From uie@uie.com Thu Feb 19 15:30:18 1998 Received: by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id MAA21567; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 12:08:36 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 12:08:36 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802191708.MAA21567@europe.std.com> From: "Jared M. Spool" Organization: User Interface Engineering To: UIEtips@uie.com Subject: Category & Content Links -- UIETips 2/19/98 Sender: uie@uie.com Precedence: list Reply-To: uietips@uie.com Status: RO UIEtips 2/19/98 _______________ Table Of Contents * Introduction * Message From The Editor * Feature: Not All Links Are Created Equal * On The Road * Private Talks * New Course: Web Sites That Work: Designing With Your Eyes Open * Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com * UIEtips Subscription Information _______________ Introduction UIEtips describes our latest research and other information that developers need to design today's products. UIEtips is produced by User Interface Engineering, a product usability consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. Information on subscribing to UIEtips can be found at the end of this message. Visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. _______________ Message From The Editor Jared M. Spool We're busy working on the publication of our newest web-site usability findings. We've done all this research and found out some cool stuff, now we have to let you know what we've found. We're doing this through a few different media: * UIEtips is the first place we publish our results. As a subscriber, you'll find out what we know as soon as we know it. * We've put together a new 90 minute presentation entitled "The Scent Of Information." This talk made its debut to rave reviews at the WinHelp Developer's Conference in Seattle last week. * Our new course, "Web Sites That Work: Designing With Your Eyes Open," will be presented in Cambridge, MA, on March 30-31. We expect this course to sell out -- we haven't even officially announced it yet and we're already getting registrations. (Thanks to everyone who participated in our December rehearsal!) (If you want more information on UIEtips, private talks, or the upcoming web design course, see the information at the end of this issue.) * The two most-recent issues of Eye For Design (Sept/Oct 97 and Nov/Dec 97) have featured several articles from our findings. (We've been a little slow in publishing, but we're just about caught up -- sorry, our recent success has had its price! The Nov/Dec 97 issue just went to the printer and subscribers should get them shortly. We expect the Jan/Feb 98 issue to be ready in the next few weeks.) * We plan to publish a series of special reports this spring. These reports will detail our new findings and provide lots of examples of all the factors we've found that help or hurt the usability of a web site. Watch this space for details. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me or anyone else here at User Interface Engineering. Jared _______________ Feature: Not All Links are Created Equal Some findings from our recent web-site study show that users were more successful in finding information when they followed links that led directly to information instead of links that led to other links. By looking at how these types of links differ, designers can gain insights into effective web-site design. >> Our Link Classification In order to study their differences, we classified links according to where they led. Two types were most significant. "Category" links lead to other links. They were the largest group, accounting for 42% of the links users chose in our study. An example of a category link is a link labeled "Museums" that leads to a page containing links to museum web sites. "Content" links lead directly to information. They accounted for 25% of the links chosen. The remaining links included home/back links and type-in fields for search engines. >> Category Links Hurt Usability We believe that category links may contribute to many of the web-site usability problems we've seen. When we correlated the types of links with user success in finding information, we saw that content links led to success significantly more often than category links, even though users chose content links less frequently. When users chose a content link, they had approximately a 47% chance of finding the information they were looking for. However, when they chose category links, they only had approximately a 31% chance of success. Content links led users to information much more successfuly than other kinds of links. We also found that users were four times more likely to give up on finding information when they chose category links rather than content links. They gave up even though we'd told them in advance that they could find the answer on the site. >> How They're Different One obvious difference between content and category links is that the user is only one click away from information with a content link. With a category link, the user is at least two clicks away. Sites with lots of category links require the user to "drill down" deeper to find information. >> Longer Links May Help Theoretically, content and category links shouldn't look any different, because we defined them based on where they went, not any visual aspects of the links themselves. But we discovered that content links tended to be significantly longer than category links -- 19 words as compared to 5.3 words. (Note that we counted the associated text around the link as well.) Something about the additional words seems to have helped users pick the links that led to the desired information. But not all long content links were effective. The Smithsonian Magazine site (http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu) used article titles as link names. These produced long, but not very descriptive links, and users didn't get the information they needed to succeed. >> Look Down, Not Left The more successful links appeared lower on the page; most of these are content links. The content links users chose were an average of 7.9 inches from the top. The category links they chose were only an average of 4.3 inches from the top of the page. This finding suggests that designers may not need to worry about making web pages short, and can focus on creating good links instead. A left panel is a collection of links on the left-hand side of the page, separate from the rest of the content. We found that links in left panels were much less likely to lead to success than links elsewhere on the page. This may be because most of them are category links. Left-panel links have only a few words because they appear in a narrow column. They also usually appear near the top of the page, often appearing in the first full screen. By contrast, content links can appear anywhere on the page, so their average page depth is more varied. Left-panel links are intended to provide a short cut for users--to give them a way to jump quickly to other major sections of the site. However, because these links are category links, users who clicked on them were actually less likely to get where they wanted to go. Users were less likely to click on left-panel links the longer they used a site. We think they learn that left-panel links don't help them find what they're looking for, so they look for other resources. >> Differences Count >From these striking difference between content and category links, we've concluded that designers may have more success if they put more content links and fewer category links on their sites. They also may help their users if they make category links look and feel more like content links, by making them longer and placing them deeper in the page. We've been experimenting with longer category links in left panels, but haven't measured their impact yet. (You can see an example of this on our web site at http://www.uie.com.) _______________ On The Road User Interface Engineering's consulting team spends a lot of time traveling. Sometimes, you can catch us while we're in your neighborhood. If we have the time, we'd love to stop by and see what you're doing or possibly even give a short presentation about some of our latest research. Here's a brief summary of some of our upcoming travel: Jared M. Spool: - February 26: Seattle, WA (Puget Sound CHI) - April 6: Denver, CO (Web Design '98) - April 14-16: San Francisco, CA (Web Builder '98) - April 19-20: Los Angeles, CA (CHI '98) Tara Scanlon: - April 19-20: Los Angeles, CA (CHI '98) Carolyn Snyder: - March 23-24: Roanoke, VA (Consulting) - March 26-27: Orem, UT (Consulting) - April 19-20: Los Angeles, CA (CHI '98) When we're not traveling, you can find us hovering around our home base of North Andover, MA. _______________ Private Talks User Interface Engineering offers several short talks on topics related to software and web site development. These talks have been "usability tested" at technical conferences across the country. All talks are 60 to 90 minutes in length and include time for discussion. Different talks are best suited to different audiences. We present the highlights here. Check out our web site (http://www.uie.com) for the full descriptions. >> For The Whole Team: We've found that the following talks work particularly well when the whole product team attends. This includes software and hardware engineers, technical support, information designers, course developers, product managers, marketing specialists, and management. *NEW* Darwinian Design Learn how both your users and your products evolve, and how you can stay one step ahead of this evolution. *NEW* In Search of Product Excellence Learn the traits and tricks of the most effective product development teams. Usability: McGyver Style Learn quick and easy techniques for building usable products. Tracking the Ice Floes: Designing for Process Learn how to identify the bottlenecks in a process and increase throughput. In Search of Mission-Critical Applications Hear how other companies have built and deployed mission critical applications. >> For Interface and Product Designers: The following talks are aimed at software engineers, UI designers, usability professionals, tech writers, and anyone else involved in interface design. *NEW* Communicating the Concepts: Learning Design from Tax Software Tax software has to communicate complex concepts quickly. Hear how tools like multimedia help and cue cards can make it easier to teach complex concepts. GUI Tricks: What Works and What Doesn't Find out how best to use Graphical User Interface controls to maximize usability. Building Better Wizards Learn why some wizards works well and others don't, and what you can do to make your wizards usable. >> For Web Designers: Anyone involved in web site design or creation would benefit from the following talks. *NEW* The Scent of Information: How to Make Your Site Smell Great Web users follow the 'scent of information' to find what they need on your site. Here's how to make the scent stronger. Cool Doesn't Cut It: Building a Usable Web Site Hear our research about what actually makes a web site usable. >>For Technical Communicators: Technical writers, information designers, and their managers would benefit from the following talks. *NEW* How to Win Friends and Influence Developers Hear success stories and learn proven techniques for having an impact in product design. What Do People Do with Docs? Hear about how people actually use documentation and online help, based on our observations of hundreds of usability tests. To find out about pricing and availability, please give us a call at (978) 975-4343! _______________ New Course Web Sites That Work: Designing With Your Eyes Open We've got a new course for 1998, based on our ongoing research into the design of web sites. The course contains new and unpublished material. This two-day course is scheduled for March 30 & 31, 1998 in Cambridge, MA. There are a limited number of spaces available, so please be sure to register right away, as this course is likely to sell out quickly. To receive registration and course