Navigation

• Visited links should change colour once they have been clicked on. This helps users understand where they have been.
• Users appear to like and use clearly and comprehensively labelled top tabs to help them navigate.
• Users want to feel that they have accessed all the things that are of interest to them and that they haven’t missed anything that they might have wanted to see.
• The back button is important.  This is one reason that pop-up or new windows aren't great.
• Not every use is familiar with web conventions, like logos acting as 'home' buttons.
• When users click on a link they want to know where it is taking them to.
• Pages must load quickly
• Users often don't realise that they can scroll down or across, so if content must be outside the immediate viewing area, provide an indication of its presence
• There must be consistency amongst navigational tools between different parts of the site.
• If a link consists of text and a picture then both of these have to be active

Interfaces and content

• The homepage should provide a good indication of the scope of content and interactivity inside
• Accessibility is vital - it improves the experience for everyone and is great for search engine optimisation
• Usability is more important than the backend stuff, no matter how cool that is.  Test, test, play, test!

• Users want interesting and unusual content.

• Visitors do not want large amounts of text. They do not wish to have the equivalent of a book online. Users expect pictures, interactivity, games.

• Consistently we have found that users want content which is relevant to them or has a human interest angle

Search and language

• The way we label and tag things doesn't necessarily make sense to visitors.  User tags and folksonomies might be a good way to improve the discoverability of our content.
• We're exploring ways to help make search results more useful, especially when the results can be of very mixed types - more research is needed
• 'Advanced search' - very open question as to whether this is useful
• Jargon is a barrier