Clicking Here, Clicking There, Clicking Clicking Everwhere!

[pixiecrinkle]

So, I'm in this meeting this afternoon, and we are discussing a button I have placed on a screen. It's clear that it doesn't look enough like a button, and might be confused with a mere piece of explanatory text. Someone suggests the solution is to include the phrase "Click here" on the button.

No. Not now, not ever. This is not the solution. If I can't get the meaning effectively communicated to the user without saying "Click here" then I'm not doing my job and I need to ride off into the sunset on a quest to start my own basketweaving collective or something instead.

I'm not exactly a Jakob Nielsen fan, but I agree with him (and others) on this topic wholeheartedly. There's a certain responsibility of the designer/content developer to provide a user interface that is intuitive without resorting to condescension. If we followed the philosophy of the Click Here proponents, then Microsoft Word would have menus that read like the following:

Click here to open a file
Click here to save your work
Click here to print

All that redundancy waters down the real meaning and makes it harder to follow, not easier!!!!

Yes, I feel strongly about this. But there's a reason why I feel I'm entitled too (here comes the horn tooting....)

Three years ago, when I started here, we had no web applications, a skeletal Intranet, and about half the building only had access to mainframe dummy terminals instead of PCs. We were something of a dinosaur in our field, and regarded as very stodgy and old fashioned. But there was new leadership, and they were starting to get on customer service/"best practices" bandwagon.

I was hired into the first specific web position. Our applications department (which I'm now a part of) started learning Java. I recreated the Intranet, and started hacking apart the Microsoft FrontPage template website. The first external web application was put into place. Then a year later, the second. We hired lots more web programmers. When I left to join the IT department for the job I have now, communications hired two website design/content staff people. They redesigned the external site. We started winning awards for our external applications. And, now, we're looked upon as the forerunner of our industry when it comes to using the web as a communication tool with our customers.

So therefore, why is there now this impulse to dumb down what we're doing? I don't think a lot of people see it this way, but my point of view is this: by implementing standards, we "teach" the user how to use our applications. Without telling them, they know something is a button because it's got an appearance of depth. They know something that looks like a tab lets them navigate within an application. Whatever. But now that those are in place, let's not water down the knowledge we've given them by just tacking whatever we feel like on top of it.

Use specific language and don't clutter it up with extraneous words or bad punctuation. Use similar styles for similar elements on screen. Label things consistently and accurately. If you're precise, that eliminates some degree of confusion and the need for hand-holding.

Other sites may use a practice that isn't the most effective, but just because users have managed to learn to cope with that is not a reason for us to use the same practices because they are "intuitive". They aren't intuitive. People have learned to work around them.

And don't assume when I say something is or is not considered a good practice that I mean "by IT people." My job is to make sure they users get a nice looking, well organized, usable finished product. My job is to think like them, not me. And I take it very seriously.

I feel better now. Rant over.

Comments

[crushinator.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you decide to go ahead on the basket weaving collective. I like interfaces that are designed to punish users for having the gall to think they were smart enough to use a computer.

Yeah... maybe I'll just start my own.

[pixiecrinkle.livejournal.com]

I won't go that far, but personally, if someone thinks I'm dumb enough to need them to say "Click Here" every time something looks like a button or a link, I won't be using their site long.

On second thought, I don't really like basketweaving. Maybe an organic farm. Or raising emus. Oh wait, I'm afraid of birds, so that won't work. Hmmmmm....