Version D

By Jakob Nielsen, May 1995

This design succeeded in making the Sun logo prominent, thus addressing some of the usability problems identified in the tests with the initial "SunWorld" series of designs. Unfortunately, this design looked too much too like a series of boxes without the feeling of being a unified single thing for users to look at. On the contrary, this design overwhelmed the users with buttons, thus violating one of our usability findings: that users did not want to have too many options thrown at them.

The different kinds of information were shown by different graphic conventions, but the use of the same style arrow buttons for all options made the interface look less prioritized and more like a "laundry list interface" in last year's homepage style: in 1994 it was considered good style the more options you could give the users because not that many things were available on the WWW. In 1995, the preferred design style is one that prioritizes the information space and recognizes that the users have severely limited time to spend on any individual site.

Actually, our final design has as many buttons as this one, but they are differentiated and prioritized, meaning that the user's initial impression is that of a much more orderly and less intimidating interface.