UX: Why too much advertising is not user friendly

This article will be useful for beginners / students of the IT industry, who want to do their first projects not so much profitable, as they are quality.

There is such a concept in the design of interfaces as usability. It is not beautifully translated into Russian in one word, it means “usability”.

This concept was used earlier in ergonomics, it became especially popular in IT when building interfaces - good usability is a service if the user is very comfortable with this service.
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Good usability is:

- If Granny comes to the unfamiliar terminal for the first time and she immediately understands how to pay for the light with it;
- If you do not have a question how to make an outgoing call to mom using a new smartphone;
- You immediately understand how to transfer money from your bank account to another card;
- In the kitchen, stove, sink and refrigerator are arranged on the principle of a triangle, so in the process of cooking you feel that everything is at hand.

More IT:

- On the website of the new social network, you can immediately fill in information about yourself, set the privacy settings;
- Opening the first time a new mail agent you understand how to write and send a letter.

I.e:

- The user of the service knows exactly how to do the action he needs. Example of bad usability - I need to change my passport, in the Sberbank terminal I have a positive scenario (when I know exactly which buttons to press, I know in which department my state duty) 12 screens should pass. 12, CARL !!! with a positive!
- Standard (= most frequent) usage scenarios are made the fastest. Good usability - if I throw money through an Internet bank to the whole family of 10+ people, then the service gives me the opportunity to put this option on one of the main pages of my account.

Fortunately, in the 21st century, all products, services, and sales have learned how to put a client / user / customer in the center. It is now accepted that everything is done for the client. The wholesale war, perestroika and revolution had already outlived its life. People do not have a strong incentive to adapt to the uncomfortable. And this is good (I am only talking about IT now).

Initially I wanted to write about usability improvements (hereinafter only about IT services), but now I will write about reducing the degree of negative user interfaces. After all, by reducing the negative and / or improving usability, the product will receive not only an improved product, a happier customer, but also often a better website / service promotion, a greater (Internet) conversion.

So, most often the interface spoils:

- Poor navigation, wrong structure / architecture (as a result, the user will spend too much time trying to complete his task);
- A very large amount of advertising. Too much.

I will not speak about the first part of this article; I can only say that research with focus groups and user feedback is needed. In a sense - minimalism . If you doubt the need for a function, most likely it is not needed (especially for mobile application interfaces). 20,000 settings are also not needed.

- I do not understand what the problem is:


Especially if you are young and inexperienced - chick all that you doubt. Make less, but more comfortable / more beautiful.

About the second - it will be about advertising, which has existed from time immemorial as well as trade itself.

It seems clear that the purpose of advertising is to be useful, to convey to the user the necessary information, brand values, so that the buyer wants to divide them and buy the goods.

Well, what kind of usability will you have if a user with foam at the mouth every 2 minutes presses a cross on an obsessive banner (hello, youtube!).

O God why

Why everything is so crooked and expensive and shit - in fact, this question always turned in my head, but before that the scale of the tragedy was smaller, so the question did not leave my mouth like that.
Vkontakte added advertising when listening to audio recordings (I do not mind advertising under the menu).

In my smartphone, I occasionally pop-up pop-up with an advertising message (I am not against advertising in sms about the balance, after the main info).

When buying a subscription to a fitness club near the house, I have to agree to send me SMS and / or letters with the newsletter, otherwise the club refuses to enter into an agreement with me.

Actually, here is the answer to the question in the title - the user cannot continue to perform the intended actions, the advertisement changes the person’s behavior, imposing the product, forcing to look at unnecessary content or perform additional actions to close it, thus modifying and raping the will of the user, thereby causing negative

What to do if you do not want to scare off the customers, but there is nothing to eat and advertising helps to earn money for food?

When designing a good interface, it is worth remembering that ad units / banners MUST NOT:

- Prevent the user from performing scheduled actions, view materials;
- Override the functional elements of the interface (for example, for most web sites advertising should not be in the F zone - menu zone);
- Dynamically shift other UI elements;
- Beat out of the stylistic decision of the product, be excessively animated / filled (also a subtle point if advertising mimics the controls, you should not change the cancel and view buttons on it compared to the arrangement of confirmation and cancellation elements on the site);
- Have a complex hiding mechanism.

I hope a high-quality, convenient product in our world of information technology will eventually become more and more.