Text Makes a Powerful Comeback!

If you haven't noticed, I've been doing a bit of my own experimentation with ads in this blog. I've come to the conclusion that everyone already knows by now, Google's text based ads are extremely effective as compared to gif animated banners or flash based ads. Jakob Nielsen has a well thought out explanation:

Text-only ads might have one durable advantage: because they're a low-end media format, users might take them more seriously. Being forced to express a message in a few words concentrates the advertiser's mind, and probably leads to more communicative ads that are better focused on explaining how users will benefit from the product or service.

Looks like people are beginning to realize the side effects of plain text. If that wasn't enough, read Microsoft's new research on Inductive User Interface design. One striking revelation:

Many well-designed Web sites use principles similar to the IUI model described in this document. This is probably a side effect of the way the Web works. Because it's hard to implement complex interactions between controls on a single Web page, designers often break tasks into pieces that involve more than one trip to the server to get a new page. Some sites even include page titles that clearly state the page's purpose.

Designers of traditional applications have a much richer set of tools available. This gives them more flexibility, but also provides more opportunity to create complex and confusing pages. When creating inductive user interfaces, designers should use this power with discretion and remember to value clarity and simplicity.

Inductive UI design says "a screen with a single, clearly stated, explicit purpose is easier to understand than a page without such a purpose". In short, don't forget to use text to explain. Well duh!

Inductive UI is applicable for simple applications, it turns out text is just as important for more complex applications. Despite all the research and development invested in Visual Programming it has become painfully obvious a picture isn't worth a thousand words. The effectiveness of the Eclipse design revolves around its support for the programming text.

Eclipse blends intelligence and interactivity inside the text editor. Instantly Eclipse indicates erroneous syntax and provides a instant way to fix them. Navigation and browsing is extremely easy, a few clicks away from the text that is in question. It's template with in place text editing. Text differencing, how does one do visual diffs?. The list goes on, however its all too clear, support the manipulation of text and you go a long way in fulfilling the needs of your users.

In summary, for advertising, simple and complex applications, text continues to rule like a king.