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.