How CNN Got Their UIX (User Interface Experience) Wrong!

CNN is a bit of a light-weight news organization. They have entertainment cat videos on their main page, mixed with ISIS beheadings and Kim Kardashian butt selfies.  However, I used to be a regular visitor, because at a glance, one could tell the mood of America. It was all laid out there. Riots in Ferguson mixed in with a guy in a fly suit zooming through a hole between two cliffs. In short, it was microcosmic glimpse into the demographic of slightly conservative, easily entertained, bite-sized pablum of news digesting, light-thinking demographic.

And then they went and changed their UIX or User Interface Experience.  I haven't been back since.

Here is a screen shot of their new UIX:

One sits there and waits for the top news stories to scroll through and automatically change. The screen grab that I took featured prominently was a city that was the homeless capital of the US. You cannot see at a glance, what is happening in the world.

Contrast this to a Reuters screen capture of exactly the same time. We have victim #22's body of the Air Asia disaster being brought to shore. We have a story on Iran and shipping enriched uranium to Russia. And we have the death report of Edward Brooks, the first black US senator elected by popular vote, and I can see the story about an Idaho earthquake.  I can read all of this stuff from a tiny screen capture.

The CNN screen capture has a faint column that is unreadable in the screen capture. If you enlarge it, it has a few terse ambiguous headlines about the death of Brooks, without giving his name, The second entry is Mike Huckabee leaving Faux News. We also have the story of Panthers Top Punchless Cards and they trumpet themselves in the NEW CNN DIGITAL.

It appears that CNN let their web developers go wild, thinking that it looks neat, but not having a clue on how to present news. The continuous flashing/changing stories makes me sit and wait to see if there is anything interesting to grab my attention. And when trivial crap comes up, it makes the wait more useless. Their UIX hearkens back to the days when HTML had the stupid flashing banner, and the revolving storybook would look good in on an online snowboard catalog, but not for a new site that wants to be taken seriously.

I'm not really sure that news is their focus -- they seem to want to invent something called newstainment - which is a meld of entertainment and news. If they want to be a serious news provider, they should emulate the UIX of bbc.com or reuters.com.  I know that these sites are serious about the news, because I belong to user panels on both of those sites, and give feedback on past and upcoming stories.

They say that every dog has their day, and the CNN site has turned into one, but it's day is gone. #FAIL

The Psychology of UIX -- Background Colors for web pages

I get a newsletter from the Brain Lady -- a psychologist named Susan Weinschenk who has built an industry around the psychology of the human brain applied to web design.  I really applaud people who can build significant online revenue streams by leveraging their skills.  She is a speaker, obviously in demand because she has upcoming seminars all around the US and London.

One of the concerns that I have about the information that she promulgates is that she takes psychological studies on the human brain and preaches a 1:1 correlation between a literature review and web design without actually having tested it in real life.  For example, she in one article, she said that the human brain is more comfortable with less choices than more and menu items should optimally have between four and seven choices.  Yet when we wireframe some complex web apps, this is either impossible, or test subjects want more choices to do the tasks that they want and they want those menu choices to be highly explicit.

All this to say, is that the brain information is very interesting, but it all can't be applied uncritically to web design on a 1:1 basis.

Her latest newsletter had the following information about the color of backgrounds.

I came across some interesting research from Mehta and Zhu about red vs. blue background color for screens.

If you are using a negative or fear message it will be more impactful if you use the color red. If you are using a positive message then use blue.
If you want people to do a detail-oriented task use a red background. If you want them to be creative use a blue background.
If you are highlighting detailed features of a product your message will be more persuasive if you use a red background. If you are highlighting concepts of how to use the product then the message will be more persuasive with a blue background.
People prefer blue backgrounds over red, even though red might make them get a task done more quickly. They are not aware of the effects that the colors are having.

Ravi Mehta and Rui (Juliet) Zhu. Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances. Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, 2053 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada. www.sciencexpress.org / 5 February 2009 / Page 1 / 10.1126/science.1169144

I hope this helps and if someone uses this information, I would appreciate some feedback.  Thanks.

Simple Yet Effective UIX For Dummies

Let's get real for an instant. A website generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more, until he knows nothing about everything. An SEO/UIX website guru gets to know more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. They both end up in the same place.

When building a web site, all sorts of UIX experts tell me that I have to wireframe websites, and then use video to watch people using them to optimize the (sarcasm on) user experience (/sarcasm off). UIX is king.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I follow the Google sect of online design -- a super powerful website with minimalist design. When you abstract to the layer of why have a website, you come up with two answers: to sell and to inform.

The primary raison d'etre for a business is to sell. So never mind all of the booshwa design crap for a minute. Malcolm Gladwell tells us that people thin slice -- make a decision within the first thirty seconds. I was told that when I wrote for a major outdoor magazine. You have to capture them in the first thirty seconds. Your value proposition will do that.

So if I am a business, and the sole purpose of my website is to sell and inform, then the landing page of my website has to boldly proclaim my value proposition. Let me repeat that: the landing page of my website has to boldly proclaim my value proposition.

When my value proposition is accepted by the surfer, I have to account for two alternate possibilities. That is where UIX comes in. The first possibility is that I have made the sale. You have to get the customer to get to the buy zone quickly. The second possibility is that I have sold the value proposition, and now the consumer wants details. Simple. (There is a third possibility in the fact that my value proposition bombed, but then the surfer is off elsewhere and out of the equation).

So, I have to unambiguously give the consumer the immediate buy option or arrange the information to answer the putative questions in his/her quest for more information. I have to arrange it such that the most frequently asked question is answered first.

Psychologists tell us that we like a lot of choice when it comes to menu items, but more than 4 or 5 choices actually hinders the buy process.

So the navigation and usability of the website hinges on providing more information to support the value proposition. In a general sense you can't go wrong with W-5 - Who, What, Why, Where and When. When is always NOW, so HOW can be substituted. And of course, you need a call to action. If you don't ask, you won't get.

The above graphic illustrates these principles completely. You don't need to pay big bucks to a UIX expert to produce wireframes and usability reports. Most consulting work is applied common sense. When usability experts fail, is that they are not subject matter experts in whatever you are selling. They would tend to put the specs and fine print in the back, but if you are selling electrical couplings and such, those data sheets are what is required up front. Or they would spend $10,000 filming someone using wireframes to discover what you already know.

If you put considerable amount of forethought into the value proposition and how the user gets to the supporting information, then you have already mastered the Dummies Guide to Extreme UIX.