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Web 'Rules' Changing?
sempf writes "Lots of things have changed since we started this HTML. The IMAGE tag was a nice change, and multimedia with plugins like Flash provide a new look.
What interests me the most, however, is the change in two of the hallowed GUI 'Rules' - the three click rule and the 7 +/- 2 rule. The Three click rule (which states that any page in a site or function in an application should be accessible in three clicks) was just debunked by Josh Porter in an article called Debunking the Three Click Rule. The 7 +/- 2 rule states that a user should never be presented with more than 5-9 choices at any given point in the site or application. James Kalbach has an excellent article debunking that rule at Dr. Dobb's Journal.
Worried that there will be no more 'rules'? Never you mind - the Government has come up with New Rules for us to follow."
I'm worried that I didn't know about any rules, and that there are any in the first place.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Unlike real life, the Internet has no rules, be it content, language, format, or organization. These rules are generally asserted to better help web designers (as there are some horrendously designed sites), but they are by no means written in stone. Follow what you think is best.
A blog like any other.
These are rules of UI design, not specific to the web... Bad headline ./
Not only is the Three Click Rule correct for Web sites but also applications. if you embed the final page/function so deep that the user can't find it, you might as well go back to CLI or just google to the final page skipping all the intermediate menus/BS.
So what if we have all these rules if the overwhelming majority of pages out there have Flash intros, content only accessible if you take the time to go through 20 intermediary pages? How many web designers actually know these rules (gudielines) actually exist? I for one strongly agree with these rules, since they enable you to actually USE the webpages, not simply drool over the shiny pictures, but most people out there simply don't know better.
Click #2, find link after futzing with page search if needed.
Oh, I'm sorry, I guess that violates the 5-9 items on a page rule.
I have better rules. How about ban senseless use of flash, annoying animated graphics, lazy conversion of printed matter to PDF documents instead of crafting true HTML pages, and sites with little or no content? But then again, who am I to argue with marketing "experts" who know what I want better than I do?
The "Three click rule" and the 7 +/- 2" rule are good rules for designing simple UIs (of which web pages can be considered a subset), but simple inspection can reveil the problem with this idea.
Suppose a UI were to scrupulously follow both rules. Then you would have a maximum number of choices of 9 ^ 3 = 729 choices. No more.
That may be great IF the number of choices you have is less than 729, and IF the choices can naturally be grouped in bunches of 9.
However, any complicated application may easily exceed this.
Moreover, people CAN deal with more than 7 choices, as long as the choices are somewhat related - Baskin Robins 31 flavors are all exactly that - "flavors". Imagine if a BR menu offered 31 choices of foods, drinks, plate colors, locations in the restaurant, server names, music, etc. ALL AT ONCE.
7 +/- 2 and 3 click are useful GUIDELINES. Just as saying "Using goto in C/C++ is generally a bad idea", or "pointing a loaded gun at any part of your body is a bad idea" are pretty good guidelines, there are times when you need violate them (e.g. error handling in the absence of exceptions, demonstrating a bullet-resistant vest, and designing a complicated piece of test equipment).
You should just use them AS GUIDELINES - "Hey, I really have a lot of items in this menu, perhaps I should take a break and see if I can come up with a different way to group them?"
www.eFax.com are spammers
I believe that when you design a decent GUI for a website, 3 clicks to go anywhere comes automatically. And 5 to 9 options, totally depends on the targeted visitor of the site and the nature of the site.
That's why he put the word rules in quotation marks.To show that these are in fact not rules, just that some call them that.
"Be careful or be roadkill" - Calvin
Yes- and working well in my opinion.
I work for a very large government agency (100,000+ employees). With a LOT of websites. We are research oriented, and each and every little group puts up information in their field on the web.
In the past, it was just a thrill if people could put something up on the web- everyone rejoiced. Most of them were done by someone in the office who was willing to try to create a website, some coded by hand, others used Front Page, Dreamweaver, etc. Some were done by the son/daughter of the employees. But, every single site looked very different, most of them very, very bad.
