Archive for January, 2009

Auto-Loading Slideshows

Monday, January 5th, 2009

While recently reading an article on Digg, I noticed one of the most popular comments on the article was one that actually “Buried” the article because of the auto-loading slideshow. Users didn’t even care about the content because the interface of the slideshow was frustrating and apparently many users agreed. The particular article was from Forbes.com, and this is an example of one of their slideshows:

Why are these slideshows frustrating to users?

Making Users Responders Instead of Initiators

One of Ben Shneiderman’s famous Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design is #7:
Support internal locus of control. This means giving users the sense of control over what they are using or doing.

To use a car for example, let’s say a driver slams on the brakes to avoid an accident and the car stops. This gives the user the impression that they are in control of stopping the car, even though it was really the hundreds of microprocessors and sensors controlling the anti-lock system and automatically pumping the brakes a hundred times a second to stop the car without skidding.

Now imagine a new technology that senses accidents and modulates the brakes by calculating and monitoring the chances of an accident. In the same situation as before, the driver slams on the brakes but the car slows down at the same pace no matter how hard the brakes are being stepped on. The microprocessors and sensors do not detect an accident occuring, so the car does not respond to the user stepping on the brake pedal harder. The user has to disable the automatic crash sensing system in order to have the car stop. This implementation of technology would make the user feel out of control of the car and think that the car is not safe (even though in reality it is safer).

The Forbes.com slideshow is similar to the second situation in that by default it takes the user out of control of the interface and expects the user to become respondants to the situation, rather than being the initiator of the action. If a user wants a slideshow to play, they should have to click play first, or navigate normally through the slideshow by clicking next. By automatically loading the slideshow and playing the slides, it takes the user out of control of the page, and also brakes the expectations of users. Currently if a user is in the middle of reading a paragraph, it is likely that the next slide will load and result in a frustration user-experience.

Obscure Icons

There are controls for the user to stop the slideshow or control the speed in which the slideshow changes. The problem is these controls are obscure and not conventional:

If you take a look at the icons, its a left-pointing arrow, a square, a right-pointing arrow, and a slider for “speed”. The left-pointing arrow goes “back” one slide, the square “pauses” the slideshow, and the right-pointing arrow goes “forward” one slide. The confusing part about these icons is that the square stops the slideshow, but when you click on the icon, it still shows a square. When that happens, it’s possible for users to be confused and assume the right-pointing arrow stands for “play” instead of “forward”. The square acutally now stands for “play”, and relies on the chance that the user remembers if the slideshow is currently playing or stopped. This can easily be fixed by a better choice of icons and icons that respond to show the current status of the slideshow (playing/paused). The slider for the slideshow does not indicate how fast or slow the slideshow will play, so having the arbitrary slider does not help users at all.

Auto-Loading New Slideshows

After a slideshow is done playing, another slideshow loads automatically and this continues infinitely. I accidentally left a slideshow playing, and when I came back the next day it was playing a slideshow of something completely random, not to mention my browser was using 90% of my computer’s RAM. The content that loads subsequently is not even relevant to the content of the initial slideshow. If there is one thing that can make your users leave your site instantly, it’s providing the user irrelevant content.

Simulatenous Video Advertisements

When multiple animations appear on the page, it makes it difficult for users to focus on one area. In this example, the slideshow plays, and occasionally animated video advertisements play simultaneously alongside. This may cause cognitive overload for the user, leading them to close the browser window.

I could go on about the usability issues pertaining to the slideshows, but the bottom line is users hate them. The concept of a slideshow is not the problem, but rather the particular implementation of the slideshow which affects the overall user experience.

Posted in slideshows | No Comments »

Credibility on the Web

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009

Adding on to the Terrible and Terrific Tuesday post on credibility, today we’ll look at how credibility on the web is established and what the different factors and layers are that affect how people perceive your website’s trustworthiness.

First Layer: Claim Credibility

As professionals in the web industry, we often associate credibility with specific pages or content on a website that talk about the history of a company, privacy policies, awards/certifications, testimonials, and other self-promoting words. Statements like “Quality widget manufacturer since 1701” or “Privacy Policy” pages were the standard go-to techniques to help increase credibility and distinguish the company from others. These became commonplace because that’s what users said they wanted, and for some time, they worked.

However, these techniques became diluted and are now expected on a website as a standard. They are still very important to establish credibility, but they don’t serve as unique differentiators any more. I refer to these techniques as the first layer of my Credibility Cake(™).

Second Layer: Visual Appeal

The second layer of establishing credibility is the visual design. Almost half of all consumers assess credibility based on the visual appeal of the design. The interesting thing is that there is a mismatch between what users think is important to them versus what their actual behavior is when browsing a website. Users claim that the first layer information was most important to them (such as having a privacy policy page), but when actually asked to evaluate credibility, users used the site’s design and never bothered to even look at a privacy policy page (Consumer WebWatch, How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility?). From our experience, it is not only important to have a visually appealing website, but to also make sure that design is consistent throughout the entire website. Often with third party applications, websites have varying designs and layouts due to different technical restrictions. These types of design inconsistencies due to technology choices can have a huge effect on website credibility, especially if these pages involve the transaction of personal information (such as request forms).

Third Layer: User Experience

This leads us to what I call the third layer of credibility, which is the overall user experience. After the first two layers are established, once a user begins interacting with a website, the experience ultimately defines credibility. If the site is an e-commerce website, and the shopping cart is clunky or slow, these are greater problems for credibility than something from the first layer such as not having a “Hacker Safe” logo on the site.

By considering these three layers, we can make sure we are covering any areas of the website that may be affecting the site’s credibility. The important thing to note is that it is all about the perceived credibility of the site. You could be the oldest, respected, trusted business in your industry, but if your site is lacking in any one of these areas online, it can be hard to compete with smaller, newer businesses with a stronger established sense of credibility and trust online.

Posted in credibility | No Comments »