Though I learned much at Shakespeare's knee, the two years I worked for the undergraduate literary magazine at the University of Utah were almost as valuable. Every night, I took home fat manila folders full of poetry and fiction that were horribly instructive in their badness. Example: a parody of "Little Women," swapping out the main characters for Smurfs.
Last week, we talked about positive web page role models. However, knowing what NOT to do is just as effective. So this week our different pedagogical model is called "Learn From Web Pages that Suck."
A wise-looking fellow, Vincent Flanders, has kindly furnished the internet community with http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ "Where you learn good Web design by looking at bad Web design." Like Sightings, Flanders offers frequent updates to his site-though his is called "The Daily Sucker," which features live examples of new ways to do bad things. Today's sucker is http://www.bah.com/welcome_pages/0301/index.html What is so offensive about this site? I can tell you what bothers me: frames; cramped-up, busy text sure to induce a seizure; and no clear explanation as to what they actually do. Flanders notes that there's no "home" button on the pages (huge mistake). His overall assessment is that "the above site uses too many frames in a bad way but disguises the fact by its professional look."
Today must be a good day for bad sites, because he has a second sucker up, a government page that is all too elf-explanatory in its suckness: http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/
For a real trial by fire, take Vincent's tour of things that suck. These are sucky pages that Flanders put together himself, which include "pretentious front pages," "too many wrong things," going overboard with special effects, free backgrounds that suck, and bad text: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/begin.htm
He also has a great article on "Mystery Meat Navigation" -that is, links and design that leave a user's brain addled and unable to complete a credit-card transaction. According to Flanders, recent research indicates that ""39 percent of test shoppers failed in their buying attempts because sites were too difficult to navigate." We all know that you don't want that to happen, yes? So at the very least, read this excellent and funny piece on how not to confuse the daylights out of your visitors: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/badnavigation.html
Flanders is also the author of "Web Pages that Suck," which you can probably find at your friendly local independent bookstore. Though it's a good, classic text about how web sites go wrong, you'll want to visit his pages as well, because according to Vincent Flanders (and he's the man) humans with access to computers are discovering new ways 3:01 PM 3/29/01to suck even as we speak-so read up, and don't be one of them!
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