

Last Impression - rrhoover
http://ryanhoover.me/post/51136892120/last-impression

======
danso
This is a useful post in that the logging-out screen is not something I think
of usually, and yet, yes, it's one more endpoint that you should think about
as a product dev.

That said, I think this piece is not at all relevant to how we use web
services today. Case in point: I almost never log out of Netflix. So that is
almost never my "last impression" of Netflix.

Instead, what my most recent last impression of Netflix is: after the TV
episode finished, I went back to my Netflix homepage, the preview-thumbnail of
the next episode looked really amusing...my most recent thought about Netflix
is _I must get back to my Netflixing tonight._

In other words, if Netflix's homepage designers have done their job right,
then the logged-in homepage is the first impression _and_ the last impression
of a subscriber...subscribers should almost never see the log out page except
in unusual circumstances.

\----

In the case of Facebook, where we're all likely to log out purposefully for
privacy reasons...FB should make the page as non-hostile as possible, but
again, most people who log out of FB (which, let's face it fellow HN privacy
geeks, is not very many) are purpose-driven in a way that no number of cute
animals or fuzzy text will change that. In fact, being _too_ cute will just
creep us privacy geeks even more.

One more use case: Google search. Google famously has designed its search
offering to get users _off_ of the page and into their destination as soon as
possible. If Google has done their job right, then the last impression you
have of Google is the blueness of the link that you're clicking. Where in this
model would a designed-last-impression fit? A "Come back soon!" modal? Using
some of the search result page to remind you how cool Google is? All of these
things clutter the results page unnecessarily.

Again, not saying that the OP is wrong to think about this (though I question
the interpretation of the sparse scientific passage he quotes), it's just that
it's pretty much irrelevant to modern online services' usecases.

~~~
rrhoover
Great thoughts, danso, and I agree with you that the log out page is not the
most trafficked but still worth considering.

More important are the end points in the user's engagement with the product
within a particular "session" (as you've noted). This varies by product and
for some, there's never a clear jumping off point.

