The Creativity Killer.
If you don’t deal with bad feedback it can disrupt, slowly corrode, and in the end, kill your creativity. If you’ve ever said "Yes, I can change that" and know deep down inside of you a little bit of your creative soul died, then this article is for you. We’ll tackle negative feedback and learn how to combat it. You’ll discover the 12 ways to manage feedback and keep your creativity alive.
Designerus Thickus Skinus
They say the designer’s skin is several layers thicker than most other humans. There is a reason for this mutation: clients, managers, co-workers … Ok, basically anyone with an opinion. I don’t think there are many other professions where any person off the street thinks they might know better than the actual professional does. I would hesitate to tell a surgeon how she should initiate the first cut, or tell the airplane pilot that I think he should move to another altitude for faster travel. But heck if I haven’t had someone walk past my desk and offer unsolicited tips on how I could improve a design I am working on.
Design doesn’t just happen
Most people have a hard time articulating why they like or dislike things. They believe it’s a sort of random reasoning. They know what they like and that’s that. To them design and creativity is just an unexplainable feeling.
What they don’t realize is the experience of a website or interaction is interpreted by the brain in a very specific way. We are born wired to like and dislike certain things. There is a science and logic behind design. Just take a look at the natural world around us. It seems random in its beauty, yet we find that some of the reason behind it has a lot to do with the Golden Ratio.
Design impacts our lives, especially if executed poorly. Today’s designs are online banks, car dashboards, medical equipment, and much more. Someone skilled and experienced should be heavily involved in decisions made in creating them.
Know your feedback
Feedback falls into two silos: Propels Creativity and Kills Creativity. Ok, fairly obvious. What’s more important are the motivations of the people offering it. The motivations of people can overlap, so it’s not always a black and white situation.
Propels Creativity
Collaborative: The person giving this feedback is genuinely interested in making the end product better. They are team focused and driven by being a part of creating something great.They know what they don’t know, and they allow the experienced person to do what they do best.
Informative: This is an experienced professional who respects others, listens to ideas, and wants to explore more than just their own ideas. Their feedback is truly constructive. They encourage and educate others to help them grow. This feedback also makes the final product great.
Kills Creativity
Egocentric: This person believes that their opinion has more weight because their experience or rank means more than your experience and/or rank. They will take credit for ideas until something goes wrong, then it’s all you.
Uninformed: This person feels they know enough to make important decisions based on something like reading an article or working with a designer in the past. They know enough to be dangerous. Some might offer an opinion just because they were asked or only speak up to justify their value as a team member.
Influenced: This person has motivations that relate only to the world they live in. It might be a marketer who only is concerned with a brand guide being followed to the “t”. The user experience might be secondary or quickly drop completely off the list, as they get distracted with unimportant details.
12 Ways to Manage Feedback
1. The Blank Page
Every creative person starts in the exact same place: The blank page. As a designer you create something out of nothing. So when you first get that feedback, ask yourself this: Where were they when the page was blank? It’s easy to give an opinion, but not without something there to critique. Take pride in what you offer and realize how important you are in the process.
2. Anticipate
Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone else. By approaching it from another angle you might find some real issues you can address before you put it in front of anyone. After that, seek out someone that you trust the opinion of and that will give you unbiased feedback. Knowing what might be brought up makes it easier to talk past it. You are in control of the feedback.
3. Know your Stuff
Great design resources (like Six Revisions) are plentiful online and there is always the library. Both of which are free. Take some time to dive deeper into design theory and user experience (UX) methodologies. With UX the best practices and user discovery are all you need to make your work impermeable to poor feedback. Let the research shine. It’s harder to argue with the facts.
4. Power of Three
Every designer goes through many different ideas as they pull together initial concepts. The number that you come up with each time depends on many things including budget and deadlines. Whatever you decide to present, it’s good to assemble a range: A conservative option, a "forward-thinking" or "edgy" option, and an in-between option (a combination of other two). You can guide the decision more by knowing most people go to the middle option.
5. Taking it Personally
Designers become more than attached to their work; They take it to personally. If someone rips down a design, part of him or her is torn too. As a designer you need to think about the bigger picture. It’s important to forward design as an industry. At the touch points in your day-to-day life you represent all other designers. Create great work that meets the needs of the end users or customers and don’t push your own creative agenda. Take the feedback as directed at the work, not yourself. If at some point in the process you have one version you know might not work for this exact project, then work on it for yourself and file it away.
6. Find the Value
Even the harshest words have a source. Your job as a designer is to figure out what that is and if it really has a value. Take a look at the motivations of the person giving the feedback and at its relationship to the whole. Where does it fall? Is it propelling the project to greatness or derailing it and causing frustration? Based on this you either ignore it or add it into the next iteration.
7. Truth and Consequences
Let me tell you the truth: Clients (internal or external) will always be a pain. They give feedback that calls for major changes in near impossible time frames. I agree that it’s not fair. Don’t let your life turn into a "Kinko’s" where everything is expected to be turned around in a few hours and you are never able to spend the needed time to get it right.
The best approach is "Yes, I can do that" to everything. But like any decision it comes with a consequence. Something like: "It will cause the deadline to move back a lot." It really works because you didn’t have to say "no". But, you just gave them a big reason to have to reconsider their unreasonable request.
8. Young at Heart
Luke: "Got ‘im! I got ‘im!"
Han Solo: "Great, kid. Don’t get cocky."
–from Star Wars
Walking into a job fresh from school everyone wants to prove their worth and think they know exactly what solutions are needed. The best advice I can offer is: Shut-up. Listen. Be humble. You just might learn everything you need to help launch yourself off into a successful career. Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to be heard, but you have to earn it. Feedback in the early years gives you experience and growth. One thing to take away from that time is don’t let the rules and having your ideas shot down over the years stifle your creativity later on. Stay young at heart.
9. Push Back
They hired you for your expertise. So give them your feedback! Ask them the reasons behind their decisions to gain some insight into their motivations. Sometimes (Ok, most times) there are very vague requirements and you are throwing out ideas blindly hoping to get it right. They might not even know what’s best and are looking for leadership.
You can drive the process. Get the answers you need. You can’t be afraid to speak up. If you do give feedback you have to back this up though. It can’t just be because you "feel" it’s right. You need to validate it. Things like user research and any other information from discovery or best practices are good.
10. Don’t Break the Rules
The same rules apply to you. Don’t be a design snob and say that no one understands your genius on something you can’t back up. If the work you produced doesn’t tie into the project goals, or if you are simply being trumped on a decision, try to do your best to move on. Find other outlets to let your creativity reign freely. In fact, this is something that you should do to explore new ideas and stay fresh as a designer. There are things clients or co-workers might not appreciate. Other places like the design community might be better.
11. Quiet Confidence
There is a fine line between confident and egocentric. The motives are very different though. You know what you are doing. You are an expert in design. The experience that you have is valuable to clients (whether they know it or not). You shouldn’t try to prove yourself. You should however try to create great work and believe in it. People will always criticize, but you need to be confident and hold true to the vision for the project. If that confidence is based on wanting to create the right thing for the project, not just to prove you are "awesome", then you will find success.
12. Show Me the Happiness
If you are stuck in an infinite loop of degrading feedback that is killing your creativity and burning you out, it might be time to move on. This could be due to a manager or the clients you have to interact with on a daily basis. Quitting should be the last resort after you have tried to deal with things head on and given it as much time as possible.
If you think about it in terms of the other professions I brought up earlier, it becomes a bit stronger. If a surgeon or pilot were continually asked to significantly limit their performance and that they were always wrong, it would not only be frustrating, but a danger to the patients and passengers.
From personal experience I can say there are better clients and better employers out there. Given, no place is perfect, but you deserve to be happy and create great work.
Make Feedback Work for You
How you deal with feedback is what really matters. I hope these tips help.
