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Should I Use a Carousel?

shouldiuseacarousel.com

41–50 of 98 posts

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#41
I'd argue this is different on mobile compared to the web.

It's pretty common in mobile onboarding flows to use a carousel like UI. It's much easier to swipe on a carousel-like UI and it's enough of a common design pattern there that people are used to it.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#42
post #14

Carousels are good for things users should be vaguely aware of but are not likely to click on. For example if you have a company that sells a widget, you can have the important menu about buying a widget on the top and below it a carousel of recent news with pictures. These news can be about your participation in widget related conferences, about you passing obtaining environmental goals, about some R&D project promi…

I agree with what you are saying.

> Carousels are good for things users should be vaguely aware of but are not likely to click on

Carousels should be used to set the _tone_ of the webpage, and not be meant for content to be clicked on.

For example, all major fashion e-commerce website dedicate large amount of homepage screen-estate to a carousel showing their major brands, current discounts, etc. The user can still use the search or menu functionality to look for what they want (and I think majority do), but now the tone of the business has been set.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#43
post #41

I'd argue this is different on mobile compared to the web. It's pretty common in mobile onboarding flows to use a carousel like UI. It's much easier to swipe on a carousel-like UI and it's enough of a common design pattern there that people are used to it.

I agree in most cases. I think they should be avoided in hero scenarios but a small flickable carousel to show product photos or something below the fold is reasonable.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#44
post #5

It's the classic false economy you're saving vertical space, but nobody wants to scroll your carousels, or wait for it to transition. It's always easier to just scroll down the page, especially on mobile. Apps like Instagram have a standard carousel for photo albums and people use them and can trust the functionality. But most websites have varying implementations of carousels, with weird functionality (autoplay, tra…

The best part is when carousels show up on game consoles or kiosks when you're trying to log in or something that makes what you're trying to do impossible.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#45
I had a client that said they wanted one because it made them look like they did all kinds of stuff. They didn’t care if it was used. It was all an illusion.

It needed to portray:

“We are big enough for you to consider doing business with us and to buy our services”

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#46
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal but... I am considerably younger then 35, know how to interact with it, and hated this page with a passion. I do think that sometimes a carousel can be fine for images, under the condition that it is only for images, and that those images can be found in a gallery that is easy to find.

This page was designed to be intentionally frustrating.

Indeed. I should probably have made it clear that I find these incredibly frustrating almost any time I find them in the wild as well. Sorry for being unclear.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#47
post #27
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if that was a design decision or just a natural artifact of using a carousel. They have a natural uncanny ability to rotate precisely when you don't want them to.

I find it weirdly infuriating. It feels like the whatever I just tried to focus on is being pulled away by someone being annoying. That, in combination with the inevitable gimme-your-email and some other gate between me and whatever I tried to view is usually enough to make me leave the site and wish I could tag sites in my browser as "do not activate links to".

That's a great idea for an extension.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#48

worked great for me... with javascript turned off. just scrolled down the page and read all the content at my leisure. the only glitch was the sticky footer that fixed itself in the middle of the page instead of at the bottom of the viewport. so my takeaway is, use good markup for carousels, in case users have js turned off, and sticky footers should use css (position: sticky), not js on top of position: absolute. (l…

I made an example of a 3D carousel using just CSS a couple of days ago - https://codepen.io/onion2k/full/xxZYBVj

It's not a serious suggestion for a UI component but it does demonstrate that a proper carousel doesn't require JS to work.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#49

Here's my counter argument to that site. Big eCommerce sites will test and optimize every pixel and if something doesn't work, they'll replace it with something better. Now, go find a list of the top ten eCommerce sites and I'll bet at least 50% have a carousel on the home page. Google's first search result gave me Amazon, eBay, Walmart Target, Etsy, Best Buy, Macys, The Home Depot,Wish and Craigslist. Only four don'…

Sure, but they all use it where they divided the content with white-space. You could argue that the carousel is just a divider here - that there's no intention of user engaging with it and that it just exists to divide the content.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#50

I work at a design agency. Most of my coworkers have seen this site before, and generally agree with it. But we still propose designs with carousels to clients. A lot of our clients are obsessed with what content is "above the fold". Never mind that "that fold" doesn't really exist on the web given different screen sizes, and never mind that users are more likely to scroll down than click slides. Every executive simp…

If you click through the website, the 8th slide of the carousel actually states this exact point: Carousels are effective at being able to tell people in Marketing/Senior Management that their latest idea is on the home page. Use them to put content users will ignore on your home page

I’ve found carousels are a great way to hide bad content that senior stakeholders insist have to be given prominence.
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