Ever watched a professional billiards player? Every game, every match, every win is an exercise in the basics. No matter how experienced these players get, they still rely on the basics to put together a winning rack.

Web designers need to do the same thing.

A developer recently asked me for advice on a data-grid in a learning management system he’d been working on. Each row in the table featured the name of an eLearning course alongside some other details, and he had struggled with how to enable users to edit a course via the table. The current version required users to double-click the course name to open the Edit screen. The developer suspected that double-click functionality would be a problem, and he wanted to avoid adding an Edit button to each row in the table for fear that it would clutter up the interface.

I explained that double-clicking was indeed non-standard for web apps, and that it’s difficult for users to discover. I explained that even if he added a line of instructive text to point it out, users were unlikely to read it. I said I’d need to see a screenshot of the data-grid to offer a more informed suggestion, but based on what he explained, adding an Edit button was probably the best solution.

Then he sent me a screenshot. And the answer jumped right out.

In the screen, the course names were displayed as plain black text. There was no hint in the interface that the course names could be clicked (or, in this case, double-clicked).

To solve this problem he’d been fretting about for days, he simply needed to use standard HREFs and then restyle the course names to look like links. Get rid of the double-click functionality. Scrap the idea of adding instructive text. Forget about adding an Edit button.

In other words, stop trying to reinvent the wheel and let HTML do what it does best—connect pages, screens, and screen states via the magic of hyperlinks.

When he replied to my suggestion, I could almost see him kicking himself. Like a lightning bolt had just struck him in the head, and he simply couldn’t believe he had missed something so obvious. So … basic.

If you don’t understand and repeatedly apply the basics, there’s a good chance any invention you come up with will miss the mark and fail to support the goals and behaviors of your users. Before you can innovate well, it’s vital to understand why these standards exist in the first place.

Every game, every match, every win is an exercise in the basics. No matter the project, the basics will take you a very long way towards achieving a good design.

Posted by Robert on September 11th, 2008