Ask Eric: Questions & Answers

November 17, 2003 – submitted by Tony Gullaci of Canada

Question: We are currently designing a Web-based system that will display information in a spreadsheet format. We would like to give the users the ability to either sort or "drill down" on each column in the table. One approach that has been suggested is to have the column headings appear as hyperlinks that when clicked would display a pop-up menu. The menu would contain links to either sort or "drill-down" the column.

Is this a good approach?

Eric's response: I would try to make the design allow the user one-click access to the sort and drill down functions. If you have frequent or trained users you can certainly do this with two icons on each column title. If they are less frequent users you will need to take a bit more space on the column title. For example, you might have two links (sort view) on each column. While this may force the expansion of a couple of column titles, it is probably still worthwhile.

September 11, 2003 – submitted by Susan Parker of Massachussetts

Question: Do you have any opinions or research on the usability of (1) flyout / rollover / mouseover menus vs. (2) accordion style menus vs. (3) "click-click-click" drill down? We are a state portal, in the process of a complete overhaul. As an enterprise portal, we have enormous amounts / types of content to aggregate. Our primary navigation will be "Yahoo" style. But for certain content modules, we're experimenting with all three of the above types of navigation. Opinions are split on their usability. I was hoping to find out if you think flyouts and / or accordions are inherently bad in terms of usability, or are they to be preferred to click-click-click when properly executed? (Let's assume for the sake of argument that the content is optimally grouped into topics / subtopics and we've achieved the right depth and breadth.)

Eric's response: Take a look at this article. It supports your "Yahoo" approach for both performance and preference. :)

Cascading Versus Indexed Menu Design
Michael Bernard and Chris Hamblin
Usability News 5.1, 2003

September 2, 2003 – submitted by Sharon Merritt of United States

Question: I am currently doing research on flyout menus on Web sites and was wondering what usability thoughts are in general regarding flyout menus? What are the pros and cons of using flyout menus on a Web site?

Thank you.

Eric's response: If you are doing original research on this we are very interested in your results! When the flyouts first came out people were quite confused by them. The key problem is that there is no consistent indicator (affordance) for a flyout. So the user does not know to select them.

The flyout hides the functionality and forces two clicks to get anywhere. The design of the flyouts in current technology often has many problems. For example the user may inadvertently change the flyout selected when moving their mouse to a selection. For all these reasons usability practitioners are very wary of flyouts.

This said, we have some more recent anecdotal evidence that users are getting used to the flyouts and they are preferred (especially in comparison with multiple pages of menus). Therefore we are actively revisiting the topic here at HFI.

August 6, 2003 – submitted by Jeff White of Charlotte, NC

Question: What are your suggestions and thoughts for Search on Web sites? I am looking at all available options, including answer engines, FAQ matching systems, bots and search engines, they all seem to have their drawbacks. Is there one software firm out there that currently offers a solution that is above and beyond competing products? The Primus Answer Engine is the best one I have come across so far...... thanks very much in advance!

Eric's response: First of all let me emphasize the weakness of Search. In a few situations Search is the primary natural taskflow on a site. For example, book purchasers almost always know the title or author they are looking for. In this case Search is very useful. But in most cases you will find that a browsing strategy (selecting items in a well designed structure of links) will get you the desired answer 3-4 times more often. I will say in the search world the Google engine is being used by both commercial and government organizations with good success. But no matter how good the search engine, the user is likely to be stuck with 54,231 matching items and poor prospects for finding their target item.

July 15, 2003 – submitted by Anonymous

Question: We have designed our site including breadcrumbs, and eliminating dynamic drop-downs This did a lot of wonderful things including removing redundant navigation, increasing download speed, eliminated technology conflicts, etc. And we tested our proposal in North America with great results. The problem is since we have a very democratic political arena, we have to convince everyone to vote for instead of against it. Well some of our European counterparts are claiming that they feel their users "aren't sophisticated" enough to use breadcrumbs. Do you have any information on the effective usage of breadcrumbs internationally, so we don't have to go through the additional time and expense of European usability testing?

Eric's response: That seems like an amazing idea. Users who are sophisticated enough for dynamic dropdowns, but are NOT sophisticated enough to use breadcrumbs. Seems like a long stretch to me.

June 19, 2003 – submitted by Jeff White of Charlotte, NC

Question: I am currently responsible for an Intranet/Extranet in the healthcare industry, and more specifically Technology Assessment for both current and future healthcare products. The site I am responsible for houses many technical reports currently organized by category (oncology, cardiology). These reports are all .PDF's, and sometimes are quite lengthy.

Are there resources, research, or anything out there that deals with usability issues regarding the display and distribution of technical reports? I am exploring the possibility of breaking down these reports into a scannable, hypertext format to reduce time necessary to read the reports, increase retention, and ultimately have a positive impact on patient outcomes.

Eric's response: There is of course a lot of research about writing methods and presentation of the type of material you describe. As you intuit, the "huge set of categorized reports" method is extremely unusable. It requires a dedicated researcher to overcome the obstacles. It is far better to develop a summary analysis of the practical applications and put it into a form where the useful content is summarized and categorized in a way that fits the user needs. For example, you might pick arthritis, then rheumatoid, then have a list of treatment programs under that. The source papers can then be referenced from there for the truly masochistic user.

Followup Question: Thanks for the prompt answer to my first question! Could you point me to some sources that specifically address the breakdown of technical reports for display on the Web? Also, could you elaborate on your statement "It requires a dedicated researcher to overcome the obstacles"I have searched through many sources that deal with writing for the Web in general, but have yet to uncover something as specific as I was hoping to find.

Eric's response: Jeff, let me be clear. I am NOT talking about simply writing the technical reports in a better way. The reason I say that "It requires a dedicated researcher to overcome the obstacles" is that research reports embed useful insights into a mass of research report formats. The classical "abstract, method, analysis, results, discussion" structures are horribly inefficient for conveying the core value of research. Often 10 pages is spent to convey an insight that could easily be put in a single sentence for a practitioner. Beyond this, the actual results are often complicated by problematic research designs and flawed statistical treatments. So it takes a very dedicated and knowledgeable individual to get anything useful from the research. So, look at the vast work that has been done on corporate "decision support systems". They face the exact same problem. Lots of very complex technical stuff that must be quickly interpreted and acted upon by fairly non-technical executives. They put research findings into graphic form. They organize the graphs in a way that is simple and makes sense to the executives. Their situation is identical to yours.

May 31, 2003 – submitted by Jose Pariente of New York, NY

Question: For some time we have suspected that human factors and information design contributes significantly to how our customers respond to our paper invoices. However, we have used "Marketing Tests" as a tool to try new designs. These tests would modify some aspect of the invoice and compare the response or lift in payment % to a control group. If the test caused a better response or better payment % we would adopt this change. We never really know "why" these responses occur; we just know that they are better or worst.

Is there research that links human factors and or information design to higher payment of invoices?

Eric's response: I do not know of any published data, but we have certainly seen invoice payment rates increase. This seems to be related to two factors. One is the ability to know what to do. When you look at the way that many people pay invoices, they do not actually read the whole document. They quickly scan for the amount they are supposed to send. If the amount looks reasonable then they send it. Therefore, making the amount to pay stand out is important.

It is also important to make it easy to physically make the payment. Complex return envelope schemes can be detrimental. At least make sure it is clear where to send the payment. Increasing work and confusion makes it more likely that people will defer and forget payments.

Finally, I think there is a value to providing invoice details that appear organized and make sense. Many years ago I redesigned an invoice for the phone company. The managers didn't like the new design. I was crushed. They said that my design was bad because people would understand it, and then be more likely to call. Well that might have worked in the regulated days where the phone company was a monopoly. I think unintelligible details would be a bad approach in most cases today.

May 15, 2003 – submitted by Rose Johnson of Colorado Springs, CO

Question: I just read your April 2003 article, updating findings about depth and breadth in on-line menus.

Is there a danger in extrapolating those findings to paper? For example, consider these situations:

1. Creating printer-friendly Web pages, where an entire document is collated for printing purposes, complete with a TOC.
2. Creating paper in the short-term with a specific long-term plan to put the content on Web.

I know that in many cases you do not want to use the same hierarchies on the Web that you use on paper, and vice-versa. However, I'm not convinced it is always a bad thing to do. And when the original is done well (discrete labels, evident hierarchies), would not the dangers of using the same hierarchy in both mediums be greatly reduced?

Eric's response: The data on menu construction seems rather specific to the dynamics of online environments. Just as we get in trouble when we directly apply the principles of magazine design to the Web, I believe we get in trouble extrapolating data the other way. Paper is different from screen displays. The dynamics of page turning is different than site navigation.

There has been a long history of refinement and vast amounts of experience in book design. People have very strong expectations. Just consider the idea of a book that had a menu (TOC) that then lead you to a second TOC, and then a third. This would be a very odd situation indeed! It would be a surprise and source of confusion. So use the methods that people expect when designing for the print media and be very careful about extrapolating research from online environments.

March 10, 2003 – submitted by Sandy Kruczkowski of Boston, MA

Question: Have you done any usability studies on flyout menus? If so can you point me to your findings? I have taken two of your courses and respect your opinions. Thank you.

Eric's response: In the words of Dr. Kath Straub, our Chief Scientist... I would like the temporary official answer to the flyout menu question to be: Early experimental work showed that they were a usability challenge. More recent anecdotal reports suggest that users are accommodating to this type of interaction. We (HFI Global) are currently planning controlled experiments to test this both here and abroad so that we can provide a definitive answer.