"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing"
–Aristotle
About the Author
Francisco Inchauste
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
History of Usability
Usability emerged as a result of the intensive research into and use of more advanced technology during the Second World War. It was realised that the adaptation of machines to the human operator increased human-machine reaction, speed and performance. The science soon spread into the field of telecommunications and finally computers. In the U.S. this realisation led to the testing and wholesale redesigning of all digital technology, a usability revolution.Bennett (1979) was the first to use the term usability to describe the effectiveness of Human performance. In the following years a more formal definition was proposed by Shackel (1981) and modified by Bennett (1984). Finally, Shackel (1991) simply defined usability as " the capability to be used by humans easily and effectively, where,
Easily = to a specified level of subjective assessment
Effectively = to a specified level of Human performance
What is Usability?
Usability addresses the full spectrum of impacts upon user success and satisfaction. Usability can be accomplished through user-centered design, although various techniques are employed (eg Psychological perspectives and software driven perspectives). The usability designer provides a point-of-view that is not dependent upon computer programming goals because the usability designer's role is to act as the users' advocate. For example, after interacting with users, the usability designer may identify needed functionality or design flaws that were not anticipated. There are a number of definitions for the quality aspect of usability, including this one from ISO 9241-11:
"The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use."
"The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments."
Apart from this definitions there are plethora of information floating around on the net. Usability is one of the focuses of the field of Human-Computer Interaction. If you ask me, Usability is more of making a product/ application / device function simple, easy to use, less time to orient the user, fast to load/start, less complicated and overall to provide the user with a pleasing user experience. Usability, is a generic term which does not restricts its application to specific field overall it can be utilized in various multidisciplinary fields. For eg. you can design a small paper application form in such a simple way, so that the applicant need not come back to you and ask how to fill in the form. The boundries are limitless and there is lot more you can do. Usability has finds it place in Information technology from long time.
Who works in Usability?
The people who are mostly from the disciplines of human factors psychology, social psychology, industrial engineering, technical communications, developmental psychology, information science, human computer interaction engineering and computer science. Apart from the above people Interactive designers, information designers, Information architects, web designers and graphic designers.
Why is Usability important?
Usability is the measure of the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system - whether a web site, software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device. According to Jakob Neilson, a reknowed web-usability guru, states "On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty." Above all, if the company wants to sale/services to customers, they should re-think usability before putting their site online. As in todays world various companies are already investing millions of dollars to make their web presence more usable.
Benefits for e-commerce site:
More efficient user tasks lead to better sales
Increased satisfaction leads to increased trust and helps to build a company's brand
Increased effectiveness, satisfaction and trust lead to increased customer loyalty, and to more repeated customers (who, on the average, spend more than first-time customers)
Reduced errors and more effective user activities lead to a higher percent of successful transactions (at same cost of hardware and software)
Benefits for portal site:
An enhanced image of the company, through an increased user satisfaction
A better user experience
Increased user effectiveness
How to evaluate Usability?
There are various methods practiced in the industry they are listed below. The list consists of the best known processes used for evaluation. The methods are :
Think Aloud User testing
Focus Groups
What is user centered design Principles ?
The basic and the most simple principle of User Interface design is to make the user feel in control of the software/system, rather than feeling the controlled by the software/system. The basic forms of interaction your software/system should support are listed below. Directness:
The Design of the software should be such that users can directly manipulate software representations of information. Whether they are dragging an object to relocate it or navigating to a location in a document, users should see how their actions affect the objects on the screen. Visible information and choices also reduce the user's mental workload. Users can recognize a command more easily than they can recall its syntax.Metaphor used to label any element of system, should provide direct and intuitive interface for user tasks. Metaphors used should be in such a way that the user can predict and learn to adapt the system for software based representations. The purpose of using metaphors is to provide a cognitive bridge; the metaphor is not an end in itself. Further more the metaphor used can help the user to associate the meaning with a familiar object, than they remember the syntax for that particular command. Metaphors support user recognition rather than recollection.
Consistency:
It allows the user to map the existing knowledge to new tasks in the new interface. This assists the user to learn new things more easily and comfortably. The main reason for this being, that the user need not spend time remembering and comparing the differences in interaction. By establishing a sense of stability and harmony in the interfaces, consistency helps the user to be familiar and predictable about the interface.Consistency with application, by using the same commands to carry out tasks, that seems similar to the users. In case of printing the document, Print command prints the document; obviously, the user can predict what’s going to happen, when this command is executed or button is clicked. Consistency in visual elements, icons represent the set of instructions, which can be easily visualized by the user. For instance, when using icons in the applications care should be taken so that visual icons comply to the functionality of the application. Consistency in visual terms can also be considered by using icons that represent real life objects. For eg. Using the Trashcan icon for storing deleted files/items from the application, here the trashcan can help user recognize the effect of the delete function.