information, send mailto:courses@uie.com with the words SEND INFO in the body of the message or visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. _______________ Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com In the process of doing our work, we collect a tremendous amount of information on what makes products and web sites usable. Here are three resources that we've made available: Report: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide It's commonly accepted that graphics, color, and white-space are among important elements of a successful web site. However, it turns out that this may not be the case after all. This report sets those ideas on their head. "Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide" is a 155-page report based on our observations of the struggles and successes of more than 50 users as they searched for information on nine popular web sites. (To get a sample chapter and ordering information, send mailto:web@uie.com with the words SEND CHAP-1 in the subject of the message.) Eye For Design If you like what you read on UIEtips, you'll love Eye For Design, our bi-monthly newsletter containing tips and techniques for developing excellent products and web sites. You'll read about the latest research we've done on how to build usable applications. (For a complimentary issue, send your postal address to mailto:efd@uie.com.) http://www.uie.com Here, you'll find articles on many things, including how tabbed dialogs can get designers into trouble, using paper prototypes to manage risk, how to spoon-feed conceptual information using tips and hints, and a new comprehensive UI bibliography from Chauncey Wilson of WilDesign Consulting. _______________ UIEtips Subscription Information To remove yourself from the list: Send the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. To add yourself to the list: Send the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. Questions? Send mailto:tips@uie.com. (c) Copyright 1998 User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 phone: (978) 975-4343 fax: (978) 975-5353 http://www.uie.com mailto:uie@uie.com From uie@uie.com Fri Mar 20 20:13:56 1998 Received: by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id RAA27081; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 17:50:03 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803202250.RAA27081@europe.std.com> From: "Jared M. Spool" Organization: User Interface Engineering To: UIEtips@uie.com Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 17:20:43 -0500 Sender: uie@uie.com Precedence: list Reply-To: uietips@uie.com Status: RO UIEtips 3/20/98 _______________ Table Of Contents * Introduction * Message From The Editor * Feature: For Whom The Page Scrolls * Letters From Readers * New Consulting Service: Web Site Link Analysis * On The Road * On-Site Courses * Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com * UIEtips Subscription Information _______________ Introduction UIEtips presents our latest research and other information that developers need to design today's products. UIEtips is produced by User Interface Engineering, a product usability consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. Information on subscribing to UIEtips can be found at the end of this message. Visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. ___________ Message From The Editor Jared M. Spool In this issue, we're continuing to report on our findings from our most recent web site study. Once again, we've found that popular wisdom turns out not to be true when you actually watch what people do on a site. We also have some letters from readers of previous issues of UIEtips and a new consulting service that analyzes your web site and search engine logs to determine what links you need to have on your site. By the way, if you recently received a message from me saying that you weren't signed up for UIEtips, but it turned out you were, that means that we have two email addresses for you. If you receive duplicate messages from us, just forward both back to me and I'll research the problem. Jared ___________ Feature: For Whom The Page Scrolls It's a widely held belief amongt the web developers we hang out with that users hate scrolling. We've consistently seen designers struggling to keep as much of their design as possible "above the fold." However, our recent study findings say something different -- users will scroll and are more successful when they do. Our tasks focused on information retrieval -- could the user find specific information on the web site. Users participated in a "scavenger hunt" where we asked them to locate the answers on specific web sites to questions we created. While observing the users attempting to locate this information, we found that they were very willing to scroll through long pages. And, in analyzing the links that the users clicked on, we found some very interesting facts: > Fact #1: The lower the link on the page, the more likely it leads to success We measured the depth of each link that the user chose. We found that it was not unusual for users to click on a link that is up to 20 inches into the page. (We measure page length in inches -- an average 800x600 Netscape browser window is about 4.5 inches. So, 20 inches is about four and a half screenfuls.) We also found that, as users clicked lower on the page, they substantially increased the likelihood that they would (eventually) find the information. It seems that users who click toward the bottom of the page are pickier about what they finally click on. (If you are going to choose one link out of four screen, wouldn't you want to carefully consider which one?) Now, this isn't to say that you should move *all* your links to the 3rd screen. It turns out that there are other interesting attributes about those links that are found deep in the page. For example, links that deep are almost always text links. And they are almost always content links. (A content link is a link that points directly to content -- see "Category and Content Links" in the 2/19/98 UIEtips.) Category links are almost always at the top of the page. (A category link is a link that points to other links.) Also, links that are deep in the page tend to have more words (either in the link themselves or in the associated text). This suggests that creating long lists of content links is a successful design approach. Which brings us to our second fact: > Fact #2: The more groups of content links, the more likely the users succeed It was not unusual for these long pages to have their links grouped into categories. For example, the Edmund's home page (http://www.edmunds.com) had groups for New Cars, New Trucks, Used Vehicles, and Buyer Information. When we counted the number of groups that appeared on pages users visited during our testing, we found that users succeeded least when there were only two groups, and they were most successful when four to eight groups appeared on the page. Grouping is a way for users to discriminate among bunches of links. It also seemed that users used the links within the group to confirm they were in the right place by seeing other links they recognized near by. If the grouping didn't make sense, users seemed to have more trouble. However, we found that having more groups wasn't always the best thing. Six or more groups of category links did far worse than six or more groups of content links. Our recommendation to designers is that if you are going to create groups, fill them with content links. How many links should be in a group? Well, we've found that groups with up to 10 links show no negative effects. (We didn't run into enough groups with over 10 links to say one way or another.) > To Scroll or not To Scroll Scrolling isn't the issue we once thought it was. Users will scroll and it doesn't hurt their ability to find information -- in fact, it often helps. When building web pages that are intended to help people find information, you don't need to worry about scrolling. Send your questions and thoughts to uie@uie.com. _______________ Letters from Readers: Category vs. Content Links In the 2/19/98 issue of UIETips we presented our findings on the difference between category and content links. Here's what we heard from one reader [edited for space purposes]: * * * * * >From TamlerH@aol.com As always, I appreciate your latest information on Web links, especially since it fits nicely into what I already believe about information architecture in general. That is, there's a strong analogy between category vs. content links on the one hand, and deep narrow menus vs shallow broad menus on the other hand. Hence, your finding about the greater usability of content links can be seen as a special case of the general rule that menu hierarchy depth should be minimized in favor of menu breadth. Howard ___________________________________________ Howard Tamler, Ph.D. HT CONSULTING - Software Usability Engineering 833 East Meadow Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303 (650) 493-3426 htamler@baychi.org - - - - - In the 11/28/97 issue of UIETips we presented our findings on Internet-Savvy users. We found that, while users with Internet experience had different behaviors than those without the experience, we didn't see any difference in their ability to find information. Here's what we heard from one reader [again edited for space purposes]: * * * * * >From Lee Wright Having just completed research that included a very small group of expert Web users and a small group of novice users, your latest feature on saavy users was of great interest. Overall, we observed significant differences in the propensity of these two groups to look online for certain information as well as the way in which these two groups went about finding information online. Once in a site, however, they had similar desires that were often not met by the existing sites they visited: Quickly and easily find information relevant to helping make a decision. Both groups responded similarly to prototypes that were designed with this in mind. Based on your observations and those from our work, I'd conclude that experienced Web users are similar to those who have a good deal of experience in any other area. In this case, they have developed clues that enable them to quickly judge the pay-off from continuing to hunt through a site. Thus, the fact that they are willing to abandon the Web for an alternative information source at a rate faster than novice users is a function of efficiency, not lack of interest. Once those responsible for sites are able to implement designs (with the appropriate content) that meet the modest needs of their customers and potential customers, they should see higher returns from their online efforts. Best regards Lee Wright Lee Wright People | Design | Technology 214/503-0052 A research-based consultancy Dallas | Los Angeles | San Francisco - - - - - - Send your thoughts to uie@uie.com. __________ New Consulting Service: Web Site Link Analysis Designing a web site is a lot easier when you know what information your users need to find. We've developed a technique that allows us to determine what links users want to click on. By studying how users interact with your current site -- through a combination of usability testing and analysis of your search engine logs -- we can quickly identify the important links that your web site should have. If you would like more information on how we could help you ensure you have the right links on your site, please give us a call at (978) 975-4343. _______________ On The Road User Interface Engineering's consulting team spends a lot of time traveling. Sometimes, you can catch us while we're in your neighborhood. If we have the time, we'd love to stop by and see what you're doing or possibly even give a short presentation about some of our latest research. Here's a brief summary of some of our upcoming travel and what we'll be discussing: Jared M. Spool: - April 6: Denver - Web Design '98 (Web Sites That Work) - April 14-16: San Francisco - Web Builder '98 (Cool Doesn't Cut It & The Scent Of Information) - April 19-20: Los Angeles - CHI '98 (Product Usability Survival Techniques & Web Sites That Work) - April 23: Los Angeles - CHI '98 SIG (Measuring Web Site Usability) - April 29: Chicago - Andersen Consulting (private talk) - April 30: San Francisco - IT Forum (Cool Doesn't Cut It) Carolyn Snyder: - April 14-15: Rochester, Minn. - IBM (Web Sites That Work -- on-site course) - April 19-20: Los Angeles - CHI '98 (Product Usability Survival Techniques & Web Sites That Work) Plus, remember that when we're not traveling, you can find us hovering around our home base of North Andover, Mass. _______________ On-Site Courses Want to set your entire team on the right track for building usable products? Want to have a course that's customized just for your company, where we focus on *your* products and *your* development challenges? Want to get everyone on your team on the same page without decimating your travel budget? If so, an on-site course might be right for you. Some of the courses we can bring to you are: Web Sites That Work: Designing With Your Eyes Open This two-day course is for designers and developers of Internet and intranet web sites, content developers, graphic designers, web authors, and managers. Knowledge of HTML is useful, but not necessary. This course isn't based on opinions -- it's based on actual data about what works and what doesn't. You'll learn about usability tests, the "scent" of information, on-site searching, links, navigation, site organization, graphics, page layout, whitespace, readability, and users' knowledge. You'll gain first-hand knowledge of what works and what doesn't by conducting usability tests on live web sites. Product Usability for Documentation Professionals This two-day course is aimed at people who need to communicate, in particular technical writers, editors, training developers, graphic designers, web site designers, and documentation managers. Discover techniques that will dramatically change the way you build products, without requiring any more time, money, or people. You'll learn how to identify barriers, prevent the majority of usability problems, use techniques for collecting information about users, do usability tests, design usable web sites, and create a fully-working paper mock-up. The following two courses are ideal for all members of the product or web site development team, including software engineers, user interface designers, project leaders, technical writers, marketers, graphic designers, and product managers. Product Usability: Survival Techniques In this one-day course, we'll discuss how quality and usability are intertwined. You'll learn about Affordances, Mental Models, and Tool Time, and how to involve users at all stages of the product's development. Each participant will have the opportunity to build a low-fidelity prototype and conduct several usability evaluations. Techniques for Complex Applications Throughout this one-day course, we focus on the products that you're building right now. The exercises center around *your* applications. By the end of the day, you'll have a whole new perspective on your product. You'll have new questions, but you'll know how to find the answers. We'll discuss Market Maturity, Core versus Ring Applications, how to increase users' productivity, and which techniques to use for a given project. Check out our web site, http://www.uie.com, for more information and additional courses. It lists reasons to bring a course on-site and compares courses so you can decide which one is right for you. Please call us at (978) 975-4343. We'd be happy to have one of our consultants talk with you about your needs. _______________ Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com In the process of doing our work, we collect a tremendous amount of information on what makes products and web sites usable. Here are three resources that we've made available: Report: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide It's commonly accepted that graphics, color, and whitespace are among important elements of a successful web site. However, it turns out that this may not be the case after all. This report sets those ideas on their head. "Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide" is a 155-page report based on our observations of the struggles and successes of more than 50 users as they searched for information on nine popular web sites. (To get a sample chapter and ordering information, send a message to web@uie.com with the words "SEND CHAP-1" in the subject of the message.) Eye For Design If you like what you read on UIEtips, you'll love Eye For Design, our bi-monthly newsletter containing tips and techniques for developing excellent products and web sites. You'll read about the latest research we've done on how to build usable applications. (For a complimentary issue, send your postal address to efd@uie.com.) http://www.uie.com Here, you'll find articles on many things, including how tabbed dialogs can get designers into trouble, using paper prototypes to manage risk, how to spoon-feed conceptual information using tips and hints, and a new comprehensive UI bibliography from Chauncey Wilson of WilDesign Consulting. _______________ UIEtips Subscription Information To get the previous issues of UIEtips: Send the phrase SEND UIETIPS in the subject of a a message to archives@uie.com. To remove yourself from the list: Send the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. To add yourself to the list: Send the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. Questions? Send mailto:tips@uie.com. (c) Copyright 1998 User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 phone: (978) 975-4343 fax: (978) 975-5353 http://www.uie.com mailto:uie@uie.com -- End -- From uie@uie.com Sat Mar 21 16:16:06 1998 Received: by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id OAA05339; Sat, 21 Mar 1998 14:26:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803211926.OAA05339@europe.std.com> From: "Jared M. Spool" Organization: User Interface Engineering To: UIEtips@uie.com Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 17:20:43 -0500 Subject: Scrolling on Web Pages -- UIEtips 3/20/98 Sender: uie@uie.com Precedence: list Reply-To: uietips@uie.com Status: RO UIEtips 3/20/98 (Note: This message is being resent due to technical problems with the original mailing. I apologize for any duplications. -- Jared) _______________ Table Of Contents * Introduction * Message From The Editor * Feature: For Whom The Page Scrolls * Letters From Readers * New Consulting Service: Web Site Link Analysis * On The Road * On-Site Courses * Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com * UIEtips Subscription Information _______________ Introduction UIEtips presents our latest research and other information that developers need to design today's products. UIEtips is produced by User Interface Engineering, a product usability consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. Information on subscribing to UIEtips can be found at the end of this message. Visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. ___________ Message From The Editor Jared M. Spool In this issue, we're continuing to report on our findings from our most recent web site study. Once again, we've found that popular wisdom turns out not to be true when you actually watch what people do on a site. We also have some letters from readers of previous issues of UIEtips and a new consulting service that analyzes your web site and search engine logs to determine what links you need to have on your site. By the way, if you recently received a message from me saying that you weren't signed up for UIEtips, but it turned out you were, that means that we have two email addresses for you. If you receive duplicate messages from us, just forward both back to me and I'll research the problem. Jared ___________ Feature: For Whom The Page Scrolls It's a widely held belief among the web developers we hang out with that users hate scrolling. We've consistently seen designers struggling to keep as much of their design as possible "above the fold." However, our recent study findings say something different -- users will scroll and are more successful when they do. Our tasks focused on information retrieval -- could the user find specific information on the web site. Users participated in a "scavenger hunt" where we asked them to locate the answers on specific web sites to questions we created. While observing the users attempting to locate this information, we found that they were very willing to scroll through long pages. And, in analyzing the links that the users clicked on, we found some very interesting facts: > Fact #1: The lower the link on the page, the more likely it leads to success We measured the depth of each link that the user chose. We found that it was not unusual for users to click on a link that is up to 20 inches into the page. (We measure page length in inches -- an average 800x600 Netscape browser window is about 4.5 inches. So, 20 inches is about four and a half screenfuls.) We also found that, as users clicked lower on the page, they substantially increased the likelihood that they would (eventually) find the information. It seems that users who click toward the bottom of the page are pickier about what they finally click on. (If you are going to choose one link out of four screen, wouldn't you want to carefully consider which one?) Now, this isn't to say that you should move *all* your links to the 3rd screen. It turns out that there are other interesting attributes about those links that are found deep in the page. For example, links that deep are almost always text links. And they are almost always content links. (A content link is a link that points directly to content -- see "Category and Content Links" in the 2/19/98 UIEtips.) Category links are almost always at the top of the page. (A category link is a link that points to other links.) Also, links that are deep in the page tend to have more words (either in the link themselves or in the associated text). This suggests that creating long lists of content links is a successful design approach. Which brings us to our second fact: > Fact #2: The more groups of content links, the more likely the users succeed It was not unusual for these long pages to have their links grouped into categories. For example, the Edmund's home page (http://www.edmunds.com) had groups for New Cars, New Trucks, Used Vehicles, and Buyer Information. When we counted the number of groups that appeared on pages users visited during our testing, we found that users succeeded least when there were only two groups, and they were most successful when four to eight groups appeared on the page. Grouping is a way for users to discriminate among bunches of links. It also seemed that users used the links within the group to confirm they were in the right place by seeing other links they recognized near by. If the grouping didn't make sense, users seemed to have more trouble. However, we found that having more groups wasn't always the best thing. Six or more groups of category links did far worse than six or more groups of content links. Our recommendation to designers is that if you are going to create groups, fill them with content links. How many links should be in a group? Well, we've found that groups with up to 10 links show no negative effects. (We didn't run into enough groups with over 10 links to say one way or another.) > To Scroll or not To Scroll Scrolling isn't the issue we once thought it was. Users will scroll and it doesn't hurt their ability to find information -- in fact, it often helps. When building web pages that are intended to help people find information, you don't need to worry about scrolling. _______________ Letters from Readers: Category vs. Content Links In the 2/19/98 issue of UIETips we presented our findings on the difference between category and content links. Here's what we heard from one reader [edited for space purposes]: * * * * * >From TamlerH@aol.com As always, I appreciate your latest information on Web links, especially since it fits nicely into what I already