One of the little things that I always see in usability testing that blows my mind is how people perform a search. This is a pretty common function, as it is used on pretty much every website, right? Most people who we test with type in a term, then, moving their hand over to the mouse, move the cursor to the “search” or “go” button to submit the search. Now, as a frequent computer user, I often wonder why they don’t just hit “enter”. Not that the manuever wastes many seconds each time it is done, but over the course of all the many times that one will type in a search, it seems silly that people would bother using the mouse to get there. This is especially common with older users, who do exert visible effort to get to that “go” button.

The learning here? That most computer users will not know or understand any functionality that is not explicitly shown on the screen. It is quite logical (to me, at least), that “return” or “enter” should submit a search request, yet I don’t ever see text confirming this. As an advanced user, I assume it anyway. Most people don’t.

In this situation, it is perhaps ok that people are clicking “go” because they are still finding what they are looking for. If there is not, however, another obvious way to do what is hidden from view, the user simply won’t find it. This is a perfect lead-in to a discussion of why dropdown are usually ineffective, but that’s enough for today…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 10:06 am and is filed under web UI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.