February 2006
Falling In and Out of Love with Flash
Why Flash intro pages are out, and contextual Flash applications are in.
By Josh Krist
The Web is much like the dating scene—first impressions count. According to a recent study by researchers at the Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, Web users are even pickier than the person who shows up with a checklist and a copy of "The Rules" at every date.
"When used as a delivery tool, Flash is as powerful or as useless as whatever it adds to the user experience." The study found that it takes only 50 milliseconds (one second has 1,000 milliseconds) for a person to decide if they like a site or not. These snap judgments were measured against the results of another test, in which a different group of users rated the same site for a half-second, ten times longer than the first group.
The result? The ratings matched almost perfectly, proving that even the speediest first impression sticks.
What do hyper-perceptive users mean when it comes to Flash? Many users don't like it, especially when it wastes their precious time. Web usability and design expert Jakob Nielsen put Flash as number three on his top ten list of prevalent Web design mistakes of 2005.
"Despite such good intentions, most of the Flash that Web users encounter each day is bad Flash with no purpose beyond annoying people," Nielsen writes. "The one bright point is that splash screens and Flash intros are almost extinct."
Nielsen notes that when used as a delivery tool, Flash is as powerful or as useless as whatever it adds to the user experience—or doesn't. Michelangelo Capraro, multimedia specialist at San Francisco-based Tin Lion Creative, agrees.
Flash is a good "context-keeper," as Capraro calls it. "Often, you'll be reading something on the Web and you'll click a link, and that context is broken," he says. "With Flash, we can bring the information to the user instead of making the user go to a different website or different page," he says.
Capraro, who wrote Skip Intro: Flash Usability and Interface Design with Duncan McAlester, says that regardless of the technology—Flash, AJAX, or whatever else—designers should always err on the side of the end-user.
"We wrote the book to help designers understand that a cool site that other designers would appreciate and a usable site that users appreciate can be one and the same," he says.
Love at First Site
It's an old truism that a meeting is usually called for the benefit of whoever's holding it. Capraro says the same rule often applies to Flash—many suffer for the satisfaction of one. When this happens, Capraro talks to the client to find out the motives behind the request. "Usually, whatever they're trying to communicate can be embodied in other portions of the site in a much more effective way," he says.
For example, some sites, like Salesforce.com, use Flash as a dynamic billboard in the center of an otherwise traditional and easy-to-navigate HTML page. Recently, the company used their Flash space to present "Star Wars"-like scrolling text that touted how many companies had recently turned to "the force."
Mike Wislocki, a Flash developer and partner at Boston-based Squarewave, says Flash is at its best when it gives useful information in an interesting way—through pictures, text, diagrams, video, or a combination of all of these things.
"That way you can have something dynamic up front, but it's just part of the experience and doesn't overwhelm the page." Wislocki likes to use Flash as an application platform, and he takes a modular approach. "We'll drop in something functional and application-based, like a media player," he says.
So why are consumer sites offering truly useful Flash applications—a training plan to get in shape for a marathon (on www.pumarunning.com, developed by Squarewave), for instance—while most corporate sites are averse to using Flash for much beyond product demos?
"Corporations are starting to discover the full potential of Flash, but it's harder to get them to try new things. They'll get there eventually," says Andrew King, also a Flash developer and partner at Squarewave.
If the Web is like the dating scene, then Flash is like the temporarily disgraced belle of the ball. It was love at first sight and businesses and designers fell head over heels. Soon the infatuation soured and the resentments and tearful recriminations started. Now, with time, most people have a truer, deeper appreciation for the real strengths and weaknesses of Flash. And if that's not a love story, what is?
About the author:
Tendo associate managing editor Josh Krist is just not that into you.
