3-Click Rule Pushes Toward Overly Broad Navigation UIs While we have seen demonstrable evidence over the years that web users are indeed driven by a desire for fast gratification, it is notable the first print appearance of the 3-click rule is not supported by evidence or studies, but simply by the assertion that users “might” move on to someone else’s site. If they can’t find what they’re looking for within three clicks, they might move on to somebody else’s site.” This book offers no data to support the assertion of 3 clicks as a maximum, simply noting the reasoning that, “It’s widely agreed, even by people who are not idiots, that web users are driven by a desire for fast gratification. The earliest published reference to the 3-click rule (that this author could locate) is in Jeffrey Zeldman’s 2001 book, Taking Your Talent to the Web, in which he mentions an already widespread concept of the 3-click rule among the web designer community of the time. Halfway down that page (below the fold on most laptops) is a section for Housing & Building with a link for Tenants (2), which brings the user to a very long list of links, with Water Meter Complaint (3) all the way at the bottom, the 133rd link in the list. On the homepage, users must click NYC Resources (1), then look through a long page of links. NYC.gov: Finding where to report a broken water meter takes only 3 clicks, but, along the way, it still offers a laborious user experience that requires a lot of scanning and scrolling. In this article we will focus on why the 3-click rule should not be used blindly for designing website IA and navigation. Simply counting the number of steps in a process misses out on what users actually do, and the opportunities to provide them with a less frustrating experience. In the real world, users make mistakes, misunderstand things, and get confused along the way. The number of clicks will rarely tell the whole story - there are many aspects of the design that contribute to its usability, whether the task flow involves 2 clicks or 10.Not all clicks are equal: some result in long wait times (if, for example, a new page is loaded) and others are instantaneous - for instance, if an accordion is expanded.The number of clicks needed to complete the task will depend not only on the design, but also on the task complexity - so an absolute number, applicable for all tasks, is not possible.Limiting interaction cost is indeed important, but the picture is more complicated than simply counting clicks and having a rule of thumb for the maximum number allowed.Ĭlick counting by itself is not a meaningful metric for several reasons: In fact, a study by Joshua Porter has debunked it the study showed that user dropoff does not increase when the task involves more than 3 clicks, nor does satisfaction decrease. The big problem with the 3-click rule is that it has not been supported by data in any published studies to date. It is a simple way of assessing the interaction cost of important information-seeking tasks, but its superficial simplicity is also its downfall. The 3-click rule assumes that users will become frustrated and will likely give up on tasks that require more than three total clicks to be completed. Often, designers apply this rule for website navigation and information-seeking tasks, but some also invoke it for other types of tasks (such as completing a form or a wizard). A variation pronounces that the most important information should take no more than 3 clicks to get to. The 3-click rule is a persistent, unofficial heuristic that says that no page should take more than 3 clicks (or taps on a touchscreen) to access.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |