Sample Chapter From Don’t Make Me Think
Why are things always in the last place you look on their behalf? Because you stop looking when they are located by you. When creating sites we’re, we become though people will pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, determining how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before making a decision which connect to click.
What they actually do most of enough time (if we’re lucky) is looking into each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first hyperlink that catches their interest or vaguely resembles finished. They’re looking for. You can usually find large parts of the page that they don’t even take a look at.
- In the Run home window, enter devmgmt.msc, then click OK. Device Manager should open
- Descriptive Text
- Keep it Slim
- Concentrating on customer happiness; “fans” are much larger than “influencers.”
- Shares from players and membership members
- ▼ June (67) 20 amazing tools for web design and development
- 7 years back from Edinburgh
- Don’t experiment on a production machine
As you may imagine, it’s a little more complicated than this, and it depends on the type or kind of page, what the user is trying to do, how much of a hurry she’s in, etc. But this simplistic view is a lot closer to actuality than most of us imagine. It makes sense that we picture a far more rational, attentive consumer when we’re developing webpages. It’s only natural to believe that everyone uses the Web the same manner we do, and-like everyone else-we tend to think that our own behavior is much more orderly and sensible than it truly is.
If you want to create effective Webpages, though, you have to learn to live with three factual statements about real-world Web use. We don’t read webpages. Among the very few well-documented factual statements about Web use is that individuals have a tendency to spend very little time reading most Webpages.1 Instead, we check (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that capture our eye.
The exception, of course, pages that contain documents like information stories, reports, or product explanations. But even then, if the record is much longer than a few paragraphs, we’re likely to print it out-since it’s easier and faster to learn in some recoverable format than on the display. Why do we check out? We’re in a rush usually. A lot of our Web use is motivated by the desire to save time. As a total result, Web users have a tendency to become sharks: they have to excessive, or they’ll die. We just don’t have the time to read any more than necessary.
We know we don’t need to read everything. Of all pages, we’re really only thinking about a fraction of what’s on the page. We’re just looking for the bits that match our interests or the task at hand, and the rest of it is irrelevant. Scanning is how exactly we find the relevant bits. We’re good at it.
We’ve been checking newspapers, magazines, and books all our lives to find the parts we’re thinking about, and we realize it works. The net effect is a lot like Gary Larson’s classic Far Side cartoon about the difference between what we should say to canines and what they listen to. In the cartoon, your dog (called Ginger) appears to be listening intently as her owner gives her a serious talking-to about remaining out of the garbage.
What we see whenever we take a look at a Web page depends upon what we have at heart, but it’s usually only a small percentage of what’s on the web page. We don’t make optimal options. When we’re designing pages, we have a tendency to assume that users will scan the web page, consider all the available choices, and choose the best one.
So, why don’t Web users look for the best choice? We’re usually in a hurry. So that as Klein highlights “Optimizing is hard, and it requires a long time. There’s very little of a penalty for guessing wrong. Unlike the firefighters, the penalty for guessing incorrect on a Web site is usually only a click or two of the trunk button, making satisfying a highly effective strategy. Of course, this assumes that pages quickly fill; when they don’t, we must make our choices more carefully-just one of the many explanations why most Users don’t like slow-loading pages. Weighing options might not improve our chances.
On badly designed sites, putting work into making the best option doesn’t really help. You’re usually better off choosing your first guess and using the trunk button if it doesn’t workout. Guessing is more fun. It’s less work than weighing options, and if you suppose right, it’s faster. And it introduces a component of chance-the enjoyable possibility of running into something good and surprising. Of course, this isn’t to say that users consider options before they click never. It depends on things like their mindset, how pressed they are for time, and how much confidence they have in the website.