I was actually hired to unify the look/feel/use of about 300 sites in one division, which is actually a very small percentage of the sites we actually do have.
We've set guidelines, we've created templates, we've contacted some people directly when their site was completely screwed up.
After 3 years, things are finally starting to look good. We still have a few 'rogue' sites, but generally, everything is where it should be.
We of course had to offer the same basic guidelines that the Deptartment of Health and Human Services did- in fact, I wish they had theirs set up 3 years ago, I would have just stolen everything there!
If we had continued with the process of creating sites that didn't work together, we would be doing a disservice to our clients- and WASTING the taxpayers money as everyone of our 'webmasters' learned the rules themselves. So I think this is a good use of taxpayers money- yes, they NEED guidelines.
No reason to lie.
That's exactly why. I agree that there are no rules, but there have been expectations built over the years - I've been writing web since 1990, and they sure FEEL like rules.
/. either, but a person sure gets flamed if they don't meet the invisible expectations! That's true of the internet as a whole, I believe, and those invisible expectations are changing somewhat.
There are no rules ar
S
/usr/bin/grep -i -E meaning life.txt
It is not different times.
It is not smarter or better trained users.
It is about UI desdign.
It is about understanding the human that is doing the clicking and what is the value of that click.
The GOV guide lines shows some of that. You try to remove annoyances and learning curves. Use words instead of codes. Make it easy to look at and that the eyes follow the flow.
We have had this same issue when screens were 24x80, or smaller (anyone, remember 6x40?).
Lastly, where most sites have taken the biggest setup, is allowing google or other search engines to index their sites. This allowed the user to simply "step" directly into website where they need to start and not navigate though lots of bad panels to the one panel they needed.
The 3-click rule gets to the importance of accomplishment -- getting that feeling of moving forward. Your typical e-commerce site takes several pages to enter credit card info, shipping address etc. But as I move thru it, I feel that I am accomplishing the task. On the other hand, if I go to the same site looking for a particular item to buy, I'll give their navigation and search tools about 3 chances to find the item before I move on to another site. If they can't get me close to what I'm wanting in 3 clicks, I'm out of there.
This is the secret that Disney has learned. Their popular rides have LONG lines, but they keep you moving. They entertain you in line. A much better experience than a typical amusement park, where you stand stoically in line.
That is an oversimplification of the issue. It is almost the same as saying 'all good webpages should be good'. Well of course. But what defines good? Similarly, what defines making content easily available? The answer is not as trivial as you might think. And the definition keeps changing, because both people and the technology they use keep changing.
W3C
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I think as the web matures, these so called 'rules' will be rewritten. No hysterical 'end of rules' proclamations need be sounded.
The 3 click rule made more sense during the bubble when there was a glut of sites for every category. Or when there really wasn't a definitive site for any one purpose. When a person knows there are a multitude of sites they can look at, they are reluctant to go too deep on any one site. I can recall using 3-5 search engines every time I was looking for something. I would look at the first result page and then try another engine. Now I only hit Google, but I'll look as deep as I need to.
The 7+/-2 rule is based on a cognitive psychological idea first put forth in an article by George A. Miller, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information. In it he argues that the average person can really only hold about 5-9 things in immediate memory at one time.
I don't believe that is an internet design 'rule' that should be ignored, too many choices in one space will overwhelm your average users.
> they are by no means written in stone
u les
who said they were?
here's a hint:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=r
3 A usual, customary, or generalized course of action or behavior: "The rule of life in the defense bar ordinarily is to go along and get along" (Scott Turow).
the point about the article is that the ideas of what constitutes good design are changing, not that there are or aren't actual rules.
> Follow what you think is best.
what an empty statement, what was I going to do before your wisdom? do what I think is worst?
