SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: The Back Button is Evil! (o
Re: SIGIA-L: The Back Button is Evil! (or is it???)
From: Andrew Hinton (ahinton_at_symetri.com)
Date: Sun Feb 18 2001 - 17:11:54 EST
Thanks to Dick Hill for forwarding my message that kicked off this thread. I
think it got rejected because I was using a different reply address through
a dialup account while I was out of town last week.
I think Rebecca and others have made some really good points on this. I
wanted to point out one reason why I'd posted the question to begin with,
though: during Spool's keynote address, he kept repeating mantra-like that
the back-button is bad, to the point of getting the audience, when prompted,
to say it back to him.
I don't think he really meant to imply that it has some kind of inherently
evil properties to good information design. I think he was more likely
saying that use of the back button is often a symptom of a failed drill-wodn
attempt, and at worst a sign of poor information design, since if someone
was really finding what they wanted they'd only be going 'forward' (this is
oversimplified, I'm sure).
I guess I ended up deciding two things after mulling over his statements on
this issue, and the reactions it elicited:
1) Gurus with guidelines (and/or rules) can be easily misunderstood outside
a very specific set of circumstances. In fact, UI research and usability
testing only tell us "for sure" what happened with a specific group of
people on a specific day in a specific environment. How the information
translates to other sets of circumstances (i.e. any other website on earth)
is a hypothetical issue. We can learn from it, but we still have to apply
that information wisely, based on our own experience.
2) The browser has had a back button and a number of other buttons since
Mosaic. It's part of the fabric of the Web. We have to design with that in
mind. However, it's interesting that the browser interface was developed
when there were nothing but static sites. In fact, the basic assumptions
behind the browser control interface are holdovers from Gopher more than
whole new interface concepts made specifically for non-hierarchical
hyperlinks.
This is a struggle when we consider all the linear-task applications out
there that we're expected to integrate with what we design. Our company has
had the thankless task of twice now having to build a site within which will
abide an application that we had little or no control over, and which is
poorly designed and very inhospitable to anyone's use of browser buttons.
Of course, this is in some ways more a CHI issue than an IA one. However,
how can we design information environments without having a better sense of
what should/could and shouldn't/couldn't be done within the inherent
assumptions of the browser interface? How can a civil engineer design
highway systems if there is a great debate about drivers' using their
brakes?
Here's what rebecca blood at rebecca_at_rebeccablood.net said on 2/13/01 5:22
PM:
>
> I think it's important to remember that correlation does not imply
> causality. it may be simply that in a poorly architected or designed
> site, the user is likely to follow many more false paths, notice that
> they are going in the wrong direction, and back up to try again. the
> poor design of the site would account for both the frequent use fo the
> back button *and* the failure of the user to acheive her task.
>
> rcb
>
--
:: s y m e t r i ::
. andrew hinton . information architecture, bureau director
. w|336.819.6914 m|336.253.5399 . ahinton_at_symetri.com
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