Forgiveness:
Users most of the times like to explore and learn new things. They always starts to learn things with trial and error method, this behavior initiates another important principle, Forgiveness. The interface provides appropriate set of choices and warns them at various stages about the potential situations, where they can damage the data or system. Moreover, the system makes data reversible and recoverable. There are situations where, even in using the best systems users can commit errors/mistakes by clicking something un-intentionally which can be physical mistake or mental mistakes by making wrong decisions about command or data to select. An effective designed can avoids such situations that can result in errors. It accommodates potential users errors and makes it easy for the user to recover.
Feedback:
Users need to get instant feedback about their actions. Informative and real time feedback is mostly desired. Effective feedback is such that it is timely and is presented as close as the users interaction as possible. There are instances when the user has to wait for a while to let the system process the interaction, at this stage the most disconcerting part would be viewing the blank screen that is unresponsive at that point of time.
Eight Golden Rules of Interface DesignAs a result of Interface Design Studies, Ben Shneiderman proposed a collection of principles that are derived heuristically from experience and applicable in most interactive systems. These principles are common for user interface design, and as such also for web design.
Strive for consistency.
Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
Offer informative feedback.
Design dialog to yield closure.
Offer simple error handling.
Permit easy reversal of actions.
Provide the sense of control. Support internal locus of control.
Reduce short-term memory load.
Psychology Behind Usability
Baby-Duck-SyndromeBaby Duck Syndrome describes the tendency for visitors to stick to the first design they learn and judge other designs by their similarity to that first design. The result is that users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems. This results in the usability problems most re-designs have: users, get used with previous designs, feel uncomfortable with new site structure they have to find their way through.
Banner-BlindnessWeb users tend to ignore everything that looks like advertisement and, what is interesting, they’re pretty good at it. Although advertisement is noticed, it is almost always ignored. Since users have constructed web related schemata for different tasks on the Web, when searching for specific information on a website, they focus only on the parts of the page where they would assume the relevant information could be, i.e. small text and hyperlinks. Large colourful or animated banners and other graphics are in this case ignored.
Source: Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings
Cliffhanger-Effect (Zeigarnik-Effect)Human beings can’t stand uncertainty. We tend to find answers to unanswered questions we are interested in as soon as possible. Cliffhanger-effects are based upon this fact; movies, articles and plots with Cliffhanger-effect have an abrupt ending, often leaving with a sudden shock revelation or difficult situation. The effect is often used in advertisement: asking the visitors unanswered and provocative questions advertisers often tend to force them to read the ad, click on the banner or follow a link.
Found out by Bluma W. Zeigarnik in 1927, this effect establishes an emotional connection with readers and is extremely effective in terms of marketing. Visitors can better remember what the ad is about and even smallest details are stored more clearly and precisely. In Web writing the Cliffhanger-effect is also used to bound the visitors to a web-site (e.g. “Grab our RSS-Feed to ensure you don’t miss the second part of the article!”).
Gestalt principles of form perceptionThese principles are the fundamental rules of human psychology in terms of human-computer-interaction-design.
The law of proximity posits that when we perceive a collection of objects, we will see objects close to each other as forming a group.
A real-world example of the law of proximity from MTV Music Awards 2002. Source.
The law of similarity captures the idea that elements will be grouped perceptually if they are similar to each other.
The Law of Prägnanz (figure-ground) captures the idea that in perceiving a visual field, some objects take a prominent role (the figures) while others recede into the background (the ground).
The Macintosh logo can be viewed as a regular happy face and a happy face in profile (looking at a computer screen). Source.
The law of symmetry captures the idea that when we perceive objects we tend to perceive them as symmetrical shapes that form around their centre.
The law of closure posits that we perceptually close up, or complete, objects that are not, in fact, complete.