- a bunch of internet users who agreed to have their internet activities monitored, with statiscation monitored by follow up survey.
- an analysis of web logs, with the follow up survey based on a pop up after they surfed away?
- click-wrapped spyware.
Each of these methods would bring along certain problems. Weblog analysis would (I believe) give the best population sample, but depending on the added popup for the "fustration data" would skew the results. If someone is truely fustrated with the site then a popup when they go will tend to be ignored. Heavy internet users also tend to ignore popups (or have a program or browser setting to kill them before they are seen). Also the survey's context may get lost amongst the windows.Also I thought it interesting that in both of the figures they presented there seemed to be a "fustration spike" at 6 clicks. However they didn't even mention it. I can't be the only one who noticed it.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
The guidelines recommends to optimize for screen resolution and fonts. I think that is a bad idea.
If the statistics that say most people have 800x600 screens are not already outdated, they will be soon. And how do you optimize for peoples eyesight. If I want bigger fonts I set the minimun-font-size in the browser or tell it to ignore font-sizes in webpages even if it breaks the design of some webpages.
How about just making pages that work with any font size and window sizes and then not use absolute font sizes?
I just fired this off to the admins of the site:
.
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Hi folks
I have a few comments about your useability guidelines, most notably the font recommendations found at http://usability.gov/guidelines/fonts.html
While I agree that a 10pt font is ideal for many people, I think it's totally inappropriate for a website to ever set this. Many people are using high resolution or high-DPI screens where 10pt is unreadable; many need larger fonts because of visual impairment; some may want smaller text, etc. Setting an explicit point size will override any preferences the user may have made in their client.
I have visually impaired users at work, and they find many websites apalling - I've had to set their browsers to ignore the website's font settings to make many sites useable. This is not a good situation for anybody, as the site designer uses font size and face as a significant cue for navigation and reading.
As such, I'd love to see you note on your useability guidelines that font sizes should only be set uding relative properties - the 'em' measure in CSS, the '%' measure in CSS, the 'larger'/'smaller' descriptive terms of CSS or the 'SIZE="+-n"' measures in the HTML <FONT> tag. CSS 'pt' or 'px' should never be used where accessability is a concern.
For an illustration of this problem, I suggest that you find a computer with a 19" monitor capable of at least 1600x1200 (or a 21" that can do 2048x1536) and try to use sites that are set to 10pt. Ideally find someone a bit older for this test. For even more fun, use an OS other than Windows that is not guaranteed to have access to the specific fonts the website designer previewed their site using.
Another issue I think well worth mentioning is the use of leading/kerning controls in CSS, especially combined with the use of absolute measurements. Setting the leading in type may well make things look very 'crisp' and 'professional' on the designer's screen, but often makes the content almost unreadable for people who don't have the same fonts, use large or small type, or otherwise differ from the configuration of the designer's test systems. Leading specified in 'px' or 'pt' is especially bad, as this causes each line of type to overlap when the font size is larger than that the page was designed for; it also causes lines to space out very annoyingly when using smaller type sizes. If leading must be specified, it should be expressed in relative measures like 'em' or percent, so that the leading scales with the type size.
One final comment: some sites, while designed to work with a range of type sizes, fall down severely when viewed with _extremely_ large type as is needed for someone who is partly blind. One of the staff at work has serious vision problems, and she finds that on many sites the columns do not expand with the type. If the type is large enough that only one word fits in each column, this is hard to read - but as words aren't broken, if the columns are a little narrower than type can overlap. This makes a site unuseable. Again, it's easily fixed - column and table sizes should be specified in relative measures such as 'em' or percent, never in pixels or point sizes.
Unfortunately, certain buggy web browsers - such as many versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer - have severly broken CSS implementations that make this more difficult than it should be. It is still possible to design good sites that work well even for people who need or prefer different type sizes, however - and I think this is an important thing to encourage.
As monitor resolutions get higher and computer use even more universal, this will no doubt become more of an issue.