believe about information architecture in general. That is, there's a strong analogy between category vs. content links on the one hand, and deep narrow menus vs shallow broad menus on the other hand. Hence, your finding about the greater usability of content links can be seen as a special case of the general rule that menu hierarchy depth should be minimized in favor of menu breadth. Howard ___________________________________________ Howard Tamler, Ph.D. HT CONSULTING - Software Usability Engineering 833 East Meadow Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303 (650) 493-3426 htamler@baychi.org - - - - - In the 11/28/97 issue of UIETips we presented our findings on Internet-Savvy users. We found that, while users with Internet experience had different behaviors than those without the experience, we didn't see any difference in their ability to find information. Here's what we heard from one reader [again edited for space purposes]: * * * * * >From Lee Wright Having just completed research that included a very small group of expert Web users and a small group of novice users, your latest feature on saavy users was of great interest. Overall, we observed significant differences in the propensity of these two groups to look online for certain information as well as the way in which these two groups went about finding information online. Once in a site, however, they had similar desires that were often not met by the existing sites they visited: Quickly and easily find information relevant to helping make a decision. Both groups responded similarly to prototypes that were designed with this in mind. Based on your observations and those from our work, I'd conclude that experienced Web users are similar to those who have a good deal of experience in any other area. In this case, they have developed clues that enable them to quickly judge the pay-off from continuing to hunt through a site. Thus, the fact that they are willing to abandon the Web for an alternative information source at a rate faster than novice users is a function of efficiency, not lack of interest. Once those responsible for sites are able to implement designs (with the appropriate content) that meet the modest needs of their customers and potential customers, they should see higher returns from their online efforts. Best regards Lee Wright Lee Wright People | Design | Technology 214/503-0052 A research-based consultancy Dallas | Los Angeles | San Francisco __________ New Consulting Service: Web Site Link Analysis Designing a web site is a lot easier when you know what information your users need to find. We've developed a technique that allows us to determine what links users want to click on. By studying how users interact with your current site -- through a combination of usability testing and analysis of your search engine logs -- we can quickly identify the important links that your web site should have. If you would like more information on how we could help you ensure you have the right links on your site, please give us a call at (978) 975-4343. _______________ On The Road User Interface Engineering's consulting team spends a lot of time traveling. Sometimes, you can catch us while we're in your neighborhood. If we have the time, we'd love to stop by and see what you're doing or possibly even give a short presentation about some of our latest research. Here's a brief summary of some of our upcoming travel and what we'll be discussing: Jared M. Spool: - April 6: Denver - Web Design '98 (Web Sites That Work) - April 14-16: San Francisco - Web Builder '98 (Cool Doesn't Cut It & The Scent Of Information) - April 19-20: Los Angeles - CHI '98 (Product Usability Survival Techniques & Web Sites That Work) - April 23: Los Angeles - CHI '98 SIG (Measuring Web Site Usability) - April 29: Chicago - Andersen Consulting (private talk) - April 30: San Francisco - IT Forum (Cool Doesn't Cut It) Carolyn Snyder: - April 14-15: Rochester, Minn. - IBM (Web Sites That Work -- on-site course) - April 19-20: Los Angeles - CHI '98 (Product Usability Survival Techniques & Web Sites That Work) Plus, remember that when we're not traveling, you can find us hovering around our home base of North Andover, Mass. _______________ On-Site Courses Want to set your entire team on the right track for building usable products? Want to have a course that's customized just for your company, where we focus on *your* products and *your* development challenges? Want to get everyone on your team on the same page without decimating your travel budget? If so, an on-site course might be right for you. Some of the courses we can bring to you are: Web Sites That Work: Designing With Your Eyes Open This two-day course is for designers and developers of Internet and intranet web sites, content developers, graphic designers, web authors, and managers. Knowledge of HTML is useful, but not necessary. This course isn't based on opinions -- it's based on actual data about what works and what doesn't. You'll learn about usability tests, the "scent" of information, on-site searching, links, navigation, site organization, graphics, page layout, whitespace, readability, and users' knowledge. You'll gain first-hand knowledge of what works and what doesn't by conducting usability tests on live web sites. Product Usability for Documentation Professionals This two-day course is aimed at people who need to communicate, in particular technical writers, editors, training developers, graphic designers, web site designers, and documentation managers. Discover techniques that will dramatically change the way you build products, without requiring any more time, money, or people. You'll learn how to identify barriers, prevent the majority of usability problems, use techniques for collecting information about users, do usability tests, design usable web sites, and create a fully-working paper mock-up. The following two courses are ideal for all members of the product or web site development team, including software engineers, user interface designers, project leaders, technical writers, marketers, graphic designers, and product managers. Product Usability: Survival Techniques In this one-day course, we'll discuss how quality and usability are intertwined. You'll learn about Affordances, Mental Models, and Tool Time, and how to involve users at all stages of the product's development. Each participant will have the opportunity to build a low-fidelity prototype and conduct several usability evaluations. Techniques for Complex Applications Throughout this one-day course, we focus on the products that you're building right now. The exercises center around *your* applications. By the end of the day, you'll have a whole new perspective on your product. You'll have new questions, but you'll know how to find the answers. We'll discuss Market Maturity, Core versus Ring Applications, how to increase users' productivity, and which techniques to use for a given project. Check out our web site, http://www.uie.com, for more information and additional courses. It lists reasons to bring a course on-site and compares courses so you can decide which one is right for you. Please call us at (978) 975-4343. We'd be happy to have one of our consultants talk with you about your needs. _______________ Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com In the process of doing our work, we collect a tremendous amount of information on what makes products and web sites usable. Here are three resources that we've made available: Report: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide It's commonly accepted that graphics, color, and whitespace are among important elements of a successful web site. However, it turns out that this may not be the case after all. This report sets those ideas on their head. "Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide" is a 155-page report based on our observations of the struggles and successes of more than 50 users as they searched for information on nine popular web sites. (To get a sample chapter and ordering information, send mailto:web@uie.com with the words "SEND CHAP-1" in the subject of the message.) Eye For Design If you like what you read on UIEtips, you'll love Eye For Design, our bi-monthly newsletter containing tips and techniques for developing excellent products and web sites. You'll read about the latest research we've done on how to build usable applications. (For a complimentary issue, send your postal address to mailto:efd@uie.com.) http://www.uie.com Here, you'll find articles on many things, including how tabbed dialogs can get designers into trouble, using paper prototypes to manage risk, how to spoon-feed conceptual information using tips and hints, and a new comprehensive UI bibliography from Chauncey Wilson of WilDesign Consulting. _______________ UIEtips Subscription Information To get the previous issues of UIEtips: Send the phrase SEND UIETIPS in the subject of a a message to archives@uie.com. To remove yourself from the list: Send the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. To add yourself to the list: Send the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. Questions? Send mailto:tips@uie.com. (c) Copyright 1998 User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 phone: (978) 975-4343 fax: (978) 975-5353 http://www.uie.com mailto:uie@uie.com -- End -- From uie@uie.com Fri Oct 24 00:48:40 1997 Received: by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id WAA00989; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 22:34:46 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199710240234.WAA00989@europe.std.com> From: "Jared M. Spool" Organization: User Interface Engineering To: UIETips@uie.com Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 22:25:48 -0500 Subject: On-Site Searching -- UIETips 10/23/97 Sender: uie@uie.com Precedence: list Reply-To: uietips@uie.com Status: RO Posted by "Jared M. Spool" : UIETips 10/23/97 _______________ Table Of Contents * Introduction * From The Editor: Learning From Lincoln * On-Site Searching * Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com * Upcoming Course * Conference: User Interface 97 * UIETips Subscription Information _______________ Introduction UIETips describes the latest research and other information that developers need to design today's products. UIETips is produced by User Interface Engineering, a product usability consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. Information on subscribing to UIETips can be found at the end of this message. Visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. _______________ From The Editor: Learning From Lincoln Jared M. Spool We're in the throes of completing our latest research study, code-named Lincoln. The objective of this study is to increase our understanding of how to design quality links. (Get it: links -- Lincoln? Ok, it's a stretch, but so are most of our project names.) In the study we conducted last spring (code-named Koolaid -- as in "what are the different flavors of information delivery"), we discovered that links, in particular text links, are extremely important to web page design. But we lacked an understanding of what makes links good or bad. The Koolaid project left us with the belief that a link is a keyhole through which users perceives the page beyond. They peer through this keyhole to identify what the click will get them. Therefore, effective link design has to communicate the benefit of clicking, which, in our tests, was to bring them closer to their goal of finding the target information. So we embarked on the Lincoln study to tell us what makes a good link and what makes a bad link. The Lincoln study is one of the most painful studies we've ever done -- every time users were about to click on a link, we stopped them and asked them a battery of questions about why they chose that link. Also, every time they went to a new page, we asked them another battery of questions about what they got. As a result, we now have more information about how people progress through web sites. We're still analyzing the data from the Lincoln study. Over the