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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content is fairly straight forward so it probably won’t cause too much confusion
about the education
Well this little “flier” is just to catch your attention, if you want more information you can always go to the University of Phoenix official site and you will get your answers there.
Wow, this ad definitely has usability issues. Clever of you to notice and point it out.
Yeah Right. I am active duty military and have 6 classes remaining with UoP and
maintain a 3.8 GPA (Stats class got me!). I am too far along to change
universities now, however, I am not 100% satisfied with UoP. The
majority of instructors I have had are not there to teach, they pass
students class after class who are not performing. The team set-ups are
terrible as there is always going to be the slacker, the person who
disappears, and the team member who just copies from wiki. It makes it
very difficult for a person like me because I am always picking up the
slack for other students. I feel if UoP could get the instructors to
enforce a minimum standards and actually fail students who deserve to
fail, the university would not have such a bad name.
That said, this is very bad news for me as upcoming 2013 graduate.
Being active duty and a mother of four, a lot of the other universities
would be more difficult to fit into my schedule. I plan to start my
master’s program in 2014 and am looking at the American Military
University as an option. Read about GOOD Goes From Bad to Worse