Perhaps the biggest challenge, and even more so for someone just beginning to think about UX, is knowing how to write and design without making largely false assumptions about the user’s interpretations. Things we think are obvious may not always be obvious to the user. Conversely, interestingly enough, things we don’t think are obvious to the user may actually be painfully so.
Sometimes we forget that the common user is capable of learning, (just like AI! Except the “A” stands for “Authentic”). It’s easy to solve a problem once and never look back, but one of the fun challenges of UX (in my opinion) is that the answers are always changing, even from one user to the next. When our knowledge of the user is out of date, we look out of date. The perceived appreciation of our users and willingness to be competitive goes down. This is why ongoing research is such a crucial piece of the puzzle.
Without further ado, here are five things the common user wishes we would finally assume they know.
1. “Click Here!”
You probably won’t need much convincing on this one. It dates as far back as the invention of the mouse, i.e. before people knew what a button looked like. Nowadays, it’s pretty much a given that, if you see a box with some text in it, or even standalone blue text with underline, and sometimes even just colored text within a paragraph, people know to click on it. Additionally, using the text “click here” means that someone scanning the page has no idea what will happen if they click it unless they stop to investigate the text around it for clues. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
2. Above the fold is old news
Taken hot off the printing press, this theory is in reference to the front page of a newspaper, or the content that is readable without unfolding it. For awhile, this also meant adding down arrows and text such as “scroll down” to let people know they could or should.. This makes sense for print… At a distance, you can read a few words on a Newspaper or the title of a book and know almost immediately whether you want to investigate it further. Today, there are two key differences between the use cases of print and web.
- By the time you’ve opened a page on the web, you’ve already read the headline, and sometimes even a snippet as well.
- Do you remember when a web page only had one section? (Can you believe we ever forgot that’s how it used to be?) Nowadays, scrolling is such a reflex that we don’t need any instruction like a down arrow or “scroll down” text to do so. We do it instinctively.
3. The “F” Shape Isn’t for Everything
Another practice picked up from the printing press. is the idea that when viewing a full page of information, people in the western world have a natural tendency to consume it in order of left > right, top > bottom. As they continue scanning down the page, the thought is that their motivation to go further right wanes, because they grow more and more confident that they “get the idea.” This theory gained special attention with the invention of eye-tracking technology – where researchers could track not just where and what users looked on a screen, but even how long they looked there. But, there are two primary objections to universalizing the famed “F” shape. The first is the same reason that the now canceled TV show “Lie To Me” was unrealistic; just because you know someone looked in a certain direction or expressed a certain emotion briefly, does not mean you know the reason behind it. Eye-tracking isn’t mind-reading. Perhaps they glanced somewhere out of distraction rather than purpose. The second objection is that not all content is consumed the same way. While it does tend to be relatively applicable on a page of text, Pinterest, on the other hand, is a bit challenging to follow the F-shape on.
4. “Flat UI” is 2000 and Late
Unlike the others on this list, Flat UI accurately assumes the user does know certain things and eliminates them accordingly.
If you’re thinking, “hey, I like flat UI,” you’re not alone. However, there is a reason flat UI isn’t the default, and companies like Apple did it (iOS 7) and has since moved on. It falls in what I like to call, “the trend zone.”
Initially, flat UI was largely characterized by its surrender of skeuomorphism. When software was first being marketed commercially, it used real world metaphors to better communicate possibility. For example, just like in a physical office, a filing cabinet contains folders which contain files. When you search and find one you want, you probably open it on your desktop. Likewise, if you were to press a button on say a vending machine in the breakroom, it doesn’t look like construction paper, it appears to be raised with depth, maybe even brightened by a backlight, and “responds” to the touch. Flat UI assumes that, “okay, computers have been around long enough. You should know by now it’s just a metaphor, so we’re getting rid of some shadows and gradients.” However, most users feel about UX the same way they feel about reality TV, “I know it’s fake, but let me enjoy it.”
5. Placeholders are seldom practical
A lot of the time, they’re really more of a nuisance. Think about how many times you’ve seen a field with the label “email” above it, and then inside the box the word “email” again. Similar to buttons and links that have instructions, users don’t need to be told to “type here!” Other unnecessary examples include… well… examples. For example, when I am being asked to fill out my first and last name, and inside the field it contains “John Smith,” I really don’t think I need that much help deciphering what’s expected of me there. Likewise, It’s 2020, everyone knows what an email address looks like. If you don’t know it’s __@__.__, you probably don’t have one. Lastly, if you’re filling out a longer form, glances at it make it look like you’ve filled out more fields than you actually have.
Knowing what’s safe to expect a user to already know, and what they need to be told it is a tricky line to walk, but monumentally impactful nonetheless.