We perceive the letters ‘I’, ‘B’, and ‘M’ although the shapes we see, in fact, are only lines of white space of differing length hovering above each other. Source.
You can find more information in the article Gestalt principles of form perception
The Self-Reference EffectSelf-reference effect is particularly important for web writing and can dramatically improve the communication between authors and readers. Things that are connected to our personal concept are remembered better than those which aren’t directly connected to us. For instance, after reading an article users better remember the characters, stories or facts they had personal experience with. In Usability the self-reference effect is usually used in terms of web writing and content presented on a web-site.
Usability Glossary: Terms and Concepts
Eye-TrackingEye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (”where we are looking”) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. eye tracking monitor records every eye movement and highlights the most active areas on the site visually. Eye-tracking studies can help to estimate how comfortable web users are with the web-site they’re browsing through and how quickly they can understand the structure and system behind it. You can find some interesting usability findings from recent eye-tracking study Eyetrack07.
Eye-Tracking: Source.
Usability emerged as a result of the intensive research into and use of more advanced technology during the Second World War. It was realised that the adaptation of machines to the human operator increased human-machine reaction, speed and performance. The science soon spread into the field of telecommunications and finally computers. In the U.S. this realisation led to the testing and wholesale redesigning of all digital technology, a usability revolution.Bennett (1979) was the first to use the term usability to describe the effectiveness of Human performance. In the following years a more formal definition was proposed by Shackel (1981) and modified by Bennett (1984). Finally, Shackel (1991) simply defined usability as " the capability to be used by humans easily and effectively, where,
Easily = to a specified level of subjective assessment
Effectively = to a specified level of Human performance
What is Usability?
Usability addresses the full spectrum of impacts upon user success and satisfaction. Usability can be accomplished through user-centered design, although various techniques are employed (eg Psychological perspectives and software driven perspectives). The usability designer provides a point-of-view that is not dependent upon computer programming goals because the usability designer's role is to act as the users' advocate. For example, after interacting with users, the usability designer may identify needed functionality or design flaws that were not anticipated. There are a number of definitions for the quality aspect of usability, including this one from ISO 9241-11:
"The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use."
"The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments."
Apart from this definitions there are plethora of information floating around on the net. Usability is one of the focuses of the field of Human-Computer Interaction. If you ask me, Usability is more of making a product/ application / device function simple, easy to use, less time to orient the user, fast to load/start, less complicated and overall to provide the user with a pleasing user experience. Usability, is a generic term which does not restricts its application to specific field overall it can be utilized in various multidisciplinary fields. For eg. you can design a small paper application form in such a simple way, so that the applicant need not come back to you and ask how to fill in the form. The boundries are limitless and there is lot more you can do. Usability has finds it place in Information technology from long time.
Who works in Usability?
The people who are mostly from the disciplines of human factors psychology, social psychology, industrial engineering, technical communications, developmental psychology, information science, human computer interaction engineering and computer science. Apart from the above people Interactive designers, information designers, Information architects, web designers and graphic designers.
Why is Usability important?
Usability is the measure of the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system - whether a web site, software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device. According to Jakob Neilson, a reknowed web-usability guru, states "On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty." Above all, if the company wants to sale/services to customers, they should re-think usability before putting their site online. As in todays world various companies are already investing millions of dollars to make their web presence more usable.
Benefits for e-commerce site:
More efficient user tasks lead to better sales
Increased satisfaction leads to increased trust and helps to build a company's brand
Increased effectiveness, satisfaction and trust lead to increased customer loyalty, and to more repeated customers (who, on the average, spend more than first-time customers)
Reduced errors and more effective user activities lead to a higher percent of successful transactions (at same cost of hardware and software)
Benefits for portal site:
An enhanced image of the company, through an increased user satisfaction
A better user experience
Increased user effectiveness
How to evaluate Usability?
There are various methods practiced in the industry they are listed below. The list consists of the best known processes used for evaluation. The methods are :
Think Aloud User testing
Focus Groups
What is user centered design Principles ?
