Here’s my rant for the day.
I was looking up a definition on Dictionary.com when I saw this skyscraper from The University of Phoenix.
The list of degrees they offer scrolls down (from top to bottom) instead of up (bottom to top). Hit play to see what I mean.
Why is this bad? Well, the degrees are organized under headers of Associate’s, Bachelor’s and Master’s. When the list scrolls from top to bottom, you see the degrees before you see the associated header. This content is fairly straight forward so it probably won’t cause too much confusion. Nevertheless, it seems they went for interactive over readable, something that’s far too common especially in banner ads.
What’s worse is that when you roll over the list, you can change the direction it’s scrolling. And there’s no way to make it stop — so while I was trying to read the definition that I’d searched for, I kept getting distracted by the annoying scrolling thing!
Now I know some of you might think, Well that’s actually really great usability because someone might have missed a degree in the list and want to quick “rewind” in order to find it without having to wait for the whole list to cycle through. Sure, but then shouldn’t it stop scrolling when you stop moving your mouse? It shouldn’t revert to downwards auto scrolling, which makes absolutely no sense!
Okay, I’m glad I got that out.
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About Whitney Hess
Whitney Hess is a coach and writer helping product teams and senior leaders make better decisions through the principles of user experience. She believes empathy builds empires.