

I am a Crazy Person - pyrmont
http://inqk.net/weblog/2010/09/23/i-am-a-crazy-person/

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jarin
I went to a talk by one of Amazon's UX researcher guys, and Amazon's clutter
boils down to a simple thing:

Cram a bunch of ways of finding products on to every page (except for the
checkout flow), and people will find at least one thing that works for them.

It's completely offensive to our designer sensibilities, but what they've
found is that users just tune out the parts of the page that don't work for
them and go right to the parts they use (almost like muscle memory). It's the
kind of thing you can only do on a site with a lot of repeat customers.

~~~
jacquesm
For a real-life version of that visit an IKEA store, they practically force
you to walk by their whole collection.

It's the one reason I absolutely loathe going there.

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hernan7
That's true, if you want to buy anything from them, be prepared to spend a lot
more time than needed. The store I sometimes go to is organized as basically
one long aisle spanning two floors. Contrast with Home Depot or any
supermarket, where you have several parallel aisles. So yes, the store is not
optimized to make find what you want quickly -- I guess they want to make
buying from them an "experience".

To their credit, they do give away those little maps of the store -- don't
remember if they include the shortcuts on them. Oh, and the smoked salmon is
good too.

~~~
wtracy
The maps do include the shortcuts.

I have had memorable "experiences" at Ikea.

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damncabbage
I wasn't aware the cupboards were big and sturdy enough for that sort of
"experience".

~~~
rolloutroad
Oh, there are a LOT of things you're not aware of, bud.

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ugh
It takes me about one minute to get an overview of opinion pieces on that new
page and to find out whether I want to read anything. During that one minute I
will scroll all the way down. I don’t even have to think about it. This is one
of the New York Times’ more rigid layouts which means that I can actually
systematically read the headline of every single piece on that page without
getting lost. Cluttered is the last thing I would call it.

Sure, they could display less. Ten rows, two columns – that sounds to me like
they picked a nice round number without much thought. Five would do but in
this day and age scrolling is easy. (This guy also seems to have a screen with
a low resolution. I have only 900 vertical pixels and I have to press page
down three times.)

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lukeqsee
This is the proverbial signal vs. noise ratio with a twist that N _signal_ \+
N _noise_ is ridiculously high.

You're not crazy.

We all want clean sites and easily accessed information. I'd pay good money
for a site that presented me with nigh-perfectly organized personalized
"information" (be it news, sports, articles, tech articles, etc.), but nobody
can do it.

So in lieu of the impossible they use the shotgun method, and it works.

Purists hate it. $ > purists.

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roadnottaken
So does he think there should just be less content? It's one thing for a blog
(e.g. daring fireball) to have a sweet minimalistic design that only shows you
one thing at a time... but sites like Amazon and the NYTimes have an
_absolutely massive_ amount of content that they're trying to provide. How is
the NYTimes supposed to make a sleek, un-cluttered interface when they have
3000 new articles _every day_? And it's not junk -- nearly every one of those
articles is thoughtful and well-written. They all deserve some attention.

Do you have any examples of websites that have ginormous amounts of content
and simple, un-cluttered interfaces? And don't say google, because that's
different.

~~~
pyrmont
I'm not sure to be honest. The title of the post is slightly facetious but
really only slightly. I'm thinking I must have a problem because if there is
no other way, and if this is not really a big problem for most web users, then
it's my problem to deal with.

The immediate idea I have is not to used fixed layouts and less 'blurb'. I'm
looking at the Opinion site at the moment (the design of which has changed
since last night) and I'd prefer if instead of giving me a blurb about
Nicholas Kristof's piece it just said Nicholas Kristof on the Millennium
Development Goals.

I might look at mocking up an alternative, though. I'd like to see if I can
come up with something that would suit at least me.

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isleyaardvark
It is easier and quicker to scroll down than to find how to navigate to and
then load several different pages. If you don't like it, don't scroll.

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jcl
I'm pretty sure that Amazon, at least, is testing the hell out of their
layouts. You may not be able to comprehend the guy who thinks "Fabric
softener!", but he's probably out there, spending more money than the people
who prefer less random products.

...not that that makes you crazy, though. Maybe crazy people just spend more
money online than you do. :)

~~~
mhb
Or maybe they've just found some aesthetically offensive local maximum.

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wccrawford
"but it doesn’t stop pages that are three or four scrolls deep"

writes the man that wrote a post 3 scrolls deep.

~~~
pyrmont
I am the man and yes, it's a long post. I'm not actually against putting a
large amount of content on a web page. It's the overloading to pieces of
content that themselves lead off to individual pages that has me frustrated.

~~~
powrtoch
If I may restate this: You're on the article page, therefore we can reasonably
assume you want to read the article. Being on the opinions splash page however
does not lead one to conclude that you want to read every opinion in the
paper.

An alternative, for example, might be only showing the top ranked opinions,
plus some minimalist options to find the others if you want them (a list of
categories, a search bar, a "complete index" link...).

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jcromartie
So what's the solution?

