User behavior and the human mind
The human mind is a strange animal. What seems to be logical and sane to one person may seem totally illogical to another. For example, let’s talk of love. When we fall in love, we think the world of our partner. Some are even devastated when things go awry. But let a few years pass and the same love seems distant and sometimes even ridiculous. ………I know I am straying from the subject. I was actually thinking of user behavior, which seems to baffle everyone of us. Web 2.0 has actually released the dog among pigeons. Let me give an example. In one of the websites I was in as a consultant, we had developed a new interface where, the most popular work of art was displayed on the home page . Visitors could select from among a hundred works of art and indicate their choice. The list of sample works was changed every week. And guess what happened? Whichever work got the highest vote on the first day retained the position after a week. This situation never changed week after week.The question we had to field was whether the choice through the week was independent or was influenced by the initial choice on the first day? We thought of an ingenious way to test the problem. We intentionally gave high votes to a particular work right at the beginning. At the end of the week we saw that the work we had chosen stood first. We repeated this experiment a few times and got the same result.
There is a powerful lesson for the designers of user interface: People follow the herd. What should you do under the circumstances? Give the lead and direction. Visual clues are very important in escorting visitors to the web pages of your choice. I would urge you to carry out a little experiment on your website. Just make your help button larger and more prominent than other buttons. Keep the button at the right top part of the web page. I can guarantee that the number of visitors clicking on the help button will jump overnight. We are mentally wired to follow such visual clues. A good designer should be able to direct visitors to whichever page he wishes, as if casting a spell.
But most of the web designer tends to forget whatever I have said. Another factor which leads to poor design is that software coders tend to assume the role of designers as well. This can be fatal to your website and your fortunes.
This leads me to the next conclusion. Let everyman do his job. Coders should remain coders, website designers should manage the user interface. By designers I don’t mean the guys who do the graphic and animation. Designers should know how people actually think. A deep understanding of human behavior is a must before we call someone a designer. Of course, one should know colors, shapes, fonts……………but how to blend all this together is the real stuff which designers are made of.
Web 2.0 has revolutionized web design. The catch word today is interactivity and collaboration. I will tackle Web 2.0 in detail later on, but for now I will only say that it has transformed static website layouts to a more dynamic creature. User feedback with the use of informal channels like forums and blogs has become common place. But too often we carry this fascination with feedback and interactivity too far. For example, I can easily alter user feedback by giving a few positive feedbacks myself. Alternatively I can influence all future feedback by intentionally giving several negative feedbacks.
Even without introducing intentional bias, I can guarantee a natural bias in most of the events in life. Initial set of circumstances do tend to influence responses one way or other. A good web designer should know this for a fact. It is only then that he can use it to his advantage.
In this context, I like the minimalistic user interface of Google. It has nothing but the search field with a clickable button. There are no diversions, no graphics or advertisements.Look at Facebook. A visitor is compelled to click on a few simple buttons. They lead you where the designer wants you to go. These are only a few examples that come to my mind.
I will put the study of user behavior at the top of my list of priorities. We must study the path which visitors take to reach our websites and the path they take to exit. A better understanding of user behavior will lead us to create better interfaces and navigation. In turn, it will lead to fulfillment. Fulfillment is different from conversion in the sense that it signifies the culmination of all our effort. Design of user interface will be perfect only when we have a perfect understanding of human behavior. Ironically, both remain ideals and are impossible to achieve.
Web 2.0 has not only revolutionized the web design it also had revolutionized designers the way they think before has been changed & the idea towards designing has been totally changed. This what we call updating the technology with mastered human brains.