It's Official: Users Navigate Flat UI Designs 22 Percent Slower (theregister.co.uk)

Reader Zorro writes: The mania for "flat" user interfaces is costing publishers and e-commerce sites billions in lost revenue. A "flat" design removes the distinction between navigation controls and content. Historically, navigation controls such as buttons were shaded, or given 3D relief, to distinguish them from the application or web page's content. The mania is credited to Microsoft with its minimalistic Zune player, an iPod clone, which was developed into the Windows Phone Series UX, which in turn became the design for Windows from Windows 8 in 2012 onwards. But Steve Jobs is also to blame. The typography-besotted Apple founder was fascinated by WP's "magazine-style" Metro design, and it was posthumously incorporated into iOS7 in 2013. Once blessed by Apple, flat designs spread to electronic programme guides on telly, games consoles and even car interfaces. The consequence is that users find navigation harder, and so spend more time on a page. Now research by the Nielsen Norman Group has measured by how much. The company wired up 71 users, and gave them nine sites to use, tracking their eye movement and recording the time spent on content. On average participants spent 22 per cent more time (i.e. slower task performance) looking at the pages with weak signifiers," the firm notes. Why would that be? Users were looking for clues how to navigate. "The average number of fixations was significantly higher on the weak-signifier versions than the strong-signifier versions. On average, people had 25 per cent more fixations on the pages with weak signifiers."

Comments

Re:The irony is

[Tablizer]

Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the web was that the server would transmit the relevant info (pictures and text) to your browser, and your browser would format it in the manner which was most readable on your device [or user preference].

This conflicts with the marketer's view of the world. The marketer wants to control the message, and that includes the look of the message. If they want to attract a given "cohort" (demographic), they want to be able to shape and style the content that way to attract that demographic, and sometimes ONLY that demographic to weed out alleged riff-raff and/or not waste ad fees on unlikely buyers.

And how can you get a jump on the latest style if you cannot convey the latest style? Purple denim's the latest craze? Okay, Marketing Joe wants the page show a purple denim font. If the UI dev doesn't deliver, he/she is fired.

Vulcan vs. Ferengi culture conflict.