be the same, but the way they are composed should differ because the sites are doing different things. If you think about cars, all cars have the accelerator to the right of the break pedal. This doesn?t mean that all cars are identical, but the basic elements you need to operate the device follow some conventions.


CIO: Then should a movie site have the same design in terms of layout as a search engine?
NIELSEN: The elements would work in the same way. For example, the search box would operate in a similar manner. But the movie site would be almost guaranteed to have some photos from the film, which you would not have on the search engine. So some of the details would be different.

FLANDERS: No, this is a major area where I disagree. There are certain sites, such as movie, band and Web design company sites, that have the right to be inherently stupid. It?s by their very nature.