(photo by dcjohn of flickr)

Jakob Nielson writes about the issues facing designers who want to design Web user interfaces that are easy to use. He promotes user testing and defines 3 levels of a designer-user continuum. The first is where the user is the designer; the second, where the designer understands the product or domain; and the third, where the designer is unfamiliar with the domain. He then gives some examples of projects and problems that could occur.

There is one example that I did not quite understand. He mentions a Web site selling suits and says the designers were too close to the people who make the suits, instead of the people who wear suits. It seems to me, you could probably find a designer who could, at least, pretend he wanted to buy a suit while designing the user interface. Of course, you have to remember to do this.

Luckily, many Web applications refer to domains most people are familiar with and there are techniques that can work overall, such as reducing the number of clicks to accomplish a task, providing useful feedback when something happens, and simplifying wherever possible.

I still refer more often to Don't Make Me Think and Defensive Design for the Web, both of which give down to earth, common sense advice and checklists to help you think like a user instead of a designer. These tools will go very far in improving Web sites. Talking to domain experts can help and watching users are also excellent tools to have in your designer's toolbox.