My local alderman dropped by the other day, it seems he’s running for Mayor. He handed me a little postcard with his campaign slogan on one side and a calendar on the other side – how nice. When I got it inside the house and looked at it – the calendar was a mashup (to use a virtual term in the analog world) of election dates and the Red Sox game schedule.
Red Sox Game schedule?!!! Hold the phone! What has that got to do with anything?
I suppose the good alderman’s campaign people might say that people would be more likely to keep the card around if it has some useful information on it. In the Boston area Red Sox worship is the main religion – I’m not kidding. Maybe this is so,
The real issue is that, on a postcard, it’s pretty difficult to make out the difference between a primary election and a home game. The card groups together irrelevant information in an artificial way – poor information architecture.
Mashups are great, and they work, when information is grouped in some useful way. Give me a list of bars that sell Sam Adams beer, put them on a map, and give me their proximity to public transportation. It’s useful, it helps me achieve a goal.
There is a trend on many web sites to cram as much information into as little real estate as possible. Cognitively, this becomes difficult for many people, and confusion ensues. If your goal is to confuse people – good job.
A client of mine who gets millions of unique visitors a month to their web site had a home page with just tons of information and links on it. In looking at their stats most people hit the same 3 or 4 pages after the home page. The rest of the stuff on the page only generated clicks from less than 1/10th of a percent of their visitors. They were confusing people with too many choices and too much info.
Research has shown over and over that people don’t read web pages. Sure, you’re reading this right now, but you probably scanned my home page looking at headlines first, found something you were interested in and clicked on it.
Whenever you design anything stat with a persona – a representation of who is going to be using your new thing. What goals are they trying to achieve? What is the bare minimum information they need to achieve each goal? Strip everything else away.
Companies I have worked with have frequently fallen into the trap of equating more features with customer satisfaction. Here’s John’s HuMex Design principle #1 – The right features, presented in the right way equal customer satisfaction. I don’t need a laser sight on my new shovel. I don’t want a coffee-mug MP3 player. I’ll manage to live without a laptop that can microwave popcorn.
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