80/20 Rule
A high percentage of effects in any large system are caused by a low percentage of variables.
Universal Principles of Design
In other words, 80% of your users will only use 20% of the features on your site and this kind of thinking should go a long way into how you approach a design. A good example would be to look at the various social voting sites. Well over 80% of the site I would say is the headline of the story and the vote button. Different sites handle this task differently and it goes a long way into how their users interact with the site.
Chawlk and Digg make the headlines and voting mechanism a prominent feature of the design while reddit and mixx make it less obvious. The issue again is what is the major feature that the site will use and with any social news site the headlines and voting go hand in hand so they should be almost given equal weight.
On reddit the voting arrows are gray and the same size as the numbered listing which doesn’t help encourage users to vote unless they are familiar with the system and have made it a habit. On mixx, the vote button is on the opposite side of the number of votes that a story has received. This is a case where both sites have put form over function and I think they have succeeded despite the design flaw and not because of it.
One of the most widespread examples of the 80/20 rule involves Microsoft Word. It is said that only 80% of the people use 20% of its features and if that is the case why wouldn’t you remove the rest of the features to unclutter the design? Because there are those 20% who will miss those features and this is where you have to weigh what is most important in your designs: reducing clutter and making an interface that is intutive and doesn’t overload the brain with options or an interface that can still be wonderfully designed, but contain everything under the sun.
With the iPod the wheel is the design because the wheel controls 100% of the functionality. If 80% of the people focus on the ability to scroll through their music quickly and easily then you should provide the functionality to do so easily.
When using the 80/20 rule in your design find out what is most important to the functionality of the site and make that the most prominent. There is no such site that has features that are all equal weight. A couple of features always control that 80% so put your focus on them and you will find your users will be more grateful.
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