Alka Badshah

Having worked with various technologies that are related to the WWW either directly or indirectly, I have experienced the explosive growth of the Internet from character cell to the graphic intensive and multi-media environment it is today. Being involved with designing and testing UI for both Enterprise Applications and the Web has given me an insight into how the Web brings new dimension to UI issues.

Designing for the web is very different from an application design. An application usually has a beginning and an end, that is, the user usually starts out with a goal to accomplish something and the work is done when that goal is achieved. On the other hand, web is an open-ended environment the user may begin with a goal in mind, but quickly wander off to other interesting places. During this surfing, the context becomes important. In essence, developing for the web requires a different approach than developing an enterprise solution or even a productivity tool.

Release Cycle on the Web presents new problems and opportunities for an HCI Professional. Since web does not require extensive media and manufacturing, it can be released quite simply once the infrastructure is in place. This implies a very different test cycle for the HCI professional. It also means that the web sites may be in perpetual beta and ever changing. This can be both good and bad from the users' perspective. Although the site may be improving constantly, to the user it is constantly changing and they have to reorient themselves. It also means that something that is incomplete can be "shipped" and functionality can be improved or added in the next phase that may be a few weeks away.

Web has attracted individuals from various professions. Starting from graphic designers who have been maintaining traditional corporate image on paper, that now have to deal with the same on the web, to hard core programmers who have to deal with the issues of firewall, information collection, and database manipulation. Web is bringing all kinds of professionals to work together in a team, beckoning developers to understand the importance of rich environments and designers to learn about bandwidth and HTML possibilities and handicaps.

A successful site has user in control. Although HTML and HTTP make it very easy to navigate and drill down through the content, the very same aspect makes it very simple for them to lose context. Some of the things that might help this are what I call "navigation maps" that will keep users' context and their knowledge of how much information they have perused. Always informing the user about download time will also make users feel more in control. Again this has been left to the designers of the pages, some of who are good at informing the user, and some just leave it to the fate of the user.

There are a spectrum of uses for the Web. There are companies that want to put full fledged working applications on-line without regard to band-width issues. Given the user's attention span and the bandwidth restrictions, this becomes a challenging issue to tackle for the designer. On the other hand there are companies that look to the Internet as a billboard where they can put pretty pictures. The usefulness of the content and the way it is presented to the user is less of a priority.

HCI community can help the users of the web by making it easier for them to surf the net without losing context and knowing how much ground has been covered. There should be some standardized HCI elements that need to be developed for exclusive use of the web -- these may include navigation maps etc.

My Background

I am familiar with web tools such as FrontPage, Internet Assistant, HTML, Internet Server, Internet Studio and various graphic tools. I have experience in setting up web sites using MS Internet Information Server. Some of these are beta products at Microsoft.