It starts with a simple question.
A question that didn’t seem relevant until a bunch of others had been decided. A question that too often catches us by surprise.
The client asks – “So what happens if I click the back button?”
Why would they ask? There are many reasons, but the primary is that it is a convention they already know. The back button is one of the most reliable & flexible controls in a browser. People hit the back button when:
_ They didn’t go where they meant too.
_ They didn’t find what they were looking for
_ The server is slow and the page isn’t loading
_ The network is slow and the page isn’t loading
_ Someone designed a huge flash file into the page & failed to warn the user, so they think the site is broken
_ Someone designed poorly tested javascript or other code into the page & it is crashing the browser
So this is something people use to solve multiple problems. The one case that usually comes up in a client meeting is not finding what you were looking for.
User are drawn to the back button like moths to a flame. We see this often in mirrored testing, it precipitates a greek chorus of UXD people behind the glass moaning and wringing thier hands.
Why do they love it so? It’s big. It’s always in the same place. It does something predictable, and usually pretty quickly. Designers should be so lucky to make something that users learn so well & trust so automatically.
