Is ours a fashion business? I think so. Every technology cycle brings its own fashion. PhotoShopped buttons with thick bevels in the late 90s; heavy, fat typefaces of the post-bubble; the now annoying jelly theme of MacOS X; Lightbox picture galleries and AJAX progress indicators of latter days.
The fashion attributes that I find pushed too far are improvised drop-down menus and pop-up “dialogs” which are hard to spot and even harder to use. I managed to rip a whole bunch in only half an hour.
Dropdowns gone wild
It seems that amidst the calls to simplicity, some people simply decided to sweep crap under the carpet. For example, among search engines Live, Yahoo! and especially Ask are gross offenders:
I have a feeling they don’t get usability. Look at the proliferation of menu options. Most of them are irrelevant. They are simply peddling their wares in your face.
MSN was resurrected as Live with a clean, minimalistic interface, but is growing ugly day by day again! And I don’t even know what people behind Ask are thinking. Choosing “Polka dots” for a theme doesn’t seem like a good justification of additional clutter. Read The Paradox of Choice.
Honda, my favorite car manufacturer, has been spotted doing stupid tricks:
There’s absolutely no need to put this superfluous menu on the specs page. A hyperlink to “Build your own…” would suffice. Not only that, you need to aim at the close box to dismiss the menu. Instead of thinking in terms of information architecture, somebody decided to sweep crap under the carpet.
American Express has come up with something genuinely twisted. Look at the statement selector:
You have to expand things inside the menu. Maybe it doesn’t look like much of an offence… until you try to use it and get frustrated.
Unhelpful popups
Let’s talk about popups and dialogs. I don’t know if there’s anything more annoying than unhelpful advertising popups which hijack hyperlinks or “key phrases”. You see this atrocity on MSNBC and many other sites:
Not only doesn’t this popup do anything useful, it’s unsolicited and annoying. Speaking of MSNBC, I found this gem there:
See “Collapse ad” in the upper-right corner? If you click it the ad
collapses, but then expands right back. Why? Because the expand effect is played on mouseover so the ad acts like an accordion. Hello!
Moving on. Other “dialogs” are more innocuous but no less annoying:
Visit Microsoft in Firefox and you get this nagging reminder to download Internet Explorer. Yes, you have to aim for the little cross to dismiss it.
Subaru promotional video gets in the way when you want to check out the new Impreza (which looks very sweet, by the way). The little close button strikes again. Hint: read about the Fitt’s Law when in doubt how big an interactive control should be.
Virgin America Airlines strikes me as a work of mad scientists devoid of social skills:
Click join and you get a dialog with a small close button. The dialog is immovable. A classic case of sweeping crap… You know the drill by now.
While we’re discussing Virgin Air, behold this AJAX aberration:
A progress indicator just to redirect me to the login page? Duh. I also get a kick out of the pricing page:
How do you plan your travel?
- You look in your wallet and say, “I have $160. Let’s see. I can fly
from New York to Los Angeles. Booked!”
- You start by saying, “I need to get from New York to Los Angeles. Now, how much would it cost?”
Shouldn’t Virgin emphasize cities, not prices?
Conclusion
I only call for moderation. Simply because something is hip doesn’t mean it’s useful. I think the concept of “rich” in “user experience” is being badly misunderstood.
