YC Outlook Roundup : May

We’re back with another round up of Yellowchalk Outlook for the month of May with four more Design facts!

Myth

Users don’t Scroll

Fact

One of the most serious misleading myths is that people usually do not scroll.

There is a common misconception that everything important should be squeezed into the top of your homepage or above the fold, because that’s all users look at.

People do scroll. And nearly half of them even scroll till the bottom of the page.

In the mid-nineties, people didn’t scroll that much.

But today, social networking has impacted the idea of scrolling. The logic of “feed” has had a significant influence on every user’s experience and currently, scrolling has become an essential part of every web page, mobile app, etc.

In order to make sure that people will scroll, several design principles should be followed and interesting content should be also provided. Keep in mind that content above the fold will still get the most attention and is also crucial for users in deciding whether your page is worth reading at all.

Research findings prove that people do scroll:

• Chartbeat, a data analytics provider, analysed data from 2 billion visits and found that “66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold.”
• Heatmap service provider ClickTale analyzed almost 100.000 pageviews. The result: people used the scrollbar on 76% of the pages, with 22% being scrolled all the way to the bottom regardless of the length of the page. That said, it’s clear that page top is still your most valuable screen estate.

Myth

UI = UX

Fact

People that aren’t in this industry might think those two disciplines are the same and represent the same results and outcomes. But that’s not true.

UX stands for “User Experience” and involves end-user interaction with the company, its products, and services. In other words, this is a process of defining users’ problems and solving them before they realize them.

UI stands for “User Interface” and involves color codes, buttons, forms, text fonts, visual hierarchy and etc. It is responsible for visual product perception while making the interface more attractive, aesthetic, and sometimes “trendy”.

UX is more about science and UI is more about art. The picture below demonstrates how UX and UI coexist:

How UI and UX work together:

So a UX designer decides how the user interface works and the UI designer decides how the user interface looks. This is a very collaborative process, and the two teams work closely together. As the UX team is working out the flow of the app, how all of the buttons navigate you through your tasks, and how the interface efficiently serves up the information user’s need, the UI team is working on how all of these interface elements will appear on screen and look to the user.

Myth

You don’t need the Content to Design a Website

Fact

Many designers create wireframes and add “lorem ipsum” as filler text. Using dummy text often results in an aesthetically pleasing but unrealistic design.

It also creates the illusion that content is secondary.

The fact is that users come for the content, not the design.

Content is by far the most important element in user interface design. A webpage with a simple structure but quality content performs much better on usability tests than a nice layout with subpar text.

Why content should take top billing, according to designers:

• In his article “Death to Lorem Ipsum“, designer Luke Wroblewski argues that “using dummy content or fake information in the web design process can result in products with unrealistic assumptions and potentially serious design flaws.” He also explains how these designs usually fail when real content is added.
• Content specialist Kristina Halvorson in a talk argues that design decisions should be driven by the content, and the entire layout is to be created to support the content.
• Web experts in a book called ‘Getting Real’ explain how dangerous dummy text can be and that “lorem ipsum changes the way copy is viewed. It reduces text-based content to a visual design element — a shape of text — instead of what it should be: valuable information someone is going to have to enter and/or read.”

Myth

Aesthetics are not Important if you have good Usability

Fact

There are usability practitioners who completely dismiss the importance of aesthetics, often citing unattractive but popular websites.

However, aesthetics do have a function.

Attractive things work better. Studies show that emotions play an important role in the users’ experience.

If a website has a pleasant visual design, users are more relaxed, tend to find the website more credible and easier to use. A positive first impression — usually based on looks rather than interaction — determines the value of the website on the user’s behalf.

Aesthetics also say a lot about your brand, product or service. They show that you care.

• A study on the role of aesthetics concludes that, though attractive things may not score higher in performance, people perceive attractive things as more usable.
• UX designer Jesse James Garrett says, “Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design.”
• Stanford University conducted a study with 2500+ participants on how people assess the credibility of a website. The findings prove the importance of visual design: “Nearly half of all consumers (or 46.1%) in the study assessed the credibility of sites based in part on the appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size and color schemes. (…) Beautiful graphic design will not salvage a poorly functioning website. Yet, the study shows a clear link between solid design and site credibility.”

You can read the previous edition of Design Facts vs Myths here.