Study: Users judge your web page for visual appeal within 50 ms of opening it | Hacker News Reader

Study: Users judge your web page for visual appeal within 50 ms of opening it

garrysub.posterous.com

26 pointsacconrad9 comments

I decided not to read the study within 50 ms due to the painful format chosen. This blog post does not add any value, it is just a one line summary of the studies results. The submitter would better serve serve HN community by submitting the original source, or better yet, by giving some analysis.

Here's a copy of the PDF, from some random internet location: http://anaandjelic.typepad.com/files/attention-web-designers...

Did you notice that the linked page cited the full URL right below the Scribd rendition of it?

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/conferences/ace-netc/lindgaard....

Yes, but the parent copy has more quality (parent is text pdf, the link at the article is a poor scanned image pdf).

I have long held the opinion that Scribd should go the way of ExpertSexChange and be purged from educated discussions.

However, IIRC, that debate was raised here before and there were users who enjoyed the services provided by both of those websites. Thus, I should not expect their demise anytime soon.

While I'm sure there are users who find it useful, this is not the primary reason for it's presence here. Scribd is a YC funded startup, and as such as actively promoted on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124940

I respect this choice, and find the Scribd technology to be slick, but I do not like the business model of framing other people's content after submission by a 3rd party and then requiring signup to view the captured original.

Regarding the original source, the actual results (at least, those mentioned in the abstract) are thus:

There is a high correlation between webpage visual appeal when presented for 50 ms and 500 ms.

So, a user who views a webpage for only half of a second is likely to give the same rating if viewed for only 50 ms. For this result to be significant (to me) there would need to be a correlation between 500 ms and a longer (5 second?) exposure.

I have not [yet?] read the linked article, but my first reaction to this headline was: yes, especially if your page doesn't render 50ms after the page title appears in my browser's tab. Interestingly enough, I experience most of that kind of lag due to loading off-site resources, such as Google Analytics and "share this" link crap.

I admit am probably more curmudgeonly than most about that kind of thing; I don't want fancy wooshings and crazy rounded corners on the tables. I want the page to load fast and use readability as its design motivation.

(You kids get off my lawn)

Loading JavaScript shouldn't block rendering, if done correctly.

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