Tips and tricks
Posted on September 25, 2002 @ 11:09 in General
Yesterday our research group discussed a paper about a research on how people look for health information. Internet is now one of the venues where people look for that kind of information, but we all were shocked by how little practical understanding these people had of the internet, how to find stuff and how to navigate. That the respondents found anything appears to be sheer luck, considering the way they approached (or rather didn't) search engines, commercial interests and brand names. Some literally understood 'the internet' as one huge publication, comparing it with a book, and deemed 'the internet' as whole as a trustworthy source of information, apparently totally oblivious to the fact that 'the net' is rather fragmented and contested 'medium' instead of a 'publication'.
Savvy users may giggle and dismiss these users, but if you find yourself giggling, consider this article on usability research at IBM. It's called 'Seven tricks web users don't know' and I think it's a rather interesting wake-up call. Consider the fact that even tech-savvy users simply don't know that a company logo usually is a link back to the home page or that the use of the stop and refresh buttons of the browser is completely unclear to many users. The author remarks that these users are not dumb or wouldn't like to use the cursor keys to navigate drop-down fields... they simply don't know it's possible. Rather than trying to change all those people's behaviour she argues, it might be wiser to change your website.
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