For those that are interested in UX/UI, I recently stumbled upon an incredible TED Talk by Aza Raskin, the head of user experience at Mozilla Labs and lead designer for Firefox, called “Don’t Make Me Click.” Before I delve into a discussion about it, let me get this straight: I wouldn’t normally write a full blog post on a random video I found online, but I’m doing so for two reasons…

1. This video is really, really good… Like, prepare to have your mind blown with enlightening usability concepts. This guy literally shares with the audience ways in which the site for GOOGLE, one of the most valuable brands in the world, could be more successfully designed.
2. Having been released in 2008, the video is really old, so it’s also therefore less likely to be found by those that need to see it.

Raskin argues that a good web interface is one that strikes a balance between “boring and annoying,” something he refers to as the “fundamental web tension.” He argues that one end of the spectrum is “boring” (his example is people posting pictures of their kids/pets) and on the other end of the spectrum is annoying (his example is an online gnome laser game). He says that usability exists between these two poles.

The Boston Museum of Modern Art website is a good example of a site that lands on the “boring” end of the design spectrum. It’s nearly all black and white aside from a few small pictures and a small “Buy Tickets” button in the corner. This site is so boring, in fact, that it becomes very unusable. For example, the basically colorless site doesn’t even feature link hover feedback, so it’s difficult to tell if the site is registering your mouse movement at all. I think the site could have been more successful if the designers strayed from the minimalistic approach when it came to their call to action buttons. A pop of color with a big button in the boringness indicating how to “plan your visit” would probably convert really well for the museum (as well as make the site more usable). Larger images would also be really great in my opinion. The tiny scrolling pictures don’t make me want to spend my time and money visiting the museum, but a larger full-screen slider which shows off some of the museum’s unique pieces could really draw user’s eyes and increase their interest.

The Polish charcoal retail store “Patimex” has a website that falls on the “annoying” end of the fundamental web tension spectrum. When you enter the site, strange and distracting music begins to play. While it is possible to turn the music off by clicking the note in the corner of the screen, the music restarts every time you visit a new page. In addition, the homepage features a cartoon devil which moves around the screen and a title with flames moving in a distracting manner. You can tell that whoever designed this site thought that these unique features would “wow” visitors, but in reality they make the site horrendously annoying to use.

In Raskin’s opinion, striking a balance between these two types of sites is where the sweet spot of usability lies. This is a framing that I found very thought-provoking and helpful. One doesn’t want a boring site, but one also doesn’t want a site which overwhelms the user… but the question arises: how far should a designer go in making their site interesting and interactive without falling into the realm of annoying?

This leads me to one of the most useful concepts that Raskin explains in this lecture: “the seduction of interaction.” The seduction of interaction, says Raskin, is the trap that designers often fall into in which they work to make their product look fancy, or in his words, “whiz and bang” and therefore add lots of unnecessary interactive features.  Raskin argues that when designers aim to make their products look “cool,” usability often falls to the wayside. He says users almost always enter sites with specific goals, so designers shouldn’t make site visitors click unnecessarily around the site for the sake of fancy interactive features. He summed this up by saying, “If you notice the interface, that means you’re thinking about the interface and not the thing you’re trying to do.”

This “seduction of interaction” phenomenon is all too real. I, myself,  have felt the pull of this trap when designing, especially when designing websites. Early in my design career, I’d say that given the choice between building a WordPress website with a fancy theme containing parallax features and fancy fly-in content versus a website with a simpler theme with a more usable interface, I’d probably go with the fancier but less usable theme. For example, I once thought that this “float” WordPress theme would be really great for my portfolio website. Obviously you know I opted for a more usable interface, but I now look back and realize that while it looks “cool,” the float theme is also confusing and over the top. The way in which the images shift around as you scroll down the page, while unique, is extremely distracting.

I think one of the reasons this seduction of interaction so frequently traps designers is because there is a lot of pressure in the field to be innovative and impressive to those looking to hire. Designers depend on standing out from their peers in the field in order to gain sufficient employment opportunities. I often find myself feeling as though I need to have work samples that “wow” viewers, and I fear that plain but usable interfaces will fail to do this. To me, this pressure to consistently push the limits of interactivity within the design community is exactly why this TED Talk remains important even a decade later.

Designers need to get in the habit of asking ourselves again and again for every project whether excellent and well-thought-out usability features are actually more wow-worthy than “whiz and bang” features. If we’re serious about enriching the user’s experience of our sites, we need to focus on content, and get rid of interaction where possible (don’t make me click)!