I'd love to hear your comments on these suggestions.
Craig Ringer
In this context they aren't 'rules', exactly. Not rules of the net at least, they're HCI guidelines, around half of which are always wrong, and a quarter of which are painfully obvious (case in point being HCI guidelines on colours, i.e. don't use colours that clash and make it difficult to even look at the page)
;)
And naturally, there are always exceptions to the rule - sometimes there is asthetic value in making a flagrantly difficult to use website, even if there is only usability value in it if your target audience are painfully pretentious and will only use pages that are asthetically interesting..
So they aren't rules, they're more like, guidelines
fortune -o
With most browsers, if you "Save as" an HTML page the browser will make local copies of all images/stylesheets/etc linked in the document and link to these local copies instead of those on real server. You can also accomplish something similar with wget. I prefer this to PDF versions for archival, HTML files are much easier to manipulate. Personnaly, I'm annoyed when I'm looking for some information an it's only available as PDF.
I find that annoying because, assuming I'm interested, the first thing I end up doing is printing the HTML page to a PDF file so I can archive it.
This I can't believe. How can a PDF ever be better than HTML for digital archiving? HTML was meant to be read on computer; PDF is intended to be printed out.
Unless you really meant "ugly HTML" instead of merely "HTML". Stupid web pages with colorful toolbars, formatting, background pics, tables-for-layour, ad banners, 'related content' links and 'click here for page 3/21' on the bottom... they're a tough way to read documents, and I suppose a PDF could be an improvement.
But the best way for publishers to present documentation is as simple, usable HTML. Then, if the reader wants a PDF, she can print it herself, and it'll take whatever font and pagination she prefers. (PDFs created by publishers are greatly flawed in that the layout is frozen, instead of being dependent on the qualities of the output device. If I'm reading on a computer, there should be no page breaks.)
It is true that Google replaced Yahoo as THE search engine.
It could well have succeded because it lacks all that crap on the front page.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
HTML pages save to disk too. They just don't come out as a single file.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It is better layout. Include in that heads up displays and better control layout.
All that could be shown from two Italian plummers -- The action must happen in the field of view, if you want some one to react.
Does that not define "heads up displays"?
How about you actually read the page before making stupid comments?
While the article sets out to debunk the web-design standard of the "3-click rule," the real object lesson here is an understanding of how the websites they examine succeed in breaking the latent frustration of visitors. Site "stickiness," keeping users clicking and exploiting links to content, must work against the natural human proclivities for exhaustion of novelty and short attention spans. It is certainly true, as was noted in the article, that years of exposure to an ever-increasing flood of information have increased our thresholds for sifting through data. Still, what really keeps someone coming back for more is a successful application of the reward principle. This shouldn't come as any suprise, game designers have plied this for years. Now, in the case of websites, we see a similar application of this principle. People will move through a task, even if it requires many multiples of 3-clicks, if this history of exploring navigational structures has shown they are moving towards a successful completition.
Most likely, the real truth here is that the 3-click rule evolved out of an era where the 'ergonomics' of human-web internation were poorly understand, providing a quick and easy rule of thumb where content designers could easily throw up pages while still retaining visitors.
In the end, though, one shouldn't come away from these articles with the notion that users will suffer any number of clicking injustices. It does show, however, that there is no substitute for a well-organized site that recognizes the processes by which a visitor will make use of the content.
There are rules, evolutionary ones, bad design gets ignored.
The number of choices that a person can retain in his memory (5-9 according to the cited study) is an important consideration when navigating a web site using a text-to-speech device.
"PDFs created by publishers are greatly flawed in that the layout is frozen, instead of being dependent on the qualities of the output device. If I'm reading on a computer, there should be no page breaks."
