Wisen's notes

# Self-evident websites are designed for non-target audience

It's a common mistake to design websites for the target audience, the domain experts. Domain experts typically would have domain specific languages, which when used would make websites harder to be understood by beginners. Even worse, the domain specific language that you have used for the design might not actually be used by other domain experts.

Usable websites are self-evident, and to achieve this you'll need to design for the beginners instead. The languages used by beginners would make the website be self-evident for both the beginners and the experts.

# References

Krug, Don’t make me think (p. 18).

Your goal should be for each page or screen to be self-evident, so that just by looking at it the average user will know what it is and how to use it.

Krug, Don’t make me think (p. 120).

  • It's usually not a good idea to design site so that only your target audience can use it. Domain knowledge is a tricky thing, and if you design a site for money managers using terminology that you think all money managers will understand, what you'll discover is that a small but not insignificant number of them won't know what you're talking about. And in most cases, you need to be supporting novices as well as experts anyway. [...]
  • We're all beginners under the skin [...]
  • Experts are rarely insulted by something that is clear enough for beginners [...]