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Mar152007
Eyetracking and Usability
Good graphic design is about getting your point across in a simple, effective way. It is not ornamentation for it’s own sake. It’s not about putting a photograph on every page just to have a photograph on every page. And according to an eyetracking study, there is evidence that confirms what I’ve felt instinctively, that photographs and imagery are often not necessary and even can be counter-productive to comprehension. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen and his company, Nielsen/Norman Group performed an eyetracking study that showed, among other things, that:
In the case of Web design a picture isn’t always worth those thousand words. According to Coyne users treat pages with superfluous images like obstacle courses: The images create barriers to content. Moreover, Nielsen and Coyne concluded that images appearing unneeded, at least peripherally, will be erroneously tuned out.
Good photography can really make a site rich and appealing, but if you don’t have a photograph that’s relevant to the content, it’s likely better to not have one at all. The whole purpose is to get people to retain what they’re reading, so why put a roadblock in the form of irrelevant imagery.
Additionally, they also determined that :individuals look at “real people” more than they do at images of models. Most assume that content that features models are advertisements, so they avoid it.
This is a bit of a revelation, but I think it makes perfect sense. As a designer, I often have to rely on stock photography due to a lack of original photography. Stock photography, while professional, often doesn’t look “real” and I think most people could spot it without much education. This is just the way it goes, but I think it is important to be aware that if you use stock photography, you may be impeding the point you’re trying to get across with the content of your site.
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Posted at 12:07 pm on 03/16/07
Gene
Understandable, I wonder though about photography that helps “sell” the brand experience… Not that “real people’s images” couldn’t be part of that, but your point about stock photography seems like it could actualy hurt a website’s branding experience.
Posted at 7:48 am on 03/21/07
Jay
I think the point is that stock photography can’t sell your brand. It’s generic by definition. If you’re brand is that generic, maybe you don’t really have much of a brand.
Posted at 3:10 am on 10/30/07
Trackbackbrigitte nielsen and flavor flav
brigitte nielsen and flavor flav
Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts !