[Sigia-l] Using Flash Rollovers to Uncover Information

[Todd R.Warfel]

Advantage of VW is that you can compare (sort of) from the home page. 
The Toyota site makes you go to the vehicle model selector page first. 
So, the VW site gives more of a call to action and gets the user on 
their way faster.

I would agree that the downside of VW is an increased cognitive load - 
it's actually called the satisfycing model. The satisfycing model 
states that once a user leaves a particular area (e.g. page, or in this 
case rollover) they don't recall all the information. So, making the 
user "recall" key items (e.g. price, MPG, date, account number, account 
balance) is bad - you see this in other areas like ATMs (don't get me 
started on those).

The ideal model would be one that gets users on their way as quickly as 
possible and doesn't require them to "recall" key items. VW and Toyota 
are both half-way their, but each in a different way.

On Jul 9, 2004, at 1:22 AM, Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com wrote:

> The VW home page's "choose a model" example (www.vw.com) is pretty
> simple and seemingly harmless.  It's a good example of using
> "progressive disclosure."  I actually like the Toyota site's approach
> better though (www.toyota.com).  You have to select "vehicles" on the
> home page and then you can go to a "model selector" which provides a
> nice level of info and ways to process the list of vehicles and compare
> between them - not by all attributes of a vehicle, but rather by three
> key attributes that consumers likely care most about (price, MPG, and #
> of passengers).  In comparison, the VW approach makes you rollover a
> vehicle model, remember the base price, rollover another and then
> compare the price in your memory with the price on the screen - this
> puts a much higher physical and cognitive load on the user.

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
User Experience Architect
MessageFirst | making products easier to use
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