Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Must We Click To Interact?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the step-away-from-the-mouse-button dept.

Rockgod writes, "Here is an interesting experiment (warning: heavy Flash!!) that urges you not to click anywhere in the site yet wants you to navigate through it. It's an exploration of the clicking habit of computer users and aims to help understand why it is so hard not to click." The site records the mouse movements of each visitor and offers you a sample of them to replay. Doing so is a little unnerving, like peering into people's minds.

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, we have got to click by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The cursor isn't always "pointed at something" when it is over the client window. Clicking is often unnecessary, but not always. Anything that reverses itself at once when the cursor leaves the area is fine, but if actions which require another action to reverse the effect are triggered by a mouse-over, users feel that they need to be careful where they point their mouse. They shouldn't have to be careful because mouse movement is not exclusive to one application.

    1. Re:Yes, we have got to click by pchan- · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Someone mod this AC up. It's not that users "need" to click. It's that the mouse interface is designed to safely float over elements without triggering them (although the old X-mouse is a notable departure from this). Only when the user has hit the target is the mouse "active". This is because the mouse is an imprecise and difficult to control tool. Have you ever tried freehand drawing with it? Compare that to what you can do with a pen. Forcing precision on the mouse action requires finer movement, greatly increases the likelyhood of unintentionally selecting something, and is generally far more stressful. This is why the users seem to get anxious and want to click. They really want to avoid this horrid new interface that, for some reason, some jackass is trying to force on them.

  2. I think I like clicking... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Moving the mouse around to navigate was fine, but after a while I felt a bit like I was chewing without swallowing. There's some kind of satisfaction with the click. Maybe it's just habit, but after swooping around without clickin' I felt frustrated and annoyed. Like the UI was doing everything it could to keep me from that button. If normal mouse-using is me going "i want.... THAT." I felt like I was going "I want... I want... I want... I want..." I must have satisfaction, dammit.

    They say one of a baby's first non-verbal forms communication is pointing. Clicking must be somewhere just after that.

  3. HHGTTG by BenjyD · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The site reminds me too much of the gesture-controlled radio in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: you have to sit perfectly still while listening or you'll change the channel.

  4. Even they miss the point? by bigberk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm wondering if even they miss the point of a click. I tried out the site and the problem is unexpected things triggering when I move the pointer past them. The click is a confirmation of a selection, so the pointer selects an option (from a massive grid on our screen) but the click confirms it. Otherwise, as happens with this site, you end up going to wrong places because you have no way of confirming a selection.