Another design issue that I see are landing pages for sites that don't need landing pages. My university's course selection site has a landing page with...yep a carousel. Why? None of the information on said landing page is useful. I want to see my schedule and courses. That's it.
Should I Use a Carousel?
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#62I feel the same way about radar charts.
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#63Clever move to make the slide transition timeout juuust a tad too fast to read, further driving home the point that carousels are a shit way to present information.
Too slow is also a thing. They always seem to scroll the second you try to click on them. There's a neuroscience phenomenon whereby the mind fills in for the motion of the eyes, I forget what it's called but it was on HN a little while ago about how crazy the human brain really is.
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#64It'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…
"Apps like Instagram have a standard carousel for photo albums"
Yeah, but that only applies to users who are used to Instagram. It's definitely not an INTUITIVE feature.
I've had friends and family link me to Instagram posts, and though I've learned now, for a long time they'd have to explicitly mention there were additional pictures in the post, or I'd miss them.
(I don't know if it's different in the app, but certainly in the webpage those little dots at the bottom are non-obvious to a first-time user.)
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#65Clever move to make the slide transition timeout juuust a tad too fast to read, further driving home the point that carousels are a shit way to present information.
Every time I do UI stuff, I tell my boss that timers are a code smell. They're either too long, and the user gets bored or confused, or they're too short and the program bucks the user off and runs on without them. "Skip" buttons don't work. If you can have a Skip button, just make it a Next button and kill the timer.
Timers can be useful, for example ensuring a slight (500ms) delay when a user expects an interaction to be non-instant (like saving or transmitting data). I wrote about this case here: https://medium.com/@graycoding/detect-slow-and-fast-asynchro...
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with this. I've seen one valid and helpful usage of timers though: in Waze. Some things start automatically after some time, like navigation after selecting and address, or dismissing a notification. The time remaining is indicated on the corresponding button itself in a progress bar fashion.
i would absolutely HATE if navigation started itself after i selected the address after some time. I'm forgetful when it comes to short term memory, and it would annoy me deeply.
It's surely better than Google's Maps approach. They make Maps crash while you're driving on the freeway, so you say "Okay Google, start directions home" and it says "Would you like me to start directions home? We know you're driving at bone crushing speeds on a road you've never been on in a country you're not entirely familiar with. Just look at your phone screen and find the button and crash into the side of the freeway and don't get home. It's not like you need to keep your attention on the road while driving; we are quite happy if you crash and die. But timers and explicit audio instructions are just such poor usability."
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#67> “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 that users will ignore on your Home Page. Or, if you prefer, don’t use them. Ever.”
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> lee duddell
This tells me I should absolutely use carousels. Just don't expect people to read the text in there.
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#68Yes, but carousels are rarely added because they provide a good UX. They are added because motion draws attention and attention sells. Let's say you have 3 big sales going on on your site: do you put them next to each other so visitors can see all three right away? If so, congratulations, you are a moral person.
But marketing people aren't (/s) and they know that if the visitor sees the word SALE just as it slides away in the carousel, they'll want to know more. But now they're already staring at the next slide, so they read that one, then the next, then they're finally back at the first one. Even if they don't go through the whole thing and just click back to see the first one, they have now spent far more time looking at your ad than if they were only idly scanning the site.
AliExpress is notorious for this, with even the "you might also like" items on a deliberately too fast slider, so something can catch your eye, but then you already have to interact with it to get it back before you've even had the chance to think about it. And once you get someone to interact with your ad, the chances of them clicking it and possibly buying it go up by a lot.
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#69I've often found Carousels do a good job when there is repetitive information, E.g. testimonials - you got one big testimonials but you also have a dozen more and you don't want to fill up your page with just that.. so you use a carousel.
Repetitive ... useless ... information. How much does "My daughter loved the gift. Sue K., Topeka" add to your impression of an offer or product?
It's non trivial. If you heard someone liked it, you're more likely to buy it.
Re: Should I Use a Carousel?
#70Facebook and Instagram use carousels for their Stories feature. Google uses carousels for News stories and product results. Are they the exception and if so, why? Or are they not aware of the user data?
I don't know about Google's News and Product results, but Instagram stories aren't really carousels, which are headlines that rotate because you can't decide what to headline. Stories are intentionally transient communications from a range of users. It is part of the design experience.