Why are things always in the last place you look for them? Because you stop looking when you find them. - Children’s riddle There is a difference between how we think people use Web sites and how they actually use them.
When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click.
What they actually do most of the time (if we’re lucky) is glance at each new page, scan some of the text, and click on the first link that catches their interest or vaguely resembles the thing they’re looking for. There are usually large parts of the page that they don’t even look at.
We’re thinking “great literature” (or at least “product brochure”), while the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.”
As you might imagine, it’s a little more complicated than this, and it depends on the kind of page, what the user is trying to do, how much of a hurry she’s in, and so on. But this simplistic view is much closer to reality than most of us imagine.
It makes sense that we picture a more rational, attentive user when we’re designing pages. It’s only natural to assume that everyone uses the Web the same way we do, and—like everyone else—we tend to think that our own behavior is much more orderly and sensible than it really is.
If you want to design effective Web pages, though, you have to learn to live with three facts about real-world Web use.
Fact of life #1:
We don’t read pages. We scan them.
One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.
The exception, of course, is pages that contain documents like news stories, reports, or product descriptions.
What we see when we look at a Web page depends on what we have in mind, but it’s usually just a fraction of what’s on the page. We tend to focus on words and phrases that seem to match (a) the task at hand or (b) our current or ongoing personal interests. And of course, (c) the trigger words that are hardwired into our nervous systems, like “Free,” “Sale,” and “Sex.”
Fact of life #2:
We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
When we’re designing pages, we tend to assume that users will scan the page, consider all of the available options, and choose the best one.
In reality, though, most of the time we don’t choose the best option—we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as satisficing. As soon as we find a link that seems like it might lead to what we’re looking for, there’s a very good chance that we’ll click it.
Fact of life #3:
We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.
One of the things that becomes obvious as soon as you do any usability testing—whether you’re testing Web sites, software, or household appliances—is the extent to which people use things all the time without understanding how they work, or with completely wrong-headed ideas about how they work.
Faced with any sort of technology, very few people take the time to read instructions. Instead, we forge ahead and muddle through, making up our own vaguely plausible stories about what we’re
And muddling through is not limited to beginners. Even technically savvy users often have surprising gaps in their understanding of how things work. (I wouldn’t be surprised if even Bill Gates has some bits of technology in his life that he uses by muddling through.)
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