next few issues of UIETips, we'll look at what we found. Some highlights include what happens as users learn sites and how users' previous experience and knowledge affect site navigation. In this issue we'll start with something we didn't set out to study: how people use search engines. Let us know what you find interesting and what questions you have. We'll try to answer as many as we can in future issues. Jared _______________ On-Site Searching In a recent study, we sent users off on scavenger hunts of information on various web sites. While all of the information that they sought could be found just by using the links provided, users would often use the search functionality provided by the site. (We saw users use search on 75% of the sites in our study.) This makes sense. Theoretically, if you know the keywords, you should just be able to type them in and instantly find the page you're looking for. However, in practice, it doesn't work that well. Search engines didn't make finding information easier, they made it harder. When users found information without a search engine, they did 50% better than when they tried to use a search engine. Overall, having a search engine on a site doesn't seem to make the site more usable. Of the different sites we tested, the best search engine helped users find the target information only 50% of the time. Some were as low as 25%. We think there are four major reasons for this: 1) Users don't know how to narrow searches Few users did anything other than simple keyword searches. (Almost no one used booleans or other features of the search engines.) They would often type in very broad terms, such as "Videos" when looking for how a video about the Wild West to get a friend. This is the equivalent of walking up to a librarian and just saying "Travel" and expecting they'll instantly find the book on Hawaii that you are interested in. When users got back a result set that was too large to be practical, they often tried completely different keywords instead of adding to the set they had. They didn't seem to know any strategies that would have allowed them to take the stuff already found and narrow it down further (for instance, "regular tire rotation"). None of the sites that we tested provided any useful information on how to narrow a search. In fact, most seemed to assume that users knew how to search effectively and didn't provide any clues at all. 2) Full-text Search engines are not indexed Users didn't seem to understand what a full-text search is. The dynamics of full-text searches are different than looking something up in an index, but users didn't seem to grasp this. For instance, they were surprised when they typed in the word "Tire" on the Car Talk site (http://www.cartalk.com) to find results that contained the word "entire" or the phrase "I'm tired." Although the site did present the option to search for entire words or partial words, users didn't change the setting (the default was partial). We also saw that users didn't understand that plurals and singular words would produce different results and were surprised. Users didn't know that typing errors would produce poor results and couldn't tell that it was a typo, instead of a lack of content, that got them the "nothing found" message. (For example, one user mistyped "Videos" as "Vidoes" and got zero hits -- and then assumed that there weren't any videos on the site.) Full-text searching produces a lot of irrelevant information for users. For instance, one of the tasks we had for the Smithsonian Magazine site (http://www.smithsonianmag.com) was, "Your six-year-old son has to do a report on dinosaurs for school. You remember an excellent article in an old issue of the Smithsonian Magazine that you think would be a fine reference. Go find it." For this task, users naturally typed in the keyword "dinosaur." The first article returned was on the American steel industry -- one of the great American industrial dinosaurs. (Go try this yourself, it's great!) Indexing is a craft that takes a lot of skill. No professional indexer with any self-respect would ever put an article about the steel industry under the topic of dinosaurs. As sites get bigger, this problem will only become more of an issue. Full-text searches will get more noisy and irrelevant as more words are introduced without any sense of what makes them important to the content. Successful searching is essentially an indexing task. To help user search more effectively, this intelligence must be designed into the site. We think that professional indexers and others who have these skills will become more valuable in the years to come. 3) Multiple search areas are not clear Many of the sites provided the ability to search different types of content or different areas of the site. This capability differed from site to site. For instance, the Smithsonian Magazine site lets users search either Feature stories, Columns, or Back Issues '89-'94. Users didn't know which one to pick. Car Talk has four search areas that do not overlap. The designers have scattered the search screens in several different locations (usually with the content it searches). Users not finding information in one area didn't know that they should search other areas. Disney (http://www.disney.com) lets users narrow the areas to search only after they've done an initial search. There is no explanation to users as to how the results from the other areas will be different from the search they just conducted. 4) Search engines are short cuts As a short cut, the search engine is intended to get users quickly to their content. But like other types of short cuts, users first need to know how to get there "the long way." The short cut requires that users understand how the search engine works, how the content has been segmented and indexed, and how content has been labeled (page titles). This is a lot to ask of users and most are not up to the task. Our data shows that the site uses a search engine, there is a strong correlation to users failing to find the right information (r-squared > .7). It also shows that users will gravitate to a search engine when the links are not clear. On sites where no search option was provided, users complained, but did 50% better than the best site that had a search engine. (This is more proof that users don't necessarily know what's good for them.) And with all the times that users failed using search engines, they never seemed to associate the failure with the search engine -- it never occured to them to try a different tack. Instead, they gave up. At this point, based on this information, our recommendation is for site designers to focus on making the long way -- the links of the site -- work effectively for users. _______________ Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com In the process of doing our work, we collect a tremendous amount of information on what makes products and web sites usable. Here are three resources that we've made available: Report: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide It's commonly accepted that graphics, color, and white-space are among important elements of a successful web site. However, it turns out that this may not be the case after all. This report sets those ideas on their head. "Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide" is a 155-page report based on our observations of the struggles and successes of more than 50 users as they searched for information on nine popular web sites. (To get a sample chapter and ordering information, send mailto:web@uie.com with the words "SEND CHAP-1" in the subject of the message.) Eye For Design If you like what you read on UIETips, you'll love Eye For Design, our bi-monthly newsletter containing tips and techniques for developing excellent products and web sites. You'll read about the latest research we've done on how to build usable applications. (For a complimentary issue, send your postal address to mailto:efd@uie.com.) http://www.uie.com Here, you'll find articles on many things, including how tabbed dialogs can get designers into trouble, using paper prototypes to manage risk, how to spoon-feed conceptual information using tips and hints, and a new comprehensive UI bibliography from Chauncey Wilson of WilDesign Consulting. _______________ Upcoming Courses Product Usability For Documentation Professionals November 12-13, 1997 Andover Marriott, Andover, MA This course is filling up quickly. You can check out the course description on our web site at http://www.uie.com or we can email you a brochure. (Just send the phrase SEND INFO in the subject field of mailto:Courses@uie.com.) We can also present our courses at your company. This is more cost effective if you are training eight or more people. If you are interested in a course, please call us right away at (978) 975-4343. _______________ Conference: User Interface 97 User Interface 97 will be held November 3, 4 & 5 in Cambridge, MA. We'll be accepting registrations until the end of business on October 31st. (After that, you can register at the conference.) To learn more about the program for the User Interface 97 conference, send mailto:UI97INFO@UIE.COM with the words SEND BROCHURE in the subject field. Or see the conference web site at http://www.ui97.com. If you are interested in purchasing a set of conference notes, you can send mailto:UI97NOTES@UIE.COM with the words SEND INFO in the subject field. _______________ UIETips Subscription Information To remove yourself from the list: Send the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to UIETips-Request@uie.com. To add yourself to the list: Send the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message to UIETips-Request@uie.com. Questions? Send mailto:Tips@uie.com. (c) Copyright 1997 User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 Phone: (978) 975-4343 fax: (978) 975-5353 http://www.uie.com mailto:uie@uie.com Brought to you by: User Interface Engineering (508) 975-4343 (uie@uie.com) From uie@uie.com Fri Nov 28 16:04:45 1997 Received: by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id NAA15211; Fri, 28 Nov 1997 13:40:42 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711281840.NAA15211@europe.std.com> From: "Jared M. Spool" Organization: User Interface Engineering To: UIETips@uie.com Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 13:21:03 -0500 Subject: Internet-Savvy Users -- UIETips 11/28/97 Sender: uie@uie.com Precedence: list Reply-To: uietips@uie.com Status: RO UIETips 11/28/97 _______________ Table Of Contents * Introduction * Message From The Editor: Trying New Things and a Goodbye * Feature: Internet-Savvy Users * Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com * Letters from Readers: On-Site Searching - Wayne Douglass - Duncan Sanderson - Fred Holtzman - John Springer - Cheryl Ward * 1998 Course Schedule * Area Code Change * New Course: Web Site Usability: Designing With Your Eyes Open * UIETips Subscription Information _______________ Introduction UIETips describes our latest research and other information that developers need to design today's products. UIETips is produced by User Interface Engineering, a product usability consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. Information on subscribing to UIETips can be found at the end of this message. Visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. _______________ Message From The Editor: Trying New Things and a Goodbye Jared M. Spool Our annual conference, User Interface 97, was a great success. We had close to 400 attendees, 50% more than last year. Overall, the conference was a success, and we also received many valuable suggestions for next year. We've already gotten underway with the planning for User Interface 98. The tentative dates are October 5th through 7th, to be held in Cambridge, MA, again. We've received many requests to bring "the show on the road," as it were, to the Left Coast, Europe, and Australia, but I think we're going to stay close to home for the near future. By announcing the dates earlier for next year's conference, we hope to give attendees time to find good deals on