Jason Terhorst

UX Design Myths

Loving this blog post on UX design myths. My favorite, myth number 2:

People Read

And the explaination:

Short: They don’t. :-) Long: The thinking usually goes something like “If the user is confused, some text explanation will help.” Or you, or someone in your team will think that a dialogue box, page of instructions, or a warning sticker will help clarify a situation.

He backs it up with solid studies and data proving this, so we’re not just pulling it out of nowhere. I continue to have to push the lawyers and reporters I work with to start thinking in terms of web: write all of the instructional copy you want, but no one will read it. Instead, make your links stand out, and link the verbs, adverbs, and prepositions to their associative actions. For example… Wrong: “To post a comment on this news article, click here to register.” Right: “To post a comment, please register or log in now.” (The “register” and “log in” links are actually almost too short, but they do the trick - a slightly larger click area often helps.) The short of it: your readers don’t actually read instructional text on the web. They merely skim, so make your content fit this pattern.