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By Jakob Nielsen, May 1995

This was our first attempt at a magazine-style home page. Unfortunately, users did not understand that the page represented Sun's corporate home page. Instead, they wondered whether it was Adobe's page, whether it was associated with an independent magazine, or whether it was associated with the SunWorld tradeshow. Most users said that their initial impression of the page was that it was "very busy," "complicated," and that it was hard to know where to look first.

Even though the month name was beautifully designed, the users did not notice it, thus depriving us of one of the most powerful benefits of the magazine design: the notion of time-dependent information that will be different next month. When the month was pointed out to users, they liked it but worried how they would be able to access the cover story next month. As a result, we added a "back issues" feature in subsequent designs. After all, it is one of the benefits of online publishing that one can easily "ship" all older issues together with the current one (just try that in paper publishing!).

The users liked the "Entertainment for Propellerheads" motto, but we decided to remove it in order to enhance the credibility of the information. Humor is appreciated in webdesign, but maybe not in that prominent a position. The users did not like too many frivolous design elements, though. All users were very adamant in preferring technical specifications and detailed information over slogans and what was derisively referred to as "marketing fluff." Instead of saying "this is the fastest in the industry," say how fast it is.

Users did not understand that they could click on the lead paragraph to get more information about the Adobe story. The design had no affordance for clickability. The same was true for the Weekly Update bar and the three bullet items. Many users did not understand that they were clickable.

The users liked the use of graduated colors in the headers and the consistent color scheme for most of the home page. Some users commented that the very colorful and striking Adobe photo was too harsh in comparison and that it seemed to clash with the color scheme used in the rest of the page "it is like having two different designs on the same screen" as one user put it.