Comment by amaccuish
3 years ago
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?
3 years ago
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
You jest, but that's exactly how you get plausibly deniable dark patterns. It's a numbers game.
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A/B testing is so gross. In other domains human experimentation of any kind, no matter how low risk, involves getting fully informed consent and ethics board approval before going ahead.
Experimental behavior manipulation, without even telling the subject they are part of a manipulation experiment? You would be chased out of the room and your reputation destroyed! Utterly unacceptable. But in webdev universe this is somehow seen as a totally normal practice.
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It maximizes their revenue until I decide to stop using Google. Joke's on them for not measuring long-term effects.
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.