Most users on the web are “click happy”: they tend to rapidly click on the most eye-catching action item without paying much attention to the rest of the site.

I see this happen during the usability tests I conduct at Pearson. More often than not, participants end up clicking the first link or “next” button they see whilst missing information that is relevant to the goal they are trying to accomplish.

Here is what I find interesting about this “phenomenon”: despite the fact that part of my work as an interaction designer involves observing this type of behaviour and making sure that participants don’t miss important information on screen, it has now been proven that I am just as vulnerable as anyone else.

Thank you, James Cunningham.

Earlier this week, Twifficiency —a web site that offers to calculate your “efficiency” on Twitter based on your interactions on it— spread across the Twitterverse posting the scores of those who wanted to know their… “twifficiency”.

The problem with this site is that once you click on the big “calculate” button (and after you allow Twifficiency to connect directly with your Twitter account, of course), your percentage is not only shown on screen, but automatically tweeted on your behalf for all your followers to see.

This came to me as a rather unpleasant surprise. The first thing I thought was: how dare this site tweet for me without my permission?

Then, the “usability specialist” in me kicked in (after the fact) and decided to go back to Twifficiency’s site to make sure I had not missed anything that would have prevented me from spamming everyone with tweets like these.

And there it was. In red (the “warning” colour):

I don’t know how I missed this, but it sure reminds me of what Jakob Nielsen once said about how little users actually read on a web page.

From a user experience standpoint, one of the biggest problems here is the way this site offers its “service”. The red text reads: “Twifficiency will tweet your score in your behalf. Do not use this app if you don’t consent to this”.

Besides being presented in a rather small font, this message is teling me: “use this app exactly how I want you to use it, or don’t use it at all”. This was done to make sure Twifficiency would spread rapidly and efficiently across Twitter —and it did.

Jimmy’s goal here is evident. Unfortunately, this resulted in a less-than-gracious user experience and many annoyed Twitter users.

Having to abide by deliberate constraints in order to get the “benefit” of the end product being offered is indeed frustrating.

Twifficiency has since changed. The site now offers an “opt in” tick-box (which comes pre-ticked, mind you) next to the calculation button. This gives you control on whether you want your score tweeted or not.

I reckon enough people must have complained in order for this happen.

So, what did I gather from this “Twitter Spamaton” experience? 

-It is still easy for most people to miss informational text around actionable items on a web page. 

-The layout, presentation and location (e.g. proximity) of relevant information are all important things to factor in when designing a web page. How do you make sure users pay attention to any relevant text that is directly related to a link or a button? Clearly red text doesn’t quite cut it.

-Forcing users to use your product in a specific, undesirable way (with ulterior motives, like Twifficiency) ultimately results in many people not wanting to use your product. At all. 

Taking these things into account when designing web apps or services can prevent us from situations similat to that of spamming our Twitter feeds. Reciprocally. 

This is, of course, as long as you don’t fall prey to sites like Twifakes: this one doesn’t show any warnings at all that it will tweet on your behalf how many fake followers you’ve got (as it sure does), despite the reassuring message at the bottom promising “not to abuse your account”.