Comment by leidenfrost
3 years ago
There was a small accordion in some Google search results that opened around ~1 second after the results page was loaded and I think it was the most infuriating thing ever. And we are talking about Google here.
3 years ago
There was a small accordion in some Google search results that opened around ~1 second after the results page was loaded and I think it was the most infuriating thing ever. And we are talking about Google here.
The one where you would go to click on the first result and it would expand seemingly perfectly timed in between and you’d end up somewhere else?
I want to say some webpages actually do this to make you accidentally click on ads but I have no proof.
We A/B tested it, and the 750ms accordion produces maximum revenue. Why do you hate evidence-based decision making? /s
8 replies →
My guess for this is that the average user doesn't parse text on pages as fast as more tech-savvy users. That delay is perfectly timed for the average user to grab their attention.
For me, I use google so often that I can rapidly parse information without really needing to read much of the text, the link just sort of 'looks' right. I've observed my wife reading google results and she is much slower and more methodical, probably because she doesn't google things 20+ times a day every day like I do.
That's how I end up misclicking, because i'm not working at the speed of a normal googler.
It is really annoying though, there are some css tweaks you can make using browser extensions to make that disappear if you're so inclined.
I really could see Apple adopting an approach from FPS games, where the phone applies a click to what was under your finger 1/4 second-ish instead of what's there when the click is recognized. Time-travel clicking.
But the real solution is better web page design.
Their new AI shit on the top of the sesrch results does this. It's slow AF and I'll sometimes have scrolled partway down the page before it farts a huge blob of text up top and pushes stuff I've already scrolled past back down past my finger.
My goodness, that accordion needs to removed from their code base immediately.
A horrific piece of UI/UX/engineering/whatever.
I'm sure the person who wrote that accordion is quite good at solving leetcode tho! (only half joking)
That one ALWAYS foils me and I hate it and whoever created it.