David Harley’s Blog

Web Design Reference

Steve Krug’s trunk test is a metaphor for the problems of website navigation. He is saying that, when we arrive at a website we have essentially been blindfolded, thrown in the boot of a car, and dumped somewhere. Now, we remove the blindfold, and are presented with a web page. How are we going to find our way home, or, more accurately, where do we need to go?

By using this metaphor I’ve considered navigational aspects of the following websites:

here I will focus on:

“Where am I?” is an important part of the trunk test. This involves both the functionality of the navigation and the signifiers that appear on a given web page.

Homepages for festival websites generally include these characteristics

A picture of either people performing, or many people facing one direction which implies a performance. I found this particularly useful in terms of understanding where I am when looking at foreign language websites
Links for ticket purchases, artist lists, individual band websites, merchandise, event info. While these are generally present, the size, colour and location (whether they are across the top, down the side etc) have a major impact on the navigability of the website.
Gimmicks. A gimmick can be a good thing on a website, however, many of them clutter the page, and make navigation confusing.
Navigation – Festival websites generally, don’t let you navigate too far away from the main page. Those that do, can lose the user
Mailing list – BDO, Maya or RSS feed. This keeps people interested in the event, and saves them having to come back to your website in search of the info they need.
Links to social networking/bookmarking sites, such as face-book, delicious, etc. This not only keeps your website in the minds of users, it also has massive FREE promotional capacity.
Something that is regularly lacking is clear direction for public transport, public parking info etc. The event maps are also often gimmicky, and simplified causing some difficulty for punters.

In the design of the festival website, it is important to remember that festivals are social and cultural events. Aspects of the websites that allow the culture of the even to build are absolutely essential. Navigability (user friendliness) helps people maintain interest, and also social networking advances people interest (you don’t get excited about something on your own).