The age old problem.

[bentwaters81tfw]

21 hours ago, alt-92 said:

 

We could ask someone experienced to build that....

My neighbour's daughter could use one of these........

[dogsbody]

7 hours ago, Neddy said:

The supreme overriding belief that rules don't apply to them because they're special. 

 

 

This kind of " special ".

 

 

 

Chris

[John Laidlaw]

I was admin and tech support for a learning management system for 12 years. We had disclaimers and "check this box to agree to the terms and conditions" and FAQs and everything. People would still do the silliest things, and it's easy to assume they're stupid, naturally or intentionally, or lazy or entitled.

 

In all of that time, I can recall only two cases that were part of that group - one didn't like it when I pointed him to where the answer to his question was (on the front page of the form where he signed up for the course), and the other was incredibly rude out of the gate because "our test is stupid" and we were wasting his time (turns out it was him misunderstanding one of the questions, but hey ho).

 

Other than that, the vast majority had simply not paid attention*. Some were contrite, some embarrassed, and the rest quietly got on with things and never mentioned it again.

 

In short, you can have HTML5 pop-ups, flashing lights and bells, whistles and klaxons to call their attention to something, and they'll click "I agree" just to get past the annoyances. I don't believe this will ever change.

 

* I have been guilty of this in the past, and realising folk can be this way has been educational for me. I try to make a point of reading things closely these days, but still muck up on occasion... 🤪.

[marvinneko]

1 hour ago, John Laidlaw said:

I was admin and tech support for a learning management system for 12 years. We had disclaimers and "check this box to agree to the terms and conditions" and FAQs and everything. People would still do the silliest things, and it's easy to assume they're stupid, naturally or intentionally, or lazy or entitled.

 

In all of that time, I can recall only two cases that were part of that group - one didn't like it when I pointed him to where the answer to his question was (on the front page of the form where he signed up for the course), and the other was incredibly rude out of the gate because "our test is stupid" and we were wasting his time (turns out it was him misunderstanding one of the questions, but hey ho).

 

Other than that, the vast majority had simply not paid attention*. Some were contrite, some embarrassed, and the rest quietly got on with things and never mentioned it again.

 

In short, you can have HTML5 pop-ups, flashing lights and bells, whistles and klaxons to call their attention to something, and they'll click "I agree" just to get past the annoyances. I don't believe this will ever change.

 

* I have been guilty of this in the past, and realising folk can be this way has been educational for me. I try to make a point of reading things closely these days, but still muck up on occasion... 🤪.

 

Commercial websites put "support" and "contact" at the very bottom of their page-- probably for good reason.

 

I suggest

(a) moving the support topic to the bottom of the page;

(b) rewording the other headings into the imperative mood ie. each heading tells the user what to do within that topic without relying on a subhead to do so; use subheads to provide context or examples instead and expect them not to be read often

(c) numbering and sequencing the headings based on the expected use case

 

I've done usability testing with task-based goal sheets for users and watched what they did, and prompted them to share their reasoning as they plodded along using "speak aloud protocol". It is always very enlightening and leads to tweaking or abandoning the design.

 

People are goal-oriented so they don't "see" all the noise between them and their goal. Design can shape behaviour and remove cognitive load-- the less people are expected to gather and process stimuli and make judgments, the more a system will succeed. Silly example: change doors with handles on inside and outside to having a pushplate on the inside and a handle on the outside. No need for "pull" or "push" signs, no more people struggling with the door. The design suggests and guides the appropriate behaviour.

 

On researchgate I had people constantly emailing me for a full-text article I authored even though I clearly wrote on researchgate how to download it from the source. Why? Because there is a button on researchgate prompting them to do so. They didn't read my link. So I create a file for them to download from researchgate. When they opened the file, it gave them to link to go get the article. Problem solved.

 

It seems to me the photo upload issue is similar. Having a button to upload photos and then getting the brief tutorial for linking displayed instead.

Edited February 17, 2023 by marvinneko

[John Laidlaw]

45 minutes ago, marvinneko said:

Silly example: change doors with handles on inside and outside to having a pushplate on the inside and a handle on the outside. No need for "pull" or "push" signs, no more people struggling with the door. The design suggests and guides the appropriate behaviour.

That is brilliant! And would stop me making a fool of myself in public as often.