Steve Mulder on User Behavior (in the Wild)
I’m in the Steve Mulder presentation right now. Wow. Very good thinking in the usability/user interface world. A lot of this stuff I intuitively knew already, but there are some nice nuggets in here that I can use in client meetings to help them understand how a user sees their webpages.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence. —Nietzsche
Users are like rivers. They follow the path of least resistence to get to what they want.
Pop up windows are like the “Whack the mole” game.
“Pop ups are guilty until proven innocent.”
How people scan pages: 1) They look in the middle where all the “good content” is 2) they look on the left for navigation 3) they look on the right for ads and promotions. First priority to find something is to look in the body. If they just can’t find it there, they finally look in the nav. If they can’t find it there, they give up.
Based on generic, user study, the logo is expected in upper left or bottom of page. Search is expected in middle, toward the top. Help is expected in upper right as well as shopping cart.
Users scroll when they 1) don’t see what they’re looking for, but are expecting it on the page, and 2) see what they’re expecting and know there’s more.
For lengthy articles, scrolling is better than multiple pages. “Below the fold is better than behind the click.”
Whether a user will search or not is based more on the task than on what the user prefers. Advanced search hardly gets usage, because people aren’t willing to put in the time. People tend to give up earlier when they’re searching, than when they’re browsing (47% of searchers give up on the first search).
People expect links to take them places and buttons to do things.
People don’t know how to manage windows: moving them around, resizing…
There are no stupid people, just stupid websites.
