filtering out the noise

Jakob Nielson
we asked users to find the supplies they'd need to install a new kitchen floor. One user was a particularly sad case: On a page that asked for the square footage of the area to be covered, he was swearing as he tried to calculate his floor area by hand. Next to the form he was struggling with was a large animated graphic with flying words, including "room planner," "set up room size," "length," "width," and several other terms indicating that the box linked to an application for computing floor sizes. Too bad this user didn't see it. Nor did our other test users. To get usability data about the actual Flash design, we had to force people to launch the application.

The problem is clear: users try to avoid anything that's overly hyped or promoted, especially if it looks like an advertisement.

I find this very encouraging, though if Advertisers take it to heart, we'll have a lot more stealth advertising.