The basic and the most simple principle of User Interface design is to make the user feel in control of the software/system, rather than feeling the controlled by the software/system. The basic forms of interaction your software/system should support are listed below. Directness:
The Design of the software should be such that users can directly manipulate software representations of information. Whether they are dragging an object to relocate it or navigating to a location in a document, users should see how their actions affect the objects on the screen. Visible information and choices also reduce the user's mental workload. Users can recognize a command more easily than they can recall its syntax.Metaphor used to label any element of system, should provide direct and intuitive interface for user tasks. Metaphors used should be in such a way that the user can predict and learn to adapt the system for software based representations. The purpose of using metaphors is to provide a cognitive bridge; the metaphor is not an end in itself. Further more the metaphor used can help the user to associate the meaning with a familiar object, than they remember the syntax for that particular command. Metaphors support user recognition rather than recollection.
Consistency:
It allows the user to map the existing knowledge to new tasks in the new interface. This assists the user to learn new things more easily and comfortably. The main reason for this being, that the user need not spend time remembering and comparing the differences in interaction. By establishing a sense of stability and harmony in the interfaces, consistency helps the user to be familiar and predictable about the interface.Consistency with application, by using the same commands to carry out tasks, that seems similar to the users. In case of printing the document, Print command prints the document; obviously, the user can predict what’s going to happen, when this command is executed or button is clicked. Consistency in visual elements, icons represent the set of instructions, which can be easily visualized by the user. For instance, when using icons in the applications care should be taken so that visual icons comply to the functionality of the application. Consistency in visual terms can also be considered by using icons that represent real life objects. For eg. Using the Trashcan icon for storing deleted files/items from the application, here the trashcan can help user recognize the effect of the delete function.
Forgiveness:
Users most of the times like to explore and learn new things. They always starts to learn things with trial and error method, this behavior initiates another important principle, Forgiveness. The interface provides appropriate set of choices and warns them at various stages about the potential situations, where they can damage the data or system. Moreover, the system makes data reversible and recoverable. There are situations where, even in using the best systems users can commit errors/mistakes by clicking something un-intentionally which can be physical mistake or mental mistakes by making wrong decisions about command or data to select. An effective designed can avoids such situations that can result in errors. It accommodates potential users errors and makes it easy for the user to recover.
Feedback:
Users need to get instant feedback about their actions. Informative and real time feedback is mostly desired. Effective feedback is such that it is timely and is presented as close as the users interaction as possible. There are instances when the user has to wait for a while to let the system process the interaction, at this stage the most disconcerting part would be viewing the blank screen that is unresponsive at that point of time.
Eight Golden Rules of Interface DesignAs a result of Interface Design Studies, Ben Shneiderman proposed a collection of principles that are derived heuristically from experience and applicable in most interactive systems. These principles are common for user interface design, and as such also for web design.
Strive for consistency.
Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
Offer informative feedback.
Design dialog to yield closure.
Offer simple error handling.
Permit easy reversal of actions.
Provide the sense of control. Support internal locus of control.
Reduce short-term memory load.
Psychology Behind Usability
Baby-Duck-SyndromeBaby Duck Syndrome describes the tendency for visitors to stick to the first design they learn and judge other designs by their similarity to that first design. The result is that users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems. This results in the usability problems most re-designs have: users, get used with previous designs, feel uncomfortable with new site structure they have to find their way through.
Banner-BlindnessWeb users tend to ignore everything that looks like advertisement and, what is interesting, they’re pretty good at it. Although advertisement is noticed, it is almost always ignored. Since users have constructed web related schemata for different tasks on the Web, when searching for specific information on a website, they focus only on the parts of the page where they would assume the relevant information could be, i.e. small text and hyperlinks. Large colourful or animated banners and other graphics are in this case ignored.
Source: Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings
Cliffhanger-Effect (Zeigarnik-Effect)Human beings can’t stand uncertainty. We tend to find answers to unanswered questions we are interested in as soon as possible. Cliffhanger-effects are based upon this fact; movies, articles and plots with Cliffhanger-effect have an abrupt ending, often leaving with a sudden shock revelation or difficult situation. The effect is often used in advertisement: asking the visitors unanswered and provocative questions advertisers often tend to force them to read the ad, click on the banner or follow a link.