airfare. In this issue of UIETips, we are venturing a little off the beaten path. In addition to our usual report on our latest findings, we're going to try a couple of new things. First, I've decided to share some of the interesting feedback we got from our last issue -- On-Site Searching. The neat thing about an email newsletter is that we can be more flexible with the format and therefore make it more interesting for you. Second, we have a special invitation that we're only making to UIETips readers. We're in the throes of putting together a new course on web site design. A one-day version has already been accepted to the CHI conference in L.A. this spring. We're currently considering adding a two-day version to our existing course schedule. Our special invitation is to participate in the design of this course. The details are below, but if you're in the Greater Boston area and want to get a sneak preview of the course, plus contribute to its design, then we've got a deal for you. On a different note, it is time for us to say goodbye to Sandy Spector. Sandy is our latest intern and has been a tremendous amount of help in our most-recent web studies. Sandy was responsible for designing, administering, and collecting the hundreds of data elements that we've been analyzing for the past couple of months and her output will keep us busy for many months to come. Her hard work and diligence has been exceptional. Without her help, we would not have any of the interesting facts that we've recently identified about searching, savvy, links, or the scent of information. This week she's putting the finishing touches on her work and now its our turn to translate her efforts into the reports you'll be seeing. The internship was through the Massachusetts Software Council Fellowship Program. This program places talented people who have been caught in the down-sizing or right-sizing activities of today's world into positions that allow them to get experience in the software industry. We have been exceedingly fortunate to have gotten the cream of the program's crop, and will continue to use the program in the future. We are sad to see Sandy leave us. It is unfortunate that our limited resources, as a small consulting firm, do not let us do what we want to do. She is currently looking for opportunities and we wish her the best of luck in the future. (Sandy can be reached at sspector@uie.com.) Jared _______________ Feature: Internet-Savvy Users One of the biggest surprises that has come out of our most recent study has to do with Internet Savvy. As we brought users in to watch them work with the web, we asked them all sorts of questions about the Internet. From their answers to these questions, their previous web experience and their comfort level with using the web, we came up with a measure we call "Internet Savvy." Based on our previous work, we had hypothesized that those with the most Internet savvy would do the best at finding answers. One reason was from the users themselves: in previous studies, users with little Internet experience always told us that if they had more experience, they would have done better. The second reason was from the web designers we'd been sharing our result with: They always ask if we were testing novices or experienced web users. Based on these comments, we thought we should measure to see if savvy made a difference. It doesn't. Our findings show that there was no correlation between the user's Internet savvy and the number of tasks they successfully completed in our scavenger hunt studies. If there was a difference, we should have seen a positive correlation. Finding no correlation means that just because you've been active on the web, it won't help you find the information you're looking for. >> Defensive Mechanisms We did observe that people who had more web experience behaved differently from their less-experienced counterparts. They had developed behaviors we've dubbed "Defensive Mechanisms." We saw several users independently show the same behaviors. The users who demonstrated these behaviors were all more Internet savvy than users who didn't. Internet savvy users were more likely to: * Scroll all the way to the bottom of a page when viewing it for the first time * Look for a link back to the home page * Look at the status bar to determine where a link led * Use the GO menu to return to an earlier page * Read search tips * Use Edit|Find to search within a page We believe that experienced users evolve these behaviors as a sort of defensive reaction to their experience with other poorly designed sites. For example, one user told us, "I've learned to scroll down, take it all in, before deciding what to click. Look before I leap." However, the defensive mechanisms didn't help: these users had just as much trouble completing tasks as users who hadn't learned these tricks. >> Two Other Differences While we didn't find any correlation between Internet savvy and success, we did find correlations between Internet savvy and two other sets of variables: 1. Critical of Looks Our study showed that Internet savvy users are considerably more likely to be critical of a site's appearance. They consistently rated sites' appearances worse than non-Internet-savvy users. This is probably because Internet-savvy users have seen more sites and have a better point of reference than non-Internet-savvy users. But they were very even-handed in their criticism. They were more critical of *all* the sites, not just the ones that they succeeded less with. Therefore, it may be a mistake for site designers to base their priorities solely on critiques from experienced users, without knowing if the improvements will actually make the site better. 2. Disenchanted with the Web The more experience people have with the Internet, the less likely they are to perceive it as a good place to find information. After each task, we asked the users, "How would you have answered this question if you didn't have web access?" Users who were more Internet savvy were more likely to suggest other non-web venues for finding the information. Our theory is that experienced web users realize the faults of the web. They've developed a "network" of non-web resources to locate information effectively. This tells us that they are more realistic in their expectations of web sites. And even though they weren't any more likely to give up on the tasks we asked of them, in real usage they might be more likely to stop using the web and use a different resource to find the answer. >> Designing For Users The good news is that designers don't have to consider whether their users are savvy or not, and don't have to come up with two designs if they have some of each. But if Internet savvy doesn't make difference, what does? In future issues of UIETips, we'll discuss the other two variables of user experience: how often they've been to the site before and how much they know about the content's domain areas. _______________ Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com In the process of doing our work, we collect a tremendous amount of information on what makes products and web sites usable. Here are three resources that we've made available: Report: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide It's commonly accepted that graphics, color, and white-space are among important elements of a successful web site. However, it turns out that this may not be the case after all. This report sets those ideas on their head. "Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide" is a 155-page report based on our observations of the struggles and successes of more than 50 users as they searched for information on nine popular web sites. (To get a sample chapter and ordering information, send mailto:web@uie.com with the words "SEND CHAP-1" in the subject of the message.) Eye For Design If you like what you read on UIETips, you'll love Eye For Design, our bi-monthly newsletter containing tips and techniques for developing excellent products and web sites. You'll read about the latest research we've done on how to build usable applications. (For a complimentary issue, send your postal address to mailto:efd@uie.com.) http://www.uie.com Here, you'll find articles on many things, including how tabbed dialogs can get designers into trouble, using paper prototypes to manage risk, how to spoon-feed conceptual information using tips and hints, and a new comprehensive UI bibliography from Chauncey Wilson of WilDesign Consulting. _______________ Letters from Readers: On-Site Searching In the 10/23/97 issue of UIETips we presented our findings that users who didn't use a site's search engine were 50% more likely to succeed than those who did use the search engine. Based on these findings, we suggested that if you want users to find information on your site, you should keep them away from your search engine. Here's what we heard from readers [edited for space purposes]: * * * * * From Wayne Douglass >At this point, based on this information, our recommendation is for >site designers to focus on making the long way -- the links of the >site -- work effectively for users. Interesting data, unsupported conclusion. As the author of a "Search Tips" online guide for the Verity search engine, I agree that average users certainly don't have searching savvy, and I tried to overcome their ignorance with my tips. Rather than simply go through the operators, I discuss operators relevant to tasks (expanding a search, narrowing a search, using fields (like author) or zones (like headers) to search, etc). (I even have a one word search that will certainly bring up the most relevant hits with the least noise using ANY Internet search engine. Looking for sites discussing early motion picture technology? Enter "zoopraxiscope." Try it.) The simple fact is that searching is a Zen discipline. If you already know the answer, you can formulate the perfect query. We are all seekers, Jared. "What is the sound of one hand clapping" is just another query. The journey is the reward and it begins with the first step, but if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. --Wayne --------------------------------------------- Wayne Douglass Verity, Inc. mailto:wayned@verity.com http://www.verity.com "Connecting People With Information" --------------------------------------------- * * * * * From Duncan Sanderson Quite interesting issue on web links, search strategies, etc. re "how users' previous experience and knowledge affect site navigation" I think this is a key question, and can be asked also for the searching capabilities (although you have a few observations about this). The related question I would like to see asked is the extent to which socio-economic background affects information finding capabilities, and site navigation. If you have (or had) a cross section of users, and information on their schooling levels (and perhaps jobs or not), you could do some tabular analysis with your data. You may not have "representative users" but I'll bet you could provide some preliminary and interesting findings. This then starts addressing some very interesting issues about whether the web will be "accessable" to certain social groups, and what designers may need to do to make it more so (although possible design options would also have to be tested with users). Regards, Duncan Sanderson * * * * * From Fred Holtzman >Search engines didn't make finding information easier, they made it >harder. When users found information without a search engine, they >did 50% better than when they tried to use a search engine. I would add a 5th [reason users have trouble with searching] - knowing the right words to use to find something. For example I want information on double-spacing. Do I enter: 1) double 2) spacing 3) doublespacing 4) double-spacing * * * * * From John Springer >Users didn't seem to understand what a full-text search is. The >dynamics of full-text searches are different than looking something >up in an index, but users didn't seem to grasp this. Long ago, I realized that most of the documents on my sites are just the same words arranged differently, and