One thing that I do not hear discussed is the reasons why you even need a website. In my consulting work, I will frequently ask if the client is sure that they need a website.
RSS FeedsNext: Nerds, PBS, and my free TVTop 10 Things to Consider in Useability Design :Previous
Engaging or Yelling
written by Dave Merwin
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
A co-worker and I were discussing an odd concept this morning. The company that I work for most of the time has a time of fellowship over breakfast every Wednesday morning.
We were looking around and I started noticing all the in-house advertising. I suggested a funny movie might be about a character who can not resist advertising. Actually, the main character can not resist any call to action in advertising. He has a disorder that prevents him from not performing an action if he is told to do one.
A co-worker and I were discussing an odd concept this morning. The company that I work at for most of the time has a time of fellowship over breakfast every Wednesday morning.
We were looking around and I started noticing all the in-house advertising. I suggested a funny movie might be about a character who can not resist advertising. Actually, the main character can not resist any call to action in advertising. He has a disorder that prevents him from not performing an action if he is told to do one.
So I began to look around at all the advertising that I could see to guess at the kind of adventures our main character would have. All of a sudden a light went of in my head. Our main character would have to work VERY hard to have an interesting life.
In a completely non scientific measurement I would guess that 90% of what I could see, in the restaurant and on the way to the office, was informational. There were no calls to action. All kinds of money was being spent on advertising, and no one was really being asked to do anything. It was all just noise.
Look around and ask yourself; “Am I being asked to do something, or am I being shouted at?â€
My guess is that you are being shouted at.
Is it possible that in your designs, and even your technological solutions, are yelling at your users? That the things you are building are not engaging the end user, but instead just dumping more noise into the vast amounts of static already in most users environments?
We need to ask these questions of our projects.
1. What do I want the end user to do?
2. What am I asking the end user to DO?
3. Am I yelling at the end user, is this just more noise?
A call to action is how we get someone to do something. Are you creating more noise, or are you engaging your users with a call to action?
You know, this is an interesting twist on something I’ve thought about a lot. There IS a lot of white noise out there. It aims to grab our attention. It serves to ‘brain-wash’ us to think of something when we have a problem. There may be no call to action, but when you see the name of a product or company and sub-titles saying what that product or company does, when you have a problem, you call them. It is the design of marketing. It’s the pyscology behind the ads that is so brilliant - at least in the good ones.
The GOOD ones - there is so much out there that isn’t good. It only causes confusion or serves to stuff your subconsious mind full of useless data. So, perhaps the church needs to make sure there is, if NOT a call to action, at least valuable information that would cause the user to access it’s resources in their time of need.
Great article, Dave.
Chris.B July 14th, 2005 at 11:19 am