As a part-time graphic designer I can appreciate a well designed website. I’ve even done some reading on user experience (UX) which is an underrated but extremely important aspect of design. And I’m not just referring to functionality, I’m also talking about little things, like content placement, website navigation, etc.
But you might be wondering why am I talking about this?
Well I visited Andy Maloney’s notebook and noticed that he had a new layout. That link there takes you to his home page, which is basically an About Me page and an introduction to his notebook. While that’s all good and nice, that pretty much breaks web design UX rule number 1: Your content must be front and center.
The reasoning is that visitors will just navigate away from your site if what they’re looking for isn’t directly accessible on first glance.
How many times do you look beyond the first page of results from a Google Search? Personally speaking, I almost never do. How many times do you scroll down a page looking for an answer that isn’t immediately viewed upon first click? I mostly never do that either. I would rather go back and click the next result hoping that gives me the answer than to wade through text to find the answer.
The point is, when designing a website you are supposed to bring your main content front and center so visitors stay and absorb your content and you make money. This is why posts are near the top of the page instead of at the bottom after tons of ads and images.
But does this apply to open notebooks? Obviously notebooks aren’t money driven (yet), so there is no worry about hits, clicks, etc. But notebook providers do still want reads. I mean if we’re going to prove that open notebook science is a worthy adversary to peer reviewed journals then there has to be something to show for it. Right?
Most hits on this notebook come from searches and social media referrals. So the links that those outlets provide take a visitor right to the content they want right away.
But will open notebooks need to be built around the casual visitor, someone who just so happens to come across research.iheartanthony.com? What about followers that don’t use social media or rss feeds? (Do those even exist?) Could we potentially be hindering our reach by having poor user experience?
Going back to my friend Andy, I think he is ok for now. The chance that someone is doing a google search for something that brings him to the homepage is very small and will not have to worry about finding the solution they were looking for on that page. The fact that he has a very well organized notebook will aid site navigation and keep web traffic flowing.
But as open notebook science grows, the scientific community will have to do some research into user experience. The audience of an open notebook is very different from a general web audience, and I’m sure at some point there is going to be a need to enhance usability.
Maybe we can learn a thing or two from the evil peer review journals that we despise so much…