pses of city life, such as signs, lights, clothing, people, and buildings. I began to imagine cars honking and that I’m breathing city smog. Amazingly, none of the illustrations are clearly defined. The artist drops clues and the rest is left to your imagination and emotions. You see what you want to see. I know I'm seeing the painting differently than the other people viewing it because I can hear their remarks.

Then, my artist friend says, “Ever since my Dad’s experience, I see everything differently.”

A few years ago, at the age of 19, my friend came home to find his father nearly bleeding to death from botched major surgery in

Whenever singer John Mayer sings his romantic song, "Your Body is a Wonderland", I can't help but think of web sites and usability. As a usability consultant, I see the devotion to his lover, and the time he spent uncovering every detail of her being, as the way most web site designers think we approach their web sites. When the lyrics arrive at "Take all your big plans; And break 'em; This is bound to be a while", I start giggling. It makes me think of Amazon.com. I'll explain why.

Do You Have Three Hours To Browse?

Amazon’s jigsaw puzzle-like homepage greets me personally by name, which is smooth talking salesmanship. We’ve obviously “met” before. It has “recommendations” for me. There’s a nifty advertisement that unfolds like those movie screens in school auditoriums where you know you’re about to see something either cool, or gross, in front of all your friends. This ad doesn’t tell me what I should do to get it to go away. When I click it, I’m instantly taken inside the web site to a targeted area. There’s my Gold Box, and my Wish List, and 15,459 links to things I might want to buy. All this is displayed in the first few seconds of my arrival.

Whenever a web site presents me with an onslaught of too much, too soon, I often feel overwhelmed, or angry, and leave the site. If Amazon was a human being with an actual body, I probably wouldn’t like him or her for very long. I would find the physical Amazon pushy, invasive, greedy, egotistical, and likely a hypochondriac. Yet, I did most of my Christmas shopping there last year. Why? What is it about Amazon that makes it such a compelling experience?

To understand the theory behind the type of design Amazon uses, which is copied by thousands of ecommerce web sites, I turned to a different way of seeing and a different kind of art. The type of Cubist art that Pablo Picasso painted seemed to fit.

The Experience of Seeing

People react to web sites the same way they respond to art. They come with an expectation. They see what they want to see. It’s up to the web site design to show them what they did not come to find, or what they may not know they were looking for.

I recently attended an opening night art gallery reception. I know the artist and his family. Standing in front of one of his vibrantly colorful pieces, a scene of someone entering a store from a busy New York City street, he pointed things out to me. “The brown brush strokes over here are the back of woman’s head as the person enters the store. Note the hand on the door handle.” The colorful canvas portrays glimpses of city life, such as signs, lights, clothing, people, and buildings. I began to imagine cars honking and that I’m breathing city smog. Amazingly, none of the illustrations are clearly defined. The artist drops clues and the rest is left to your imagination and emotions. You see what you want to see. I know I'm seeing the painting differently than the other people viewing it because I can hear their remarks.

Then, my artist friend says, “Ever since my Dad’s experience, I see everything differently.”

A few years ago, at the age of 19, my friend came home to find his father nearly bleeding to death from botched major surgery in w

usly “met” before. It has “recommendations” for me. There’s a nifty advertisement that unfolds like those movie screens in school auditoriums where you know you’re about to see something either cool, or gross, in front of all your friends. This ad doesn’t tell me what I should do to get it to go away. When I click it, I’m instantly taken inside the web site to a targeted area. There’s my Gold Box, and my Wish List, and 15,459 links to things I might want to buy. All this is displayed in the first few seconds of my arrival.

Whenever a web site presents me with an onslaught of too much, too soon, I often feel overwhelmed, or angry, and leave the site. If Amazon was a human being with an actual body, I probably wouldn’t like him or her for very long. I would find the physical Amazon pushy, invasive, greedy, egotistical, and likely a hypochondriac. Yet, I did most of my Christmas shopping there last year. Why? What is it about Amazon that makes it such a compelling experience?

To understand the theory behind the type of design Amazon uses, which is copied by thousands of ecommerce web sites, I turned to a different way of seeing and a different kind of art. The type of Cubist art that Pablo Picasso painted seemed to fit.

The Experience of Seeing

People react to web sites the same way they respond to art. They come with an expectation. They see what they want to see. It’s up to the web site design to show them what they did not come to find, or what they may not know they were looking for.

I recently attended an opening night art gallery reception. I know the artist and his family. Standing in front of one of his vibrantly colorful pieces, a scene of someone entering a store from a busy New York City street, he pointed things out to me. “The brown brush strokes over here are the back of woman’s head as the person enters the store. Note the hand on the door handle.” The colorful canvas portrays glimpses of city life, such as signs, lights, clothing, people, and buildings. I began to imagine cars honking and that I’m breathing city smog. Amazingly, none of the illustrations are clearly defined. The artist drops clues and the rest is left to your imagination and emotions. You see what you want to see. I know I'm seeing the painting differently than the other people viewing it because I can hear their remarks.

Then, my artist friend says, “Ever since my Dad’s experience, I see everything differently.”

A few years ago, at the age of 19, my friend came home to find his father nearly bleeding to death from botched major surgery in

e the site. If Amazon was a human being with an actual body, I probably wouldn’t like him or her for very long. I would find the physical Amazon pushy, invasive, greedy, egotistical, and likely a hypochondriac. Yet, I did most of my Christmas shopping there last year. Why? What is it about Amazon that makes it such a compelling experience?

To understand the theory behind the type of design Amazon uses, which is copied by thousands of ecommerce web sites, I turned to a different way of seeing and a different kind of art. The type of Cubist art that Pablo Picasso painted seemed to fit.

The Experience of Seeing

People react to web sites the same way they respond to art. They come with an expectation. They see what they want to see. It’s up to the web site design to show them what they did not come to find, or what they may not know they were looking for.

I recently attended an opening night art gallery reception. I know the artist and his family. Standing in front of one of his vibrantly colorful pieces, a scene of someone entering a store from a busy New York City street, he pointed things out to me. “The brown brush strokes over here are the back of woman’s head as the person enters the store. Note the hand on the door handle.” The colorful canvas portrays glimpses of city life, such as signs, lights, clothing, people, and buildings. I began to imagine cars honking and that I’m breathing city smog. Amazingly, none of the illustrations are clearly defined. The artist drops clues and the rest is left to your imagination and emotions. You see what you want to see. I know I'm seeing the painting differently than the other people viewing it because I can hear their remarks.

Then, my artist friend says, “Ever since my Dad’s experience, I see everything differently.”

A few years ago, at the age of 19, my friend came home to find his father nearly bleeding to death from botched major surgery in

b sites the same way they respond to art. They come with an expectation. They see what they want to see. It’s up to the web site design to show them what they did not come to find, or what they may not know they were looking for.

I recently attended an opening night art gallery reception. I know the artist and his family. Standing in front of one of his vibrantly colorful pieces, a scene of someone entering a store from a busy New York City street, he pointed things out to me. “The brown brush strokes over here are the back of woman’s head as the person enters the store. Note the hand on the door handle.” The colorful canvas portrays glimpses of city life, such as signs, lights, clothing, people, and buildings. I began to imagine cars honking and that I’m breathing city smog. Amazingly, none of the illustrations are clearly defined. The artist drops clues and the rest is left to your imagination and emotions. You see what you want to see. I know I'm seeing the painting differently than the other people viewing it because I can hear their remarks.

Then, my artist friend says, “Ever since my Dad’s experience, I see everything differently.”

A few years ago, at the age of 19, my friend came home to find his father nearly bleeding to death from botched major surgery in

pses of city life, such as signs, lights, clothing, people, and buildings. I began to imagine cars honking and that I’m breathing city smog. Amazingly, none of the illustrations are clearly defined. The artist drops clues and the rest is left to your imagination and emotions. You see what you want to see. I know I'm seeing the painting differently than the other people viewing it because I can hear their remarks.

Then, my artist friend says, “Ever since my Dad’s experience, I see everything differently.”

A few years ago, at the age of 19, my friend came home to find his father nearly bleeding to death from botched major surgery in which he was discharged too early from the hospital. His chest literally opened back up and my friend held it together with his bare hands while family members got medical help. He saved his father’s life. Since then, his artwork took on a new form. From this artist’s point of view, everything is present, in the moment, all the time. We normally see it in bits and pieces, and then miss most of what’s around us.

This struck a chord with me. Should a homepage, for example, present everything the web site offers all at once? Is there a way to do this by offering clever clues or gentle nudges that leave enough to the imagination to make the visitor want to stay on the page until it all comes “into focus”?

This was one of the experiences that brought me to link Pablo Picasso and web design. Pablo Picasso felt that only by means of our awareness do things come into being. We’re normally unaware of something until it matters to us.

Awareness, Experience and Persuasive Architecture

Impressionist art is not about painting objects as they are seen, but more about the experience of seeing them.

Andrew Chak writes in his book, Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites, “What our users see are the web pages in front of them at the very moment they are trying to do something. Each page either helps them move forward in the process or puts them a step back. If you have gaps in your functionality or you don’t provide guidance to your users, you can’t expect them to just figure it out.”

One solution for guiding web site visitors to important pages or items is through the use of persuasion and making a site desirable. For example, when a product is designed, some thought is also given to the human response to it or the experience of using it. The same can be true for web sites.

Amazon utilizes persuasive techniques. Remember that “movie screen” ad? When clicked on, it deliberately took me deeper into the web site. Other web sites use marketing content expertly written to keep you interested enough to keep browsing. Even better are embedded links within that text.

By comparison, Google’s homepage interface is minimalistic and simple. Yet someone realized it wasn’t bringing everything Google does out into the open, so they designed Soople.com, which efficiently lists everything on one page. No extra clicks. No navigation to learn. The obvious tasks are presented at once, for instant access. Someone at Google forgot to read Andrew Chak’s Principle #4 – “You know everything about your site, but your users know nothing.”

Both the