Tackling Usability Gotchas in Large-scale Site Redesigns

by Jeffrey Zeldman

Usability is like love. You have to care, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to change. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s where growth and forgiveness come in.
The usability problem discussed in this article was one of many we addressed or are in the process of resolving. In the life cycle of most large projects there comes a point where you have to downsize your expectations, prioritizing deliverables in order to launch on time. Think 80/20 rule. Think “dare to do less.” If producing 100% of your desired features will delay your launch by six months, maybe you need to scale back, build what you can, take the site live, and then continue to improve it in the months ahead. That is what we’re doing with ALA.
When ALA 3.0 premiered with issue 160, some readers asked, where was our search engine? The answer is, it’s coming soon. We were unwilling to launch until we had solved the bookmark usability issue discussed in this article. But if implementing Search would delay the launch by months, it made more sense to launch sans Search (and add Search later).
ALA is more user-focused than before, but we still have a ways to go. That is the iterative nature of interactive media, and it also the mystery of life itself.

A great example of this approach is Fotopages which launched version 2 of the site a couple of weeks ago but continues to roll out new features almost weekly as they are finished.