There’s beauty in the details, but a pretty UI can only take a user so far. I was reminded of this last week when I asked for some feedback on a new hover feature I was toying with. After every word I’d read about focusing on content instead of decorations, here I was putting new rims on a car that didn’t even run.

My slick design didn’t hide the fact that a user would have almost NO CLUE what to do on my page (it’s not a good sign when the first feedback you get is ‘I don’t know where I am here’).

HTML and CSS have come quickly to me and it’s really easy with a few attributes to make a page that looks professional. What’s coming more slowly to me is parsing what content is vital and emphasizing it accordingly. I can expand divs all day and make them go transparent, but that’s worthless if I’m obfuscating a clear and simple task.

After that feedback I decided to put my user shoes on and walk through a flow, from start to finish. I realized it was time to view my site for the first time (again) so I could see what I’ve left out. See, when I’ve got my designer shoes on I take things for granted — I know where to click and what screen is going to pop up next. As a result I’m missing things.

My problem reminds me of an editing trick I learned in grade school: reading sentences backwards. By working from end to start you focus on each word individually because they’re taken out of context of the larger sentence. Right now I’m flowing through my screens from start to finish and I already know where I’m going. I’m thinking about what’s next instead of focusing on each individual screen or action. When you’re mentally at the next step before you arrive you’re going to overlook some important things.

So I’m going backwards now, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’ve traded my new rims in for a pair of user shoes and they’re getting me a lot further than that car that didn’t run. Shiny rims and a new paint job are nice, but we gotta walk before we can drive.