therefore a full text search was probably useless. I've stuck with hierarchical indexing and searching for keywords. John Springer---- * * * * * From Cheryl Ward I am a reference librarian and indexer. Yes indeed, the results of the trial searches are interesting. As you may know, some interesting research has been done on what it takes for people to continue or give up as they search for info - mostly paper sources in libraries, I think. I learned boolean searching in programming classes in college but don't remember much about it being taught in library school, when I got my masters. While working the reference desk at a local university, people would look at me like I was crazy when I suggested changing search terms to plurals. I always demonstrated simple techniques like that when giving library tours. It seems like there is a great need for some kind of standardization. For example, when libraries buy non-print resources from different vendors, vocabularies are often just different enough to drive searchers nuts. Of course being a librarian, my suggestion would be to avoid reinventing the wheel by using Library of Congress subject headings. There are some problems with that, though. Oh and don't EVEN get me started on the lack of any kind of logic or standard between all the sites provided by government agencies. YIKES! Cheryl Ward Continental Divide Editorial Services _______________ 1998 Course Schedule We've finalized our course schedule for 1998. All of these courses will be held at the Holiday Inn Andover/Tewksbury in Tewksbury, MA. Product Usability: Survival Techniques January 21 May 18 September 21 Techniques for Complex Applications January 22 May 19 September 22 Product Usability for Documentation Professionals June 15 & 16 November 16 & 17 Descriptions of each of these courses can be found at http://www.uie.com. If you don't wish to wait or come to Massachusetts, we can bring the course to you. Last year, we brought these courses to dozens of companies. It's a perfect way to get everyone in your group on the same page. If you are interested, give us a call at (978) 975-4343. _______________ Area Code Change Along with millions of others all over the country, we've been hit with an Area Code change. Our new phone number is (978) 975-4343. Our new fax number is (978) 975-5353. Our email is the same at uie@uie.com. _______________ New Course: Web Site Usability: Designing With Your Eyes Open We're currently working on a new course for 1998 based on our research into the design of web sites. Whenever we develop a new course, we hold a "rehearsal" of it, where we present it to 15 or so people for free, in return for their feedback. Everybody wins - we learn how to make our courses better, and you get the opportunity to hear our latest stuff, for free. We're still looking for a location for the rehearsal. If you have a facility that can hold 18 folks with 5 or 6 computers already hitched up to the Internet, we'd love to borrow it for a day. All we need is an Internet browser for our exercises. There will be no charge to attend the rehearsal, but it ain't free: we'll expect you to give us lots of feedback on how we're doing and what we could do better. Our tentative dates are 12/16 or 12/17, depending on the availability of the facility. If you think you'd be interested, please send mail to rehearsal@uie.com. We'll contact you as soon as we have more information. (The offer is limited by space, so you'll want to contact us right away.) _______________ UIETips Subscription Information To remove yourself from the list: Send the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to UIETips-Request@uie.com. To add yourself to the list: Send the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message to UIETips-Request@uie.com. Questions? Send mailto:Tips@uie.com. (c) Copyright 1997 User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 Phone: (978) 975-4343 fax: (978) 975-5353 http://www.uie.com mailto:uie@uie.com From uie@uie.com Mon Jul 13 13:36:32 1998 Received: by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id JAA21088; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:06:38 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199807131306.JAA21088@europe.std.com> From: "Jared M. Spool" Organization: User Interface Engineering To: UIEtips@uie.com Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:52:14 -0500 Subject: Pogo-sticking -- UIEtips 7/13/98 Sender: uie@uie.com Precedence: list Reply-To: uietips@uie.com Status: RO UIEtips 7/13/98 ______________ Table Of Contents * Introduction * Message From The Editor * Feature: Pogo-sticking: Downs and Ups * Courses Offered In San Francisco * Letters from Readers * User Interface 98 * On The Road * Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com * UIEtips Subscription Information ______________ Introduction UIEtips presents our latest research and other information that developers need to design today's products. UIEtips is produced by User Interface Engineering, a product usability consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. Information on subscribing to UIEtips can be found at the end of this message. Visit our web site at http://www.uie.com. ______________ Message From The Editor Jared M. Spool This spring has been so crazy that we fell behind in getting UIEtips out. Since the previous issue, we've embarked on some really cool client projects, which I can't tell you about until we've given our clients a chance to integrate the results into their products and services. But there is some thing we learned about that I can tell you about. It is something we discovered last year, but keeps jumping up, as it were: Pogo-sticking. In this issue of UIEtips, we've updated our original Eye For Design article on this, plus we include some letters from our readers. On a different note, over the years we've gotten many requests to bring our courses to the west coast. So, we're trying an experiment: we're bringing our most popular courses to San Francisco the first week in August. If this works out, you can expect us to be back. (Instructions on how to get detailed descriptions of the courses are found below.) Enjoy this issue. As usual, let us know what you think. Jared ______________ Feature: Pogo-sticking: Downs and Ups [ This article was originally published in the July/August 1997 issue of Eye For Design. We've updated it with some recent results. ] We noticed it first in our web-site studies: users would click on a link, jump to a location, go back, pick another link and jump to it -- and so on. Because this process makes users jump around, we call it "pogo-sticking." We use this term to describe any structure that brings a user back to a central location before moving to the next step. Depending on how it's used, pogo-sticking can help users -- or it can totally frustrate them. Thus, designers may want to be aware that they're asking their users to pogo-stick. > Some of the Downs Pogo-sticking can be a serious obstacle to users who are trying to compare information. Forcing users to jump repeatedly and requiring them to remember information between jumps can hinder the process of making comparisons. We saw this problem at several web sites, notably the Disney site (www.disney.com), where we asked users to choose among the dozens of CD-ROMs available for sale. Users quickly tired of being forced to jump around and remember or write down information. One frustrated user actually gave up and decided to request the catalog by postal mail so she could make her comparisons more easily. > Up with the Back Button We've noticed that when users hit the back button in the browser, their chance of finding the information they were looking for drops tremendously (more than 50%). Because pogo-sticking requires the back button to do the "up" jumps, user's rarely succeed. The back button is a problem because it is, in essence, a signal that the user has failed or made a mistake. When they originally clicked on the "down" link, they thought they were going in the right direction. The link was chosen because it was the most likely to yield success. But once they find they didn't go in the right direction, and have to go back up, their frustration increases and their confidence that they can find the information drops. Their confidence remains low once they've hit the back button, even though they've seen and studied the higher-level page before. Now they are faced with determining what the "next most likely" choice is. Occasionally, the "wrong" page they just visited can give them some clues as to what to choose, but this happens infrequently. More often, they tell us that the link they are choosing is just a guess. (We heard the phrase "I'm hoping" quite often in these tests.) > Eliminating Jumps We've seen some variations of pogo-sticking that make comparisons a bit easier: * Don't tell users they guessed wrong. On the Hewlett Packard site (www.hp.com), printers are described under the Printing & Imaging link. However, if a user chose Business & Technical Computing to find a printer for their business, there is a link in that page to get them to the right place. Users didn't have to hit the back button and guess again. * Adding Next and Previous buttons. This allows users to move sideways rather than jump back to the central location. It worked well for users we tested on the Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) and Ziff Davis (www.zdnet.com) sites. * Presenting a high-level summary of the information. With even a little more information, users can make some decisions before clicking on a link. This was effective on the Edmund's site (www.edmunds.com), where designers added a brief text description to each link, giving users a more complete idea of which links they wanted. * Letting users tag items they want to compare, then having the software create a table. Viewing all the choices at once makes comparing them much easier. CompUSA uses this method on its web site (www.compusa.com). Tables bring their own issues, such as being too wide to display without scrolling on some browsers, but these issues may not affect users as much as ineffective pogo-sticking does. > Some of the Ups Pogo-sticking isn't necessarily bad; in some situations it can be helpful. The back-and-forth steps may be beneficial when they help provide context -- as long as users aren't required to remember information between steps. This ability to provide context can be particularly useful when users are trying to complete complex tasks they don't do very often. Microsoft Word 97's Mail Merge Helper uses three pogo-sticking steps. The first step helps users define and name merge fields, then returns them to the main dialog box for the next step: creating a form letter using those fields. It brings users back to the dialog for the final step: creating the mail-merged documents. Pogo-sticking succeeds here because the procedure doesn't require users to remember information (the software does it for them). In this case, the back and forth jumps are useful, not frustrating, because it shows the users where they are in the process. _______________ Courses Offered In San Francisco We've been listening to you -- and we've responded. Thanks to all your requests, we're bringing our three most-popular courses to the West Coast! We've also added dates on the East Coast. These courses are: * Web Sites that Work: Designing with Your Eyes Open San Francisco, CA: August 3-4, 1998 Cambridge, MA: July 27-28, 1998 If you've enjoyed reading about our research findings in UIEtips, then you'll love this course -- two days filled with what we've learned. You'll actually conduct experiments on many of the sites we've evaluated and test your own site against our findings. * Product Usability: Survival Techniques San Francisco, CA: August 5, 1998 Cambridge, MA: September 21, 1998 This is our flagship course. In a single day, you'll learn everything you need to know about conducting usability tests and building paper mockups. The competition is the best part. * Techniques for Complex Applications San Francisco, CA: August 6, 1998 Cambridge, MA: