Rich Content and Simple Menus
Have you ever had this experience. You rent a DVD, maybe one you’ve been waiting for. You are so excited to view the movie and you throw it in the DVD player. After the player adjusts itself, recognizes the disc, you wait through a series of warnings and previews. You fast forward or skip past all this content only to end up on the DVD menu. You wait as various scenes of the movie fade in and out, lines from the movie are played, maybe some snippet from a theme song is played, and you wait… and wait… and wait… as the animation has to play itself out. After enduring for what seems like an eternity, the words “Play Movie” slowly appear. But wait. You can’t select them yet. The words “Play Movie” are not done animating yet. They eventually rest in their place. Finally. You click the enter button and are ready for the movie to start. But wait. You now have to wait as all of the elements of the menu animate themselves back out of the screen. First the play movie text fades, then the various scenes and images fly and fade out of view as some line from the movie is played (usually one that also has a double meaning that confirms the user selection to play the movie) and the music fades out. Then the movie starts and the THX or Dolby screens animate into frame… Ughhh.
What is the point of the DVD menu? What function does it serve? Why can’t the menu just appear as a still and give you the option to select “Play Movie” right off the bat? Why the excessive animation? It is not as if the menu is acting as a preloader while the DVD player is preparing something essential for movie play. In that case, that might be sort of useful or entertaining. I’m just guessing, but I believe the only people that enjoy DVD menus must be the people that make DVD menus.
When designing web sites, how much of the design and creative are you devoting to useless visual clutter that has no purpose other than filler. Take for example this site: www.drano.com .
If I were interested in purchasing a drano product, I probably have a serious problem with a drain in my house. Let’s say I have a problem with the toilet in the bathroom. Let’s also say it is an emergency. I’m probably in somewhat of a hurry. Before I head out to the store, I do some quick research online to make sure I purchase the right product.
I visit the drano web site and I notice three choices - bathroom, kitchen, and garage/laundry. I am eager to find the right product so I click “bathroom”. I wait for the site has to load some information. I wait patiently. It finally loads (2mb of Flash files) and what do I see?
I see a video of a lady standing in a bathroom in front of a mirror applying lipstick. Huh? I don’t see any product information but I do see three glowing circles - one over the toilet, one over the sink, and one over the bathtub/shower. I click on the one on the toilet. After I click, the lady looks at the toilet and exclaims, “Oh no!” Then the camera moves into a close-up of the toilet, which oddly enough is not clogged or backed up.
An information box pops up over the toilet and tells me I need to purchase Drano’s Build Up Remover. This little information box isn’t big enough to have all the information I need about the product so there is a button at the bottom I need to click on that says “Learn More About The Product”.
Once I click it, then I get another page that has additional information. The lower half of the page is divided into three tabs - How it works, Directions for use, and Precautions. Each of these tabs has so little information under them that I don’t really see the point of breaking up the page into three tabs in the first place. The whole site frustrates me as a designer and a user. Why didn’t the design firm focus more energy on animating “How it Works” or “Directions for use” instead of animating a lady putting on lipstick in front of a mirror? That actually would have been useful and interesting. Or, they could have spent more time on the Solution Finder, which doesn’t make choosing the right Drano product any easier the way it is currently designed.
If you are designing a web site. Do not create the equivilant of a DVD menu. Focus your time and energy on the content, including making the content come to life via great design/animation/sound/video. Users want richer content, not lengthy animated menu systems.