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Brick No152: They lied to me on the first page of this site
By Matt Weston, Thursday 21 July 2005 Don't click it They lied to me on the first page of this site. "You will get the hang of it immediately," they said. The link above, which, just to be clear, you DO need to click, takes you to a project by the Institute of Interactive Research. The idea is to see what happens when you do away with the mouse click. As the first page puts it (just before lying to me): "Within this interface you won't find any buttons. Instead you navigate the contents in a different way." Yes, you read it right. On the site, you won't find any buttons or links to click. You have to navigate without. Ordinarily, when you click, your screen changes. But here, if you try to click, your screen freezes. The only way you can get around is by not clicking. Like I said at the top, I didn't get the hang of www.dontclick.it immediately. Or eventually, even. You select things, not by clicking them, but by mouse movement. But, travelling from one thing to another, it's easy to inadvertently select things en route. Most perversely, when I was asked to answer the IIR poll question, "Do you miss the click within this interface?" I accidentally selected "No" in trying to move the cursor across to click "Yes". (I can only assume the 23,544 others who voted "No" did likewise.) Imagine video games came before books If you take the click away, everything feels very unfamiliar. Suddenly, you have to think. And as Steve Krug has pointed out, that isn't a good thing. Sometimes it's only unfamiliarity that makes people uncomfortable with something new. (Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad Is Good For You", has a thought experiment that works along the same lines: "Imagine video games came before books. What would all the scolds be writing about when the kids dropped their gameboys and started reading all of a sudden?" But that logic doesn't apply here. Point and click interfaces - like disposable cameras, the iPod wheel, the mouse - are so low-level and easy to master that even extensive training doesn't really improve how we use them. From our earliest years we learn that pointing and touching something can make something happen. Just pointing doesn't always produce any result. How to fix most websites It is only an experiment. But what www.dontclick.it shows (me at least) is that when you take the click away, the way to navigate a website becomes much less immediately obvious. You have to think. And if you have to think, you're much more likely to use the back button to return to safe territory. Most of us with websites don't intentionally stop people clicking things. But, by the same token, many of us fail to make it immediately obvious what link does what when you click on it. If you really want to know if your website works, print it out in colour, and ask your next door neighbour to explain back to you exactly what he/ she thinks lies behind the links. Bric-a-brac (1) A short excerpt from "Call To Action" by Bryan & Jeffery Eisenberg: "[Make sure] each major button or link is made up of as few words as possible that complete this sentence: "I want to ______." Remember, nobody wants to "click here". "They want to: Find the right bike for me Buy a bicycle Get my bike fixed Ask a question Find my order Find a store "This applies to the rest of the links on your site as well. The "Buy Now" button is not pushy salesmanship - it's a clear message to the visitor who is desperate for clear messages." (2) If you liked today's Brick, you might also like The Click. Remember to sign up: back to top |
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