The Ronseal approach

By David Bomphrey

I have for sometime now (a matter of years in fact) been trying to get the term “The Ronseal Approach” into everyday use in terms of usability on the web. Ronseal themselves started the campaign “it does exactly what it says on the tin” as far back as 1994 and have registered the trademark on the term. Steve Krug, a guru in this industry, also coined a phrase with a similar purpose in mind; “Don’t make me think!” which he used as the title of his seminal book on usability that in 2000.

What “it does exactly what it says on the tin” means to me however and the context in which I use it, is that whatever your page is intended to do or wherever a link is intended to take you, it is explicit from first glance or read through. It’s a fundamental rule of good design and one which is still sadly overlooked by many site owners and designers.

Some readers may easily dismiss this as “common sense” but if this were so why isn’t everybody doing it? I therefore dismiss this and prefer another phrase “uncommon sense” which has been used by many in the past in various ways or indeed another ‘Krugism’, “Advanced common sense” which is the strap line for his website.

So what’s the call to action here? Let’s start using the phrase and more importantly starting thinking in uncommon ways to make sure that our sites are explicit and our designs are good and do exactly what it says on the tin. You’d have to go a long way to make your site too easy to use.