Next Button Alerts and Notifications in E-Learning #293: Challenge | Recap
Generally, when someone asks about the ubiquitous next button, they’re looking for creative ideas to move beyond t...
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Hello! This is an interesting -- and potentially controversial -- topic!
I think 'next buttons' get a bad press but there's definitely an art to getting them right. With that in mind, here are three experiments in meta messaging, symbols and movement to help the user 'click next' without er, clicking next.
CE N'EST PAS UN BOUTON SUIVANT
Demo: https://bit.ly/elhc293
Download: https://bit.ly/elhc293dl
I think 'next buttons' get a bad press but there's definitely an art to getting them right. With that in mind, here are three experiments in meta messaging, symbols and movement to help the user 'click next' without er, clicking next.
CE N'EST PAS UN BOUTON SUIVANT
Demo: https://bit.ly/elhc293
Download: https://bit.ly/elhc293dl
Thanks for taking part in my experiment folks!
I was going to let this run a while longer, but the comments and feedback I have received so far have been really interesting.
What I didn't highlight in my original post, is that each interaction has a 10 second timer. If you don't 'click next' in that time, the next button is then highlighted to help you.
What's fascinating is that no-one appears to have stayed on each slide for more than 10 seconds, even those of you who found the design choices less obvious or unclear. You nonetheless identified the next button within 10 seconds without help.
This provokes a follow-up question:
How long is 'too long' to make the user wait to move on or until you highlight the next button?
What are your thoughts?
I was going to let this run a while longer, but the comments and feedback I have received so far have been really interesting.
What I didn't highlight in my original post, is that each interaction has a 10 second timer. If you don't 'click next' in that time, the next button is then highlighted to help you.
What's fascinating is that no-one appears to have stayed on each slide for more than 10 seconds, even those of you who found the design choices less obvious or unclear. You nonetheless identified the next button within 10 seconds without help.
This provokes a follow-up question:
How long is 'too long' to make the user wait to move on or until you highlight the next button?
What are your thoughts?
- I think that we might be a little biased because we know the challenge is to create a next button and thus, we're going to be on the lookout for it. I also think that our ability to quickly identify the next button is due to our experience with e-learning and having seen many examples of course navigation. This is definitely not the case for all audiences and I find that I usually err on the side of making things explicit, just in case. However, I thought that the images you used in the first and second examples (door handle, arrow) and way you used animation and bright text to catch the viewer's attention in the third example worked well here to prompt the viewer to interact with those pieces.
Like everyone else, I didn't even know the timer was there and stayed on each slide for under ten seconds. I love the idea behind it and how the animations were subtle enough to catch your eye.
I would say that the amount of time on the timer should be dependent on the amount of content on the slide. I usually time how long it takes for me to process the slide content to approximate the timing of animations like these. I thought that 10 seconds for each slide was appropriate for your demo, Jonathan.
This was a great question and thanks for prompting an interesting discussion! For my demo this week, I tried to use subtle animations for my buttons but ended up labeling them for clarity because I didn't think they were intuitive enough. I'm considering going back and seeing if I can improve my demo. (Maybe adding a brief timer before the labels pop up!)- Thanks for your thoughtful comments Kimberly. It's a fascinating area of UI, for sure.
I do a lot of user observations in my day job and my A/B tests showed that a significant minority of users responded very differently to same type of interaction when it was presented in different contexts. This suggests the context is as important as the type of interaction.
And if had to pay a pound for every complaint about the 'next button', but received a pound for every compliment about more intuitive UI, I think I'd break even. It seems to be a very divisive area of ID/elearning design!
