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Can Good Navigation Exist Without Clicks?
Just say no to mouse buttons. I stumbled across this interesting experiment that urges you not to click anywhere in the site yet wants you to navigate through it. It explores the clicking habit of computer users and aims to help understand why is it so hard not to click. The user interface (UI) is extremely intuitive. Keep this blog open. Go visit the website (Heavy in Flash). See if you get the urge to click before sharing your experience here.Clicking is lame. Users have been trained to "point and click" since the Mac in 1984, if not earlier, so it's in our nature to impulsively click when we want to take action. The point of this study is to explain that clicking doesn't necessarily have to be a requirement. Certainly an amazing proof of concept and with the advent of touch screens, this type of navigation could be very useful. Perfect for a gesture-based interface and it would save a lot of people from repetitive stress injuries.
Health is not interesting. Think about playing with it on a Wii. Given the right "medium", there are many places where this innovative idea could take off. Speaking of games, this experiment reminded me of Don't shoot the puppy game, where you learn to use your mouse - the sad way!
A new UI standard? The only disadvantage is that it would be difficult to implement it using Flash (imagine the time spent on building that site) but what happens when a comparatively new tool like AJAX is brought to the scene? Then again, it will be rare to see such sites. How about a Firefox extension?
14 thoughts:
Wow, that's an insanely awesome site. I love not clicking, makes things different and a lot easier in my opinion.
Sean-Dinner.com
Surely that is more of an art site than any real "research." The idea is just ludicrous; it's way too easy to accidentally select things when you just meant to move the pointer out of the way. In the real world, I can point at, say, a clock without resetting the time or turning the alarm on. Using a mouse button has much more of a real-world analog than a pointing-only interface like this.
I thought it was very cool!
Obviously it would entail a lot of design re-engineering, but it took me all of about 5 seconds to NOT miss the clicking.
Very interesting interface. Although it seems a bit counter-intuitive (because, as you said, we are trained to click from the moment we start using a computer) because as soon as you move your pointer over another menu title it switches menus. So I often accidently changed channels when all I wanted to do was opening something on my taskbar or such.
I have been to that site. I thought it was very interesting, but I think that the world is already trained to click.
Breaking this will not occur until we're all using our Smart Phones to surf & mice are a thing of the past; which will never probably happen.
Well...never say never!
It is a neat concept, but I agree with Ilker's suggestion that site design would be more difficult. AJAX may make things easier, but I don't see habits changing from the way they have been developing for more than 20 years now.
I don't see web developers attempting to "Retrain" users.
Do you?
I don't mind clicking, really.
I don't like the idea of touch screens because I don't want nasty fingerprints on my screen...
lol, great post, I hit the button several times
DON'T SHOOT THE PUPPY!! :'(
I don't think the you could describe AJAX as "comparatively new", AJAX and it's precedent techniques have been around for at least ten years. It's only recently that they have become grouped under a common name and cross browser javascript libraries have made the techniques easier to implement and therefore more prevalent.
That was a great website. Perhaps it would be a better world if we don't have to waste so much effort to make the best mouse when we don't have to click for navigation purpose ;)
this site is pretty old there, Ilker!
the trouble is it would need wide adoption to work. if you have to click anything anywhere else, it fails.
fun to play with though!
"don't shoot the puppy"
took me a minute to figure out this one, lol
I managed to not click for over like 30 mins, exploring most items, while switching to gaim and other websites. And that was using a touchpad.
Regardless, I prefer clicking still.
What do you think? Post your thoughts..