It depends on your purpose. If I'm printing some reference material (for instance, the make manual; ignore the fact that there is probably a more suitable for printing PDF version available directly from GNU), I would print it to PDF first. Why? So I can see how it will look. A lot of archival things I want to look as much like the original as possible. If I'm reading the report on the Columbia disaster, I want to read it in PDF so I can see how it was organized in print. I don't want to read the HTML version (like what NASA has for the Challenger's Rogers Report).
Now, of course there are a lot of things for which PDF is unsuited, but there are many many cases where it is very helpful.
It is absolutely traceable to better GUI design. Old style cockpits were full of gauges that had to be scanned, constantly, always checking temperature gauges and a zillion things which almost always had the proper readings and did not change, scan the instruments, scan outside, scan the instruments, scan outside ... boring as hell scanning those gauges, because they were almost always showing what they should have been ... can you spell repetitive? boring?
Glass cockpits and HOTAS, Hands On Throttle And Stick, changed everything. The computer monitored instrumentation, and only showed what was out of spec, and alerted you when that happened. HOTAS meant doing everything from the two controls, stick and throttle. No more moving your hands from the primary flight controls to reach for one of dozens of toggle switches and dials which all looked the same, while pulling 5Gs and still trying to scan all those round gauges and track the situation outside and look where your fingers were.
I knew a retired air force pilot who had flown patched up MiGs collected from battlefields, who said the biggest difference between planes of the same era was that the US planes had HOTAS and glass cockpits, and the Russians still had round gauages and toggle switches. Even if the Russian got on the tail of a US fighter, he had to reach up or over while pulling Gs, trying to reach the arming and firing switches and having to do it quick with one of his hands which really should have stayed on the throttle and stick because he was in combat, but no, so he lost a bit of maneuvering while the American was doing it all with ease because his hands were on the controls that mattered and his eyes were outside the cockpit instead of scanning dozens of round gauges.
*That* is a classic GUI redesign.
Infuriate left and right
It's an oversimplification because the question is inherently flawed. There are different design guidelines for different types of sites - corporate, community, application, news, etc. So a bunch of people running around trying to make rules is simply a bad idea. An honest evaluation of each site design is necessary, and the evaluation must start with the two questions of the original post, not "how many buttons do I have on my site, or how many layers."
I'm a dinosaur. I'm a damn good web coder. I used to love writing clean code. I loved the challange of reproducing what the design people came up with using the least amount of resourses.
Marketing sucked the joy out of my work. I'd tell my boss "Look, it's fast and easy to use, and it looks the same in all browsers!" and he'd say "So? It needs more animations!"
People like me are being replaced with flash monkeys and go tards with dreamweaver.People who can't write a style sheet by hand, or create simple javascripts.
And look at the results! Sites that crash my browser, sites where I can't find any real content. Who the hell thinks a serious b to b site should be loaded down with flash? Why use java for ad banners?
I doubt most non tech savy users on dial up connections are slogging through this crap.
The internet is becoming less and less useful. And we have marketing weenies to thank.
That being said, I'm not in favour or against the 3 click rule. I just don't think that they deserve credit for debunking the 3 click rule.
testing out my trending skills
Is it me or does this report seem rather unscientific? I quote: "we looked at data from a recent study of 44 users attempting 620 tasks." But no mention of the conditions under which these tasks were set. It's obvious that variations in the experimental conditions will produce variations in the results. For example, someone trying to find a product on a particular website may be inclined to give up after 3 clicks if they know they can just click over to the Walmart site to look. On the other hand, if you say to someone "here's a task, achieve it using this website" it's likely that they will persevere a bit more. The cynic in me suggests that the main purpose of the article is to publicise their roadshow. But then, the report does have graphs. Who am I to argue with graphs?
In my humble opinion, it's not how many clicks it takes for the user to get to the content they're seeking - it's how easy each click it.
No matter if it's 3, 7 or 10 clicks - if the user finds the content in a logical path without getting confused, then the UI has done its jorb.
Maybe you need another qualifying rule,
4. have content people actually want
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary