blog.philcrissman.com

“The discovery of common abstractions and mechanisms greatly facilitates our understanding of complex systems. For example, with just a few minutes of orientation, an experienced pilot can step into a multiengine jet aircraft he or she has never flown before and safely fly the vehicle. Having recognized the properties common to all such aircraft, such as the functioning of the rudder, ailerons, and throttle, the pilot primarily needs to learn what properties are unique to that particular aircraft. If the pilot already knows how to fly a given aircraft, it is far easier to learn how to fly a similar one.”

Booch, Grady, 2007. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design With Applications. Third Edition. Addison-Wesley.

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked…. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”

Gall, J. 1986. Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail. Second Edition. Ann Arbor, MI: The General Systemantics Press, p. 65.

So, thinking about usability.

There’s no particular intuitive reason why a logo in the header should be a link to the site’s home page. Or on a blog, why the header graphic, which more or less serves as a logo or brand identity for the blog, should be a link to the home page.

Then why do I get frustrated whenever I get to a site where the main header graphic (logo, site name, icon) is not a link back to the main page? (Chris Brogan, this means you, too!)

It doesn’t really matter that there is also a main navigation button saying “Home” right on it. I “intuitively” expect the main graphic or logo in the header to be a link back to the main page.

Note — I said “intuitive”, but it really isn’t. Like I said when I began, there’s no real world analogy which would cause us to think that this would be so. There’s no human DNA or instinct, or even cultural norm (that I can think of), which would cause us to think in terms of what should be hyper-linked and where it should point.

Rather, it’s become convention. A convention so ubiquitous that I think it could be argued that it has become intuitive to believe that the main logo or graphic in a header is also a link to the main page.

I always click on the header graphic or logo, without thinking about it, if I intend to return to the main page. I only look for a “Home” button if this doesn’t work. I admit; it’s ingrained so strongly for me to think that the logo will be the link that I’ll usually click it twice before moving on to look for a “home” link.

In an extreme case, esr’s old blog (I say “old” because the last post was in Summer 2006) did not even have a link of any kind to return to the home page. If you clicked into a single post, you had to either use the back button or (gasp) actually edit the URL in the address bar in order to return to the main page. (Of course, programmers being poor interface designers is a sad-but-true joke as old as computing itself, so perhaps that’s not too surprising.)

So; if the main graphic or logo on your site does not link back to the main page, I would at least encourage you to ask yourself “why not?” Is there some conscious, purposeful, tangible reason why using the logo to link to the main page (even if you already have a “Home” button/link) would be a Bad Thing?

Because if there is no reason not to do it… and if doing it would increase usability for a substantial number of web-surfers… why would you not do that?

Comments welcome!