There must be something in the water because a few people I’m reading seem to have had something to say recently about interface elements confusing people.
- Confusing Interaction from Nathanael Boehm
- Forget Select - it is Browse, Browse, Browse from Gary Barber
- Nick Cowie’s response, The select element, a tale from my past
None of this should really be of any surprise, yet it’s still pleasing to know that as experienced web people, we can still manage to be amazed by user behaviour sometimes. 
We also tend to let things slide a little and overestimate people’s willingness or ability to experiment within an interface and try and figure it out.
Here are some fun facts about people I’ve observed over the years:
- Don’t assume that people will just ‘figure it out’ or take the time to learn your interface, because people can’t be bothered. By and large, they simply cannot be bothered trying to figure out how your web site, app, or device works. They’re lazy. They don’t care how much work you put in to it.
- Breaking someone’s mental model of the way the world works is a recipe for disaster. It’s by far one of the most disruptive and confusing things you can do to a user.
- If you expect someone to use something you should put it right in front of them. If you hide things behind pulldown menus, slide-out panels, or whatever, people won’t realise they’re there. You might be able to get away with it by putting an explicit icon or something to say so, but this is still not likely to help. In Gary’s post he seems to think this is related to the demographic he was testing against (less internet savvy types). I’m here to tell you, I’ve observed this with pretty much everyone.
- We will sometimes be stunned and amazed at how many people will completely miss something that we think is really obvious. Part of this is quite probably from being too close to the action. There’s no substitute for usability testing and it’s a crying shame that this doesn’t feature often enough in some people’s web development plans. You should build it in as part of your project plan, as early as practicable.
2 Comments
Well I do try and get a round of usability testing in, but sometimes the client just will be pay for it and sadly I can’t work for free.
Well same general site design pattern with a younger student audience (not same site), automatically go what the select menu was for. I take your point that people are lazy, but I’ll still push that the profile of the user is important and has to be taken into account.
But thats why we test to ensure the usability
it’s good in a way to get it wrong, keeps you on your toes.
In this case the client asked the the select menu in the specs. We needed hard evidence, like I discussed to get it removed. Subsequently this client has got another design team to put the select menu back.
Yeah it’s not easy to actually DO any of that unless they pay. Here’s hoping though.