In my opinion, “user experience designers” should be making websites fun to use, not just easy to use (although the former should never be to the detriment of the latter). Christopher is 100% right in his comment – the site is perfectly usable without clicking the timeline, so the discovery that it is clickable at all is just an extra bit of fun!

The primary navigation does have cursor:hand, as well as a hover state – its the unimportant timeline which is deliberately hidden. We design for our target audience, so none of the “stereotypical moms” which Steve referred to will have a problem with the site as they most likely won’t be using it.

These things aside, thanks for the link Eric, and I’m pleased you like the concept! :-)

The timeline at the top is indeed an “Easter Egg”, hence the lack of feedback. It’s funny how many people assumed this was a usability error, rather than something deliberate.

While I agree with many of the comments that usability is an important part of user experience design, it is just one facet. This site aims to challenge some concepts and create a specific experience, for a specific group of users. The fact that has caused this debate, indicates the experience we were trying to create has worked.

While normally I would agree that they should have rollovers or someother device to indicate the links, in the context of what they are doing, I do not think it is vital. I see the timeline links as almost an Easter Egg on the site… not really something you are supposed to click on yet, but if you find it, fantastic. Of course, this is pure speculation, as I have spoken with no one involved in their project.

My only (tiny) critique is that some of the things that are links aren”t obvious enough—I thought at first that the navbar was all placeholders

I think you downplay this critique quite a lot (dare I suggest because you are apparently some sort of friend/acquaintance/business relative of these people?)

If it were a conference on Rails or UGC or microformats or whatever it would be one thing, but the entire conference is about “user experience design”. They’ve failed the most absolutely basic aspect of their own user experience, namely making it clearly apparent that their PRIMARY navigation is at all clickable! The stereotypical “mom” might stare at that all day without working it out. Heck, if you hadn’t have tipped us off in the post, I’d probably not have realised it myself.

I’ve noticed a lot of (shall we politely call them) “not a power user” people are scared of clicking somewhere ‘unusual’ – if they don’t get the feedback they expect (ie, in this case, “cursor:hand;”) they will be literally fearful of doing it anyway “just to see”.

All in all I look at this and think, “if you can’t get your own user experience up to normal / baseline usuable standards, why on earth would I pay you 400 quid to tell me how to design mine?”