Found out by Bluma W. Zeigarnik in 1927, this effect establishes an emotional connection with readers and is extremely effective in terms of marketing. Visitors can better remember what the ad is about and even smallest details are stored more clearly and precisely. In Web writing the Cliffhanger-effect is also used to bound the visitors to a web-site (e.g. “Grab our RSS-Feed to ensure you don’t miss the second part of the article!”).
Gestalt principles of form perceptionThese principles are the fundamental rules of human psychology in terms of human-computer-interaction-design.
The law of proximity posits that when we perceive a collection of objects, we will see objects close to each other as forming a group.
A real-world example of the law of proximity from MTV Music Awards 2002. Source.
The law of similarity captures the idea that elements will be grouped perceptually if they are similar to each other.
The Law of Prägnanz (figure-ground) captures the idea that in perceiving a visual field, some objects take a prominent role (the figures) while others recede into the background (the ground).
The Macintosh logo can be viewed as a regular happy face and a happy face in profile (looking at a computer screen). Source.
The law of symmetry captures the idea that when we perceive objects we tend to perceive them as symmetrical shapes that form around their centre.
The law of closure posits that we perceptually close up, or complete, objects that are not, in fact, complete.
We perceive the letters ‘I’, ‘B’, and ‘M’ although the shapes we see, in fact, are only lines of white space of differing length hovering above each other. Source.
You can find more information in the article Gestalt principles of form perception
The Self-Reference EffectSelf-reference effect is particularly important for web writing and can dramatically improve the communication between authors and readers. Things that are connected to our personal concept are remembered better than those which aren’t directly connected to us. For instance, after reading an article users better remember the characters, stories or facts they had personal experience with. In Usability the self-reference effect is usually used in terms of web writing and content presented on a web-site.
Usability Glossary: Terms and Concepts
Eye-TrackingEye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (”where we are looking”) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. eye tracking monitor records every eye movement and highlights the most active areas on the site visually. Eye-tracking studies can help to estimate how comfortable web users are with the web-site they’re browsing through and how quickly they can understand the structure and system behind it. You can find some interesting usability findings from recent eye-tracking study Eyetrack07.
Eye-Tracking: Source.
Fold
The fold is defined as the lowest point where a web-site is no longer visible on the screen. The position of the fold is, of course, defined by the screen resolution of your visitor. The region above the fold (also called screenful) describes the region of a page that is visible without scrolling. Since the fold is seen directly without scrolling, it is often considered as the area which guarantees the highest possible ad click rates and revenues. However, Fold area isn’t that important.
Foveal viewport (Foveal area)
The fovea, a part of human’s eye, is responsible for sharp central vision, which is necessary in humans for reading, watching television or movies, driving, and any activity where visual detail is of primary importance. Foveal area is a small wide space area where your eyes are aimed at and it is the only area where you can perceive the maximum level of detail. Foveal area is a tight area of about two degrees of visual field or two thumbnails held in front of your eyes. This is the place where you’d like to deliver the most important messages of your visitors.
Foveal viewport is important, because outside of this wide screen area how your visitors see your web-pages change dramatically. Inside this area is the only part of your vision with the maximal resolution - only here no eye scanning is necessary.
Gloss
Gloss is an automated action that provides hints and summary information on where the link refers to and where it will take the user once it’s clicked. Hints can be provided via title-attribute of links. From the usability point of view users want to have the full control over everything what is happening on a web-site; clear and precise explanations of internal and outgoing links, supported by sound anchor text, can improve the usability of a web-site.
Graceful Degradation (Fault-tolerance)
Graceful Degradation is the property of a web-site to present its content and its basic features even if some of its components (partly or at all) can’t be displayed or used. In practice it means that web-sites display their content in every possible “fault” scenario and can be used in every configuration (browser, plug-ins, connection, OS etc.) the visitor might have. “Power-users” are still offered a full, enhanced version of the page. For instance, it’s typical to offer alternatives for Multimedia-content (for instance image) to ensure that the content can be perceived if images can’t be displayed.
Granularity
Granularity is the degree to which a large, usually complex data set or information has been broken down into smaller units.
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