
Your Users Won't Read - mwbiz
http://www.w2lessons.com/2012/01/your-users-wont-read.html
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latchkey
I've building my own site for the last 5 months now and I've been knee deep in
usability like this. It always comes down to what is the easiest path you can
possibly give to your users.

I'd do away with the whole extra click of making someone 'accept' or 'decline'
the invite. Just have the two buttons in the dialog, on the first screen.
Don't make me read, then click, then read again, then click. There is no
logical reason for that extra step at all.

The button on the right should be the 'continue' or 'ok' button and the one on
the left should be the 'cancel' button. Don't use text for 'cancel' or
'decline', just make them buttons. The buttons should be right aligned at the
bottom of the text. This is how the user expects things to be based on UX
experience of their operating system, don't confuse users by changing it up.

I just spent 5 minutes in Balsamiq mocking something up for you [1]. I'm not
super happy with the decline button, I might play around with it in different
areas (or ideally get rid of it all together). The point being that there is
no need for the 'accept' step, since they aren't accepting anything, they are
signing in or creating an account.

By the way, for my site, we got ride of the whole create an account process
entirely. We just have sign in. User clicks sign in and they have the option
of using their FB account (with the bare minimal permissions) or using a
BrowserID account (which only requires an email and password).

Keep it as simple as possible.

[1]
[https://img.skitch.com/20120130-dh9hf6mtt8wwemtgcjy7rq16t2.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20120130-dh9hf6mtt8wwemtgcjy7rq16t2.jpg)

Good luck.

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BurritoAlPastor
I work at a movie theater. We have four pairs of front doors, all of which
open outwards. One pair has handles; these are the doors which should be used
to enter the building. We sell tickets outside, and tear tickets at the door;
if both these doors are open, people come in three or four at a time and we
can't get to them and take their tickets. So, one of these two doors is always
locked, and the entrance door which is not locked has a sign on it that says
"Please use this door."

A nontrivial number of people will come up, read the sign, and promptly try to
open the OTHER door, see that it's locked, and then walk away to try and find
the "other door" - generally trying to push open the out doors. As it turns
out, they all read the sign as saying "Please use other door".

(Occasionally they'll try to claim that the sign is wrong. There's a certain
schadenfreude in the looks on their faces when I convince them to reread it
more carefully.)

So, we removed the handle for the door that's always locked, and took down the
"Please use this door" sign. Now people just walk along the out doors, pushing
on them to try and find the one that'll open.

~~~
tnicola
Putting a 'Please use this door' on a door that is open is redundant. That is
why people 'believed' that the sign said 'Please use other door.'

If you were in front of the door that is open, why say 'Please use this door.'
They will. You don't have to say so. People generally do not walk up to the
door they do not tend to use. Hence why they assumed that the sign said
'Please use other door', since that is 1) what is most often on the doors and
2) it's illogical to have a confirmatory sign on the open door.

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notatoad
it's not so much that users won't read, it's that they read as little as they
think they can get away with to make a decision. the best way to solve this
problem is to take the decisions away from the user. instead of asking if they
want to sign in, give them a username/password form. most of your users will
probably be able to fill out the form. no decisions, no reading necessary, no
problems.

the users that aren't able to fill out the form they will be unable to
continue until they read. they will start looking for the "sign up" button.
make it big and obvious for them. still, nobody has made any decisions. the
user takes the only path available to them.

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vacri
experience in support:

'The software isn't performing the analysis'

"Okay, what does the dialogue box say"

'The data file is corrupted' (we have no such dialog box)

"Hrm, I haven't seen that box before, can you read it out word-for-word to
me?"

'The. Data. File. Is. Corrupted'.

"Hrm, I've not heard that before, could you please spell out the words letter-
by-letter so I can get it exactly right for the developers to look at?"

'Sure: Y-o-u-r s-e-t-t-i-n-g-s a-r-e n-o-t c-o-n-f...'

Even when specifically asked to read the message out word-for-word, endusers
find a way to screw it up.

~~~
LearnYouALisp
Send that to NotAlwaysRight, now.

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ben1040
4 or 5 years ago I made a registration workflow for a event I was working with
as part of a freelance gig. We had a giant bolded text link, something like 24
points, that said "Click Here to Register," right on the front page above the
fold.

I got several emails from users who asked me "How do I register? I looked all
over the front page and found nothing."

In hindsight, I wonder if maybe I needed to make it look like a button, or if
these particular people were beyond saving and wouldn't have bothered to read
the text on the button anyway.

~~~
patio11
The industry has trained people for a decade that primary calls to action look
like buttons. People scan for this as a learned behavior, because scanning
accomplishes their goals faster (true for most HNers), they don't enjoy
reading, they can't read well, or they've learned by painful experience that
words on a computer screen are likely scary gibberish like "screen resolution"
and "defragment" and you should just click the blue thing in the bottom left
corner followed by the blue E so you can get to your Googles.

~~~
icegreentea
On top of this, users have also been trained to ignore anything that looks
like a banner or ad. Sometimes giant text just looks like something meant to
be ignored.

~~~
LearnYouALisp
You should see this website:

<http://airforcefcu.com/>

~~~
ben1040
I didn't even need to expend any mental effort to ignore the large
advertisement-shaped blocks there.

AdBlock Plus did it for me, and delivered me a blank page.

~~~
LearnYouALisp
Apparently with no scripting, the middle of the page does not load.

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metabren
This article comes to the wrong conclusion. Removing the dialog wasn't what
stopped the confusion — changing the text on the buttons did.

Your users will read — but only enough to feel they have an understanding of a
situation before they take action.

~~~
tnicola
I believe that the key word here is _feel they understand_. That does not
necessarily mean that they _actually_ understand.

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rokhayakebe
Why is this a surprise. Reading is sequential. The primary way is which we
consume information is not. Our eyes capture a bit of everything, left and
right, up and down, then our brain gives it a meaning. Reading requires us to
follow a specific path, and I am forced to believe it is harder on the brain.

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aprescott
A related study into how long people spend reading words on a web page found
that on average people only read 20-28% of the text. For 1000 words, the
average visit duration was less than 70 seconds.

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html>

I read quite a lot of text online, and I certainly have a different style of
reading a web page versus reading a book. I'd be fascinated to know how
efficient scanning is after years of practice online, in terms of information
consumed that you're able to recall. 28% is surely too low for adequate
comprehension, though.

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kzrdude
This is Apple's HIG stuff, from the 1990's.

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bittermang
In my experience. It's Murphy's Law adapted to reading.

If you pour a lot of care and attention in to some copy or instructions. They
won't even not read it, they will flagrantly disregard it.

If you fluff up some filler text to fit a space, they will go through it with
a fine tooth comb and hold you to the fire over it.

In my experience, you can't win.

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plasma
If I ever get popup boxes on sites (or Windows), it becomes instinct for me to
click the X or the button that says 'No', because its in the way of what I was
doing and I don't care about whatever it has to say (if I wasn't expecting
it).

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mclin
"Don't make me think" is a pretty good book on this topic.

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biggfoot
This is really good information. We did do some level of usability testing but
we still rely on content for important messaging.

