Topic of the Week: Automatic Audio on Web Pages
I’ve noticed that a lot of websites have started playing audio as soon as the page loads; MySpace pages (especially in the music section) start songs immediately, on ESPN video begins whether you ask it to or not, and more and more banner ads have annoying audio tracks attached to them. Heck, even UX firm Electronic Ink has jumped into the fray with a talking head animation right on the homepage.
From my experience, most web users — at least in the past — do not like it when audio starts without being requested, especially since they may be surfing at work (and probably not supposed to be on the page they are on). However, perhaps the nature of broadband and web multimedia is changing what people expect, and thus the expectation of web users is changing as well. Personally I still don’t really like it, as I tend to be surfing either w/o sound or with some other sound (music, tv, etc.) going on in the background, and as such want to choose when to enter into an interactive agreement that includes some kind of audio.
I stumbled across a particularly funny rant on this subject (that I have cleaned up to some extent) on Deadspin.com: “What drives me particularly nuts about this… is when I get to work in the morning and load up ESPN.com and that Trey Wingo starts talkin’ out my machine speakers about ESPN mobile and I gotta mute the sound card quick before any coworker gives me the evil eye. $#&* a lot of ESPN mobile. $&%^ ESPN.com in general for putting ads that make noise on their site.”
Despite all this, more and more audio is cropping up without being asked. Are we throwing out the usability principles we have learned, or is the way the web works changing?
August 9th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
I think you have to ask how the audio benefits the user. It is quite hard to make a blanket statement that it is OK or NOT OK to have audio load automatically as there may be some situations for each. Does the audio serve to enhance the overall experience? Sell something?
August 10th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Digg Me: http://digg.com/design/Should_audio_start_immediately_when_a_web_page_loads
August 17th, 2006 at 6:20 am
I’m with you Mike. Let the user keep control of their experience and request the audio if they want it. It doesn’t fit people’s expectation to have audio blarring by going to a URL or clicking on a link. When it does, or when we think we might expect it and will need to be ready to find how to turn it off, I think we’re in trouble.
If it’s a music/multimedia web site and navigation is set up change between streams, channels, etc., that would be a different story. That’s one case I could see.
Here’s a slightly amusing example. I ran across this site the other day and had to wonder why they decided on this dramatic/emotional score for their products for electronic health records.
http://www.curemd.com/
October 17th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
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December 21st, 2006 at 8:28 am
[…] To everyone who has a MySpace page that plays music when I visit it. Aside from a specific band’s page, I can’t recall ever enjoying the song that plays. Why must thou force it on me? To every retail site that doesn’t remember that I like to “view all”. It is so simple to remember this — why make me click the damn link again and again??? […]