Emphasis on user rather than experience. A number of years back, one of the clients of the company I worked for hired a consultant. He had two recommendations. One is that we add more orange. The other was that we try to get away from your usual website navigation and give the user what he liked to call an experience. To him, this meant "something exciting and new, not something you see at every site". To me - and I like to think most other website users - this meant "a website that frustrates me so much I will never return to it."
We added more orange.
The "website as an experience" thing never seems to go away. Any time I buy a magazine about website design, they invariably are holding up some monstrosity of a website as an amazing accomplishment. "It's not the same as every other website!" (But it looks strangely similar to every other website lauded for its uniqueness...) They love how you have to work hard just to figure out if the dancing turtle in the corner is a link to something useful or just a way to have embarassing noise stream out of your computer unexpectedly while your nurse wife who just came back from a night shift is desperate for some sleep. Superb!
I don't get it. Do the same people wish TV remote controls were more "creative"? Your usual websites aren't all the same because people are lazy and uncreative (although people are lazy and uncreative). They're the same because not only does that system work pretty well, but it allows the users (which I like to emphasize) to easily get to what they want: information. Sure, some of them may be looking for an experience and not information, but in most cases we can safely ignore those people. It's not like they're the ones looking to find out when your band is having a gig, or how to get to your store, or what's in your product line. The people you should want to satisfy are the ones who are looking for something from you (that's a good thing, by the way) and your best bet is to make that easy and satisfying. Confusing them with a Brand New Paradigm in Navigation will just put them off.
Let's go back to TV remotes. Imagine you're sitting down to watch TV. You pick up the remote and turn it on. Now imagine that with every channel change, the buttons on the remote change shape, colour and position. You don't get to simply use it, you are required to learn it. Every channel is different. I don't know about you, but I would hate that. The experience I want is in the content, not the controls. While it's true that driving people insane while they try to get information out of you is more creative than not, it's still not what I consider a good idea.
Here's an example of what I consider to be pointlessly off-putting website navigation. It's cute, but it's only usable as a cautionary tale:
That's it. Well, to be accurate there are now some buttons below with actually useful information in them, along with a snarky note that tells people who are looking for the experience to be in the content and not the controls that they are "less adventurous". Right. But the useful buttons weren't there before. Obviously, I'm not the only one who thinks that website design isn't one that encourages people to continue. I'm a fan of Robin Hobb and every once in a while I'm curious to know what she's working on. Is there a new book coming out? What's it about? Do I have to walk through a bathroom and down into a cellar to find out?
What this sort of design says to me is I need to spend my own valuable time and effort, with no guarantee that it will be rewarded. After all, if they neither tell you that they have the info you crave nor provide any sensible way to find it from the start, why would I think that digging deeper into the site will be any better? Another message I get from it is that the author (and by coincidence this is the website of an author, but I am talking about the website's author and / or owner) doesn't care about me. They have created this site, likely in an effort to be more creative and to express themselves. Bully for them; entirely within their rights. But by ignoring the actual experience of people coming to visit (and even being dismissive about it) you are in essence saying "go away". Fine. I will.
By the way, using a website to express yourself creatively is an excellent goal, provided your purpose is not to disseminate information or sell anything. Also, be aware that you are starting off by limiting your audience and then continuing on doing that. As a web designer and programmer, I strongly recommend not doing that.
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