Article: The Truth about Download Time
UIEtips 2/14/06: The Truth about Download Time
As we study how people interact with web sites, we keep having to remind ourselves one important thing: we need to be very careful when we listen to our users. I don’t mean that we have to listen to them carefully. Instead, I mean we have to interpret what they are saying with caution and care.
When users say what they like or don’t like about a design, they mean well. I think they really intend to help us understand how to make things better.
Unfortunately, they are the wrong people to help us. Study after study shows us that users can’t attend to the details necessary to arrive at the right solution. Instead, they’ll often suggest changes that, when executed, fail to make any improvements at all and, all too often, make the experience worse.
In today’s UIEtips, we’ve dug into the archive and brought you an article to help us remember to be careful in our interpretations. In The Truth about Download Time, originally written in 2001 by Christine Perfetti and Lori Landesman, we revisit our discovery that just because users believe a site to be slow doesn’t mean speeding it up will make them happy.
Since we conducted the original research five years ago, we’ve repeatedly discovered users are more interested in achieving their goals than having speedy page loads. Since goals are often complex and require the users to be thoughtful, the best designed sites seem to get away with slower-than-average pages.
So, if we’re not supposed to listen to our users, what are we supposed to do to learn what to improve? Watch the users. Study them. Understand what they are trying to do. Learn what happens when they try and fail. (Or succeed.)
It would be a wonderful world if we could just say to our users, “Tell us what we need to fix” and they’d give us a complete list. Every design would be perfect within weeks of deployment. Unfortunately, it’s far more complex than that scenario would allow.
This is why we’ve packed our new Roadshow with a ton of tips about collecting and disseminating information from our users. The more we learn and the more everyone on the team understands, the better our designs will be.
You can learn more about the UIE Roadshow program and all the techniques for improving your web site design here. Almost every city is full (we found more space for Seattle, but it’s still going to be tight), so you’ll want to register right away. (This Thursday, 2/16, is a big day: the prices for the DC and Philadelphia events increase and it’s the last day to register for Atlanta online. Don’t delay.)
What’s been your experience with listening to what users actually say? Have you found you need to look beyond their words and understand what’s really going on? Or are we completely off base? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Just leave us a comment.
Read the article here.
You’ll want to register for the UIE Roadshow by this Thursday, 2/16, to ensure you get the best prices available and reserve your seat in the city of your choice. We’re close to selling out in every venue. Register here.