No more than a twentieth of a second!
One-twentieth of a second - this is the time a viewer takes to
form an impression of a website. In a recent study by
Canada-based researchers, published in the latest issue of
Behaviour & Information Technology journal, people tend
to make aesthetic judgment of a website in one-twentieth of a
second, which is said to be less than half the time it takes to
blink. See related report here by Kamakshi Tandon.
This is a fact not entirely unknown. Humans are known to have
minimum time-span of about one-twentieth of a second. This means
that if two successive movements take place in less than this
time, we cannot consciously register the difference. An example
can be that of a fly flapping its wings. An interesting
animation can be seen here that explains the phenomenon.
That being so, why is there a sense of unrest among web
designers? The reason is not far to seek. The study above shows
that viewers' judgment is not random or casual, for when the
experiment is repeated second time, the judgment has remained
same.
This means if the design or layout of a website is not liked by
a person in just a fraction of a second, there is perhaps no
chance of his/her liking it ever. The finding is harsh no doubt,
and more so since the research offers no clue as to why a
website design is liked or disliked. Nor is there any suggestion
of possible improvement that may help retaining viewers longer.
On the flip side, it can be argued that liking or disliking is
totally a personal experience, and therefore there's no point in
splitting hair on the issue. Indeed, one of the researchers,
Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University, Ottawa so opined, "When
we looked at the web sites that we tested, there is really
nothing there that tells us what leads to dislike or to like."
Web designers may take heart. Bottomline is unless there's more
concrete data to support, there's very little website designers
can and should do.