How do People Use the Web?

This is an absolutely fundamental question, and one I thought I had a pretty good answer to, but an interesting post Miss Manners Guide to Opening Links in New Windows on Subtraction (my new favourite web design) got me thinking... What right do we have to force our user experience decisions on our users?

I know how I use the web but I also appreciate that I'm not a typical user: I live on the internet, and that obsession has moved me into a kind of super-users group. I use a non-standard browser, I know what all 6 of my mouse buttons do and I even know the keyboard shortcuts for the most common actions. While writing a reply to the Subtraction post I realised how easy it is to patronise users - making assumptions about the user experience without properly considering the alternatives and just assuming that I know best. It's so important to keep asking how your decisions will affect the user and why you're making them...

All that said, I'm also not sure I entirely agree with Mark Hurst's The Page Paradigm either. His view that users are ALWAYS looking for something on a website seems to be more aimed at 'proper' sites - e-commerce, education etc, rather than entertainment ones, where exploration is half the fun. I still think I'll be coming back to his Practicing the Page Paradigm steps as a way of refocussing my attention on what's important though...

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