I am finally catching up a little on my UX-related magazine
reading and got to that article in Design Instruct that I previewed last week
on using photographs on website. Jacob
Gube describes “eight common mistakes” that designers often make. The article is solid in that he provides
evidence for all of his ideas.
Unfortunately, it seems rare in these days of social media publishing
that anyone recognizes that opinion does not make fact. I really applaud Jacob for the way he put the
article together.
I put all three words in quotes because I am not sure that
there are eight, that they are common, or that they are all mistakes. This might sound like a big criticism of the
article, but as I said above, most of it is really solid. He just overgeneralizes and overspecifies on
several occasions and I want to set the record straight.
Mistake 1: Not choosing the right photo. Jacob is spot on with this advice in one
sense – having a photo that is not relevant to the user’s task is not going to
be productive, no matter how great a photo it is from a purely aesthetic
perspective. But I have one major
quibble with his evidence. He used an
eye-tracking study to show that users did not look much at a photo and
concluded that this means it is not relevant.
But there are two possible reasons that this might not be true. First, the photo might be so clear that the
user only need a brief glance to get the meaning and the value from it. In this case, very little dwell time in an
eye-tracking study could be an indication of a good photo choice. This is why eye-tracking has to be used in
conjunction with other methods in user research. It is not a stand-alone tool. Second, the user might only need to get a
gist from the photo rather than any specific information. Users can get gist in milliseconds. In the case he uses, people downloading a
college application didn’t look very long at a photo of some smiling students
sitting in a classroom on laptops. But
users can get the impressions of “happy, classroom, technology” and that is
really all they need. In his
counterexample of shopping for a bookcase at Pottery Barn, clearly users will
need more specific information from the photo and will look at it longer. Even if the photo is no better in relevance
or quality. The difference is in the
need for precise information versus gist impression.
Mistake 7 kinds of contradicts mistake 1. He suggests using the photo of the artist
rather than the artwork on a site that sells paintings. The reasoning is that photos of people are
most powerful. Well, yeah OK, but what
about relevance? If the user is buying
the art based largely on an engaging story about the artist, then maybe this
photo is relevant. But otherwise, it is
the artwork that matters.
Mistakes 5 and 6 are kind of the same thing. Mistake 5 says not to use photos that take
too long to load and then Mistake 6 says how to code photos so that they load
faster. Same thing, isn’t it? This is kind of nitpicky, but it is a long
article. He didn’t need to make it
longer still.
The Mistake 8 tells us to use large photos. This contradicts all of the above. It takes longer to load and might not be as
relevant as what it displaces. Aren’t we
better using small photos if there are other elements that are more relevant
and if we want the page to load faster?
I recommend the article to anyone who has missed it and uses
photos in their web design. Most of it
is really good and he provides real evidence.
I just had a few nitpicks I felt compelled to share. Am I being too picky or do you agree?
