Home, Home on the Web!

by Heather Champ

While a "pre" home page is most commonly called a splash page, the next page has more of an identity crisis with a variety of names like "home," "main," or sometimes "core" document. Home page is by far the most common and perhaps somewhat ironic given the current complexity of Web design. There are more than a few sites that take the metaphor of home a little too far.

It goes without saying that determining the look, feel, and brand presence on a site can go two ways. Either a site will strongly affirm a broadcast or print identity or not. And while this affirmation can merely be a shoveling of the content from one medium to the Web, there needs to be an element that cements the site together in such a way that it works as a Web site and not merely a series of billboard-like pages. This element can take the form of a metaphor to aid the user in navigating through the site.

There are a number of sites that try to establish a sense of place online with a rather literal metaphor of place, be it a home with different rooms, a town with different buildings and neighborhoods, or the application of real spaces and places for ease of understanding. While these metaphors have employed a different scale, in the end they all rely on a user's innate understanding of three-dimensional space, with varying degrees of success.

It was Col. Mustard in the Library!
Wendy's is a wonderful example of when a metaphor can go awry. Dave Thomas greets the viewer from the front porch of a rather CorelDraw-like puce Victorian house trimmed with red and turquoise.

"Clicking" through to the hallway, a user is presented with a variety of colored doors that immediately made me think of Clue (I always wanted to be Miss Scarlet). While the site does use frames in subsequent sections of the site, it has none of the finesse usually associated with a "corporate" site.

Although the interface may attempt to be child-friendly, there is nothing to indicate that the site is intended for the younger set. Other fast food sites like Burger King or McDonald's are more recognizable online, with a design sensibility that more closely mimics their "real-time" personas.

The Nabisco Neighborhood uses the metaphor of a city or town to display the varied content within the site. While a site typically uses the home page as a table of contents, displaying everything within the browser window, the Nabisco Neighborhood has a main street that a user must scroll to see all the cotent. Again, large graphics hamper the overall design, limiting the ease of navigation.

GeoCities has a much simpler use of geography to create a sense of place. By merely using recognizable places, cities, or country names to represent the various interests of the site builders and users they rely on the images that these terms invoke without going that one extra step with the heavy-handed graphics.

And while less is more and K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) may be rather crass and common, there is a definite kernel of wisdom that can be found within.