Did you come across such situation? When you enter a meeting room, there are many switch located on the same panel and their appearances are exactly the same. You didn't know which one is to turn on the light, which one control the projector. I guess you would take the "try and error" approach and discover the function of each one. It may only take less than 10 seconds to achieve, but the point is why should I need to stand beside the switch panel, try it like an idiot and suffer the pain given by the bad design. :O

Good design is "Visibility"

Donald A. Norman (the author of "The Design of Everyday things") mentioned that one essential factor of good design is "Visibility". Visibility means you will know how to use or operate a device or tool once you see its appearance. Appearance can give you instructions immediately. For example, when you are in front of the entrance of shopping arcade, if the door doesn't contain handrails, or you see the handrails locate on the other side of the door. You would recognize instantly about how to open it, just push it! This is Visibility, we could use or apply something instantly through just one look.

Visibility reminds users the functions of different items in control panel and also how to execute. From above door example, handrail reveals the method of opening, and no handrail send out a executive message: Push. Good designs consider visibility and they take account of normal human habits. People don't need to learn before using such devices.

What is visibility in web?

Compared to physical things, visibility in web seems more easier to achieve. There are only several actions that we would take when visiting a website, such as click, scroll and type. You can learn these web design principles from any web usability books, for example blue text, convex buttons for clickable, scroll bar for long article and rectangle box with cursor for typing. They become popular and universal. But did you query these principles of web design? To me, "blue text for clickable" is achieved through learnings and mistakes, with no connection with visibility. Color is universal, blue is cool, but also very personal, blue is my wicked boss's favorable color, so I hate blue. It's hard to link up blue and clickable, I guess it just evolve into "clickable color in web" through long time practices and recognitions. Maybe I would said, blue text has developed into system image of web by collective cognition.

Back to the switch panel of meeting room, I guess the easy way to recognize the difference between light and projector button is to separate them into independent panel. Usually, more lighting than projector in meeting room, so if you find the switch panel contains more than one button, it probably will be those controlling the lights. When you see, you get its function and you can execute instantly, that's visibility can do!

What do you think about visibility? How it could be applied appropriately in web design?

By Eddie Wu