While looking up what movie to go see with Ashley tonight, I clicked on a banner ad that caught my attention over at Calgary Movies (you should always click on an ad if you visit a site), and it took me to a Samsung promotion page. Samsung is demonstrating the breadth of their product line, and since I didn’t know they made refrigerators (that’s the type of hardware I don’t know much about), I clicked on it. Nothing happened. I clicked again. Nothing happened. I clicked on the stove. Nothing happened.
Of course, silly me, the itty-bitty grey squares surrounded by the thin black line is the click point. They took the smallest possible user interface element and made it the only thing the user can click on to see more about the product. Idiots. One of the golden rules of user interface design is that if you want the user to interact with your interface, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to click on items – meaning you pick the biggest, most obvious things in the interface, and those are what drive the interaction. Whomever did this interface must have slept through that class in school.