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Should I Use a Carousel?

shouldiuseacarousel.com

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Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#91

Post by rchaud »

A few cherry-picked quotes doesn't really tell me anything, since the value of a carousel depends on a number of factors:

- how is the carousel being used? To display similar products, to show latest blog posts?

- are your users primarily on desktop or mobile?

- have you A/B tested carousels to see if users interact with them more, less or the same?

I see carousels on sites like Ikea and Best Buy and IMO it's a useful way to get a quick glimpse of what categories of products are currently on sale.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#92

Post by clairity »

onion2k wrote: post #48
clairity wrote: post #20

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.

that's awesome! i really like these css-only explorations and hope they continue to drive html/css advances. lots of interactions and controls we use js for can, and should, be subsumed by html/css instead.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#93

Post by koheripbal »

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #4

I love these snarky novelty sites making fun of bad UI trends. As soon as the carousel started going too fast I almost rage quit the tab. Well done.

I felt that detracted from the argument since it was really just demonstrating that a badly implemented carousel is bad - which isn't a strong argument against a well designed carousel.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#94

Post by koheripbal »

DominikPeters wrote: post #51
geddy wrote: post #11

Clever 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.

From the source: auto: { enabled: true, interval: 3000 // HA HA! I HATE MY USERS!!! Especially the ones that aren't speed readers. }

I felt that detracted from the argument since it was really just demonstrating that a badly implemented carousel is bad - which isn't a strong argument against a well designed carousel.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#95

Post by derefr »

koheripbal wrote: post #94
DominikPeters wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the source: auto: { enabled: true, interval: 3000 // HA HA! I HATE MY USERS!!! Especially the ones that aren't speed readers. }

I felt that detracted from the argument since it was really just demonstrating that a badly implemented carousel is bad - which isn't a strong argument against a well designed carousel.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a well-implemented carousel. Maybe in theory you could have one, if browsers could do eye-tracking, such that you could stop the carousel’s rotation as soon as the user looks at it.

But without that, users are always going to land their eyes on the carousel and start reading an item in it some random interval after the carousel’s rotation timer last fired. (As, remember, users like to look away from the browser while pages load, and it takes them a random amount of time to look back.) Then, with this random "misalignment" of engagement times, the carousel content will inevitably transition out from under them.

IMHO, this is exactly why users choose to not engage with content in carousels (according to the studies the author cited.) They know they’re going to not get to fully read whatever it is the carousel currently says; and they don’t know for sure how to stop the carousel from progressing; so they don’t bother with it.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#96

Post by koheripbal »

derefr wrote: post #95
koheripbal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt that detracted from the argument since it was really just demonstrating that a badly implemented carousel is bad - which isn't a strong argument against a well designed carousel.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a well-implemented carousel. Maybe in theory you could have one, if browsers could do eye-tracking, such that you could stop the carousel’s rotation as soon as the user looks at it. But without that, users are always going to land their eyes on the carousel and start reading an item in it some random interval after the carousel’s rotation timer last fired. (As, remember, users li…

If there's no such thing as a well-implemented carousel, then the demonstration shouldn't have needed to use an obviously nerf'd carousel.

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#97

Post by setr »

koheripbal wrote: post #96
derefr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a well-implemented carousel. Maybe in theory you could have one, if browsers could do eye-tracking, such that you could stop the carousel’s rotation as soon as the user looks at it. But without that, users are always going to land their eyes on the carousel and start reading an item in it some random interval after the carousel’s rotation timer last fired. (As, remember, users li…

If there's no such thing as a well-implemented carousel, then the demonstration shouldn't have needed to use an obviously nerf'd carousel.

Its easiest to point out an issue by first pushing it to the extreme, and then re-evaluating whether the middle-ground does not exhibit the flaw (in lighter fashion)

Re: Should I Use a Carousel?

#98

Post by volkandkaya »

superasn wrote: post #40

I'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.

Then don't include the others.

Only add testimonials that help convert visitors to customers.

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