Are Your Feet Wet?

By Seth on October 28 2009

Confession: If you want to see me respond in a dramatic and possibly amusing way, drop a few ice cubes on my kitchen floor and watch my face when I place a sock-covered foot in one of the resulting icy puddles.

Actual Content: What makes my admission of eccentricity useful and what does it have to do with design for the web? I offer it as a reminder of something so easily forgotten in our tech-driven lifestyle. Namely, that we can't touch things online.

We can write about what it feels like to have wet feet. We can build sites with images of shorelines, showers, and other places where one might become a moist pedestrian. But we cannot give the guests who visit our sites the actual sensation of wet feet.

What can we give them? A sense of familiarity.

The next time you stand in your shower, actually pay attention to the things around you.

• Limited options – The water comes in either very hot or very cold. There are no in-between settings. No "mildly Arctic" or "Intermediate Hell" options. Just two inputs that each user can mix as they see fit. Offering the ability to remember preferred settings is nice, too.
• Clear functionality – Showers serve a particular necessary function. You step into a shower to get clean. Not to take phone calls, write letters, or chop broccoli. Adding options to your site may temporarily boost perceived value, but does it really increase the function? More buttons != more useful.
• Familiar Design – The knobs to adjust water flow and temperature are below the shower head. Not at the opposite end of the shower or beside the sink. Changing placement of basic site elements might seem edgy and groundbreaking to you, but will your visitors agree? Novelty is a poor foundation if you hope to inspire daily use.

Does this mean we should abandon all attempts at innovation and seek to replicate the offline world as closely as possible online? Not in the least! But we would do well to remember that most of our visitors come from a place that still uses knobs, dials, and latches that click. If we want to relate to them, we'll need to shut off our giant monitors and get our feet wet.

Just not in my kitchen.

Image:Nicholls