September 22, 1998 This course delves into the difficulty of building complex applications and web sites. You'll learn from our experience in working with some of the most complex applications on the market. To receive our special discounts, make sure you check out our package deals. We would be happy to e-mail you detailed course descriptions and registration information. All you need to do is send mailto:COURSES@UIE.COM with the words SEND INFO in the subject field. Or call (800) 588-9855 or visit http://www.uie.com for more information. Register early; these courses are filling up fast. _______________ Letters from Readers: Scrolling On Web Pages In the 3/28/98 issue of UIETips, we presented our findings that users willingly scroll through long pages, as long as the pages are packed with interesting information. Here's what we heard from readers [edited for space purposes]: * * * * * From: sschoenb@sctcorp.com After reading "For Whom the Page Scrolls" and Lee Wright's observations about experienced and novice users, I got to wondering a lot of things. Questions mostly. What do we know about grouping, language, and how the brain maps information? In addition to experienced internet users, are there certain kinds of people who do better searching the web? Perhaps, people who pick up patterns well. (My husband is more than bright and more than computer literate, but he says he can never find what he's looking for. He makes me do it. He also says I have good "pattern recognition." Sees it even in the games I like.) My own experience on the internet has made me very cautious about what I link to -- at least until I've gotten feel for how the site "works" and the link is within the site. (And if the link isn't within the site or if I can't figure that out easily, I'm even *more* cautious.) Since it *is* so hard to find things sometimes, I depend a lot on the Back button. I would guess others do, too. My first experiences with this kind of button, was in on-line help. It meant '"go back to the last place you were." But on the web, the Back button sometimes means "back somewhere" (there's probably a precise answer on a given site, but I certainly don't want to figure it out) or the button might not be enabled. (Microsoft loves this one. They really just don't want you to be there, do they?) And then when you do select a link, there's Fear of Waiting. Long way of explaining why I select links carefully and don't mind scrolling. And then I had a wryly amusing moment when I just wondered why we don't just hire all the librarians and do the Dewey Decimal System thing and be done with it. Bad moment. I don't expect you to answer any of this, just my way of saying how much I enjoy your stuff. I'm the newly designated "usability person" in a place where the phrase isn't in the vocabulary, so you can imagine what's ahead for me. Sara Schoenberg Senior Technical Writer SCT Government Systems sschoenb@sctcorp.com * * * * * Thanks again for another thought-provoking issue of UIEtips. I do have one comment to add to your analysis of whether readers are willing to scroll or not, and it relates back to your discussion of content links. On the surface, it certainly appears from your study that users don't mind scrolling, but I think you may be mistaking the symptom for the cause and thereby overstating your case somewhat. This by no means invalidates your findings, but it does strongly suggest that you need to re-examine and expand upon them in light of what I've said below. Here's the gist of it: It's basic human nature that people will scroll happily for precisely as long as they think that course of action is productive: if they're reading something interesting that seems to be leading them to the information they seek, they'll keep scrolling, but if it looks like they're on the wrong road, they'll escape (via a hyperlink) as soon as an opportunity presents itself. Since one of the hallmarks of a well-designed page is that it starts with generalities and proceeds towards more specific information, it's likely that a well-designed page will lead people downwards through several screens. (There are other rhetorical models, such as starting from a very specific point and exploring its implications, but I suspect that web searchers are more likely to follow a general-to-specific model.) This follows the traditional rhetorical technique of defining a context for your reader and then progressively expanding upon it, and providing cross-references (the hyperlinks) as appropriate. This has a sound basis in human psychology: If they're still reading at the bottom of the page, it's only because they think that they've found what they want at the top of the page. Any links that appear at the bottom of the page are likely to relate specifically to what they want (i.e., to generate a successful search) simply because they wouldn't have gotten to the bottom of the page unless it was appearing increasingly likely they were on the right track. That observation makes your point that scrolling more tends to lead to success a tautologous argument, not a proof that scrolling per se is a good thing. You do acknowledge this in your newsletter. I think your findings are still important, particularly since you can now take what I've said and try to identify something more fundamental: what underlying rhetorical principles led people to keep scrolling, and what failures to observe these principles caused them to stop scrolling? If it's not imposing too much on your time, why not include this letter in your next newsletter and see whether you can stimulate some discussion of the topic? I think it'll lead you down some very productive paths indeed! Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h@mtl.feric.ca - - - - - In the 11/28/97 issue of UIETips, we published a letter by Cheryl Ward. Cheryl told us she was a librarian and indexer and asked if standardization of categories might make it easier for users. Here's a response to her letter (again, edited for space purposes): * * * * * From: stanz@cam.org (Stan Schwartz) I'm sitting here in bed curled up with a good powerbook reading back-issue #7 of UIE TIPS. I came to a letter written by Cheryl Ward where she mentions: It seems like there is a great need for some kind of standardization. For example, when libraries buy non-print resources from different vendors, vocabularies are often just different enough to drive searchers nuts. Of course being a librarian, my suggestion would be to avoid reinventing the wheel by using Library of Congress subject headings. Boy, did she hit a nerve with that one. I wish I had a nickel for every time I pleaded with someone to use an existing word (one that could be looked up in a normal dictionary) wherever possible. It's as though there is a need to invent a word whenever one cannot find a term quickly enough to finish a sentence. Our desire to appear unique is at cross-purposes with our desire to be understood. The reasons for this are legion. Among other things, I write user-documentation, procedures, and instructional material in general. Above my desk are two maxims: "Write documentation as if whoever reads it is a violent psychopath who knows where you live." and "Creating a quality product is like making love to a gorilla. You can't quit when you are happy; you stop when the gorilla is satisfied." I have to stop before I turn into both of my parents. Your UIE TIPS is appreciated and I have thanked the one who referred me to you. Now, I thank you. Regardz, Stan McCrimmon/Schwartz, Inc. Presentation Planning & Production Specialists 208-248 Elgar Park, Montreal (Quebec) Canada, H3E 1C8 (514) 761-3145 _______________ User Interface 98 Keep October 5-7 open on your calendar for our third annual conference: User Interface 98. We're just putting the finishing touches together on the program and it's looking really good, (if we say so ourselves)! _______________ On The Road User Interface Engineering's consulting team spends a lot of time traveling. Sometimes, you can catch us while we're in your neighborhood. If we have the time, we'd love to stop by and see what you're doing or possibly even give a short presentation about some of our latest research. Here's a brief summary of some of our upcoming travel and what we'll be discussing: Boston, MA: - September 10: Webgrrls -- The Scent Of Information Tara Scanlon and Carolyn Snyder - September 23-24: Web Design and Development 98/East Jared M. Spool (http://www.web98.com) (The Scent Of Information presentation is a "featured presentation" which we're told means that you don't have to pay for the conference to attend.) Cambridge, MA: - July 27-28: Web Sites that Work: Designing with Your Eyes Open Jared M. Spool, Tara Scanlon, and Carolyn Snyder (http://www.uie.com) - September 21: Product Usability: Survival Techniques Jared M. Spool, Tara Scanlon, and Carolyn Snyder (http://www.uie.com) - September 22: Techniques for Complex Applications Jared M. Spool, Tara Scanlon, and Carolyn Snyder (http://www.uie.com) Dallas, TX: - September 28: Performance Support 98 Carolyn Snyder (http://www.epss.com) San Francisco, CA: - August 3-4: Web Sites that Work: Designing with Your Eyes Open Jared M. Spool and Carolyn Snyder (http://www.uie.com) - August 5: Product Usability: Survival Techniques Jared M. Spool and Carolyn Snyder (http://www.uie.com) - August 6: Techniques for Complex Applications Jared M. Spool and Carolyn Snyder (http://www.uie.com) - August 31-September 1: Seybold Publishing 98 Jared M. Spool (http://www.seyboldseminars.com) We may be coming to your company. Here's a list of some of the places where we'll be speaking. If you work at one of these companies, please call or email us for information on how to attend these sessions. The Mathworks (Natick, MA) SAP (Palo Alto, CA) Pfizer (New York, NY) Lexmark (Lexington, KY) Broadway & Seymour (Charlotte, NC) Plus, remember that when we're not traveling, you can find us hovering around our home base of North Andover, MA. _______________ Resources: Web Site Usability Report, Eye For Design, www.uie.com In the process of doing our work, we collect a tremendous amount of information on what makes products and web sites usable. Here are three resources that we've made available: Report: Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide It's commonly accepted that graphics, color, and whitespace are among important elements of a successful web site. However, it turns out that this may not be the case after all. This report sets those ideas on their head. "Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide" is a 155-page report based on our observations of the struggles and successes of more than 50 users as they searched for information on nine popular web sites. (To get a sample chapter and ordering information, send mailto:web@uie.com with the words "SEND CHAP-1" in the subject of the message.) Eye For Design If you like what you read on UIEtips, you'll love Eye For Design, our bi-monthly newsletter containing tips and techniques for developing excellent products and web sites. You'll read about the latest research we've done on how to build usable applications. (For a complimentary issue, send your postal address to mailto:efd@uie.com.) http://www.uie.com Here, you'll find articles on many things, including how tabbed dialogs can get designers into trouble, using paper prototypes to manage risk, how to spoon-feed conceptual information using tips and hints, and a new comprehensive UI bibliography from Chauncey Wilson of WilDesign Consulting. _______________ UIEtips Subscription Information To get the previous issues of UIEtips: Send the phrase SEND UIETIPS in the subject of a message to archives@uie.com. To remove yourself from the list: Send the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. To add yourself to the list: Send the word SUBSCRIBE in the body of the message to UIEtips-Request@uie.com. Questions? Send mail to tips@uie.com. (c) Copyright 1998 (Portions Copyright 1997) User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 phone: (978) 975-4343 fax: (978) 975-5353 http://www.uie.com uie@uie.com