Design Secrets: Debunking Myths of Usability

Rules that aren’t based in reality are Myths.  Myths are are developed because:

Research is expensive

Hundreds of sites are already designed

We should already know how to design usable websites

Theoretically, rules allow us to transfer knowledge from previous projects to current ones

“The Three-Click Rule” – All content should be three clicks away
If this rule was true, research should show a relationship between user success at finding their content and the number of pages they visited:  users would be less satisfied with more clicks

After testing 44 users completing 620 tasks they found that users continued looking for content, some as many as 25 clicks

Users were not more satisfied with shorter click-streams

When users complain about how long it takes to find content it is not about the number of clicks, that is the way a user can describe that they can’t find something

“Search Dominance” – the theory that some users only search, or highly prefer search over navigating content
“Page Download Speed”  – Do faster loading pages help users?

Common beliefs:

• Users don’t return tot slow sites as often 
• People get very irritated if a web-page takes longer than 10 seconds to download*

A study that asked 12 users to rate sites on more than 50 attributes including professionalism, completeness, fun speed and ease-of-finding things

About.com
Amazon.com
BlackandDecker.com
CDNow.com
CNN.com
Ericsson.com
LLBean.com
Nokia.com
REI.com
Schwab.com

All users rated the speed of sites consistently.  They rated Amazon.com the fastest site and About.com the slowest.

After measuring actual page download time during the usability tests they found that there was no correlation between actual speed and their perception

•  
  • Slowest rated About.com loaded in 8 seconds on average
  • Fastest rated Amazon.com loaded  in 36 seconds on averages

There was a strong correlation however between perceived download time and whether the users successfully finished there task

* Gerry McGovern, new Thinking Newsletter — April, 2003