How do I choose?

When I got Raw Materials for the Mind, I was preparing for a web design class, so I started at that end of the book. David talks about the opening page of your website as the "most important six inches". He goes on do discuss good clear web design, which is simple and direct but can be difficult to achieve. Our design has a few seconds, at best, to deliver the nature of the site as the viewer decides whether to move on.

I began to think about how we choose sites in contrast to how we choose books. I know the Dewey Decimal system, I use the card catalog, but in the end I browse the shelves. I pull books from the shelf, flip pages, scan, and check out the table of contents for nonfiction or the back cover for fiction. I am sure that I am affected by the color, typeface, layout and illustrations.

On the web, I search. I may not even view a site until I done a couple of different searches, scanned the results, and refined my search. When I think I am close, I click open multiple sites, quickly flip through them, and, in most cases, X them out into oblivion. I very seldom click a link unless I have already deemed the site as worth pursuing. All of this confirms the importance of the "most important six inches", on most sites that is all I ever see.