Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Kudos to your whitepaper! I can’t wait to read it!

yes! please turn this into a story!

I think this paper could provide valuable insight for the design community. C’mon, print it…...pleeeeeeeease!

Please don’t forget to take a good stab at how advertising requirements based on these kinds of artifacts are ultimately blocking good usability design.

I want to see this research. I’m always debating the fold question.

ditto everyone else. I’m tired of this issue coming up again and again! It would be helpful to point my clients to such research.

Would love to hear more about this.

Love it! Fold this, Fold that… Enough with the fold already. Can’t wait to read this.

I vote Yes! Folds are not just for origami.

Great idea! It’s about time we stop just accepting the “givens” and look at the real facts. Please print!

There are many ways to promote scrolling without putting everything above the fold. Above the fold is getting old.

I’d love to read more about this?

I’d really love to hear more about Millissa’s findings. Please print this story.

I almost didn’t find the ‘post comment’ field. I looked everywhere, but I just couldn’t find it above the fold. Luckily I remember I could scroll. Phew! ;)

EMBRACE THE SCROLL!!! We designers need to create designs that encourage the user to peruse the page beyond first load. We should also consider the design of scrollbars themselves. Are they effective? How do people use them? Are people scanning pages with a mouse, keyboard or scroll wheel? Inquiring minds want to know.

Milissa – I think this would be widely read and utilized. Data that you have to share as well as seeking out info from other people in different contexts will be important as well. Designers and advertisers can use this for re-valueing the lower portions of our webpages. Does your info take into consideration differences in montor sizes and what that means for the fold – since it is a moving target?

I think the page basically has to make it obvious there is stuff below the fold. Sometimes boxes will end at the edge of the screen and it doesn’t look like there’s anything else down there. Long, vertical elements that deliberately extend below the edge definitely help.

I would love to see this story too. It drives me crazy specialy when you are talking about a transactional application. This one is right up there with “stickyness”.

I would love to hear more research about this issue. There are often unclear contractual obligations based on “the fold line” (as if there were only one fold line in the entire Internet—h e l l o!!!)

The information I plan on presenting does address the fickle nature of the fold itself. But I’ll go further by looking at performance data of items that fall below folds on current sites. This is what I want to focus on – showing proof that users are actively scrolling and utilizing items despite their screen location. I also will present cases where the fold truly does matter and scrolling should be avoided.

It’s interesting to see that such an old school print term like the fold still is being used in a modern day design world such as the web. I would be very interested in seeing how the concept of the fold is being addressed and overcome in many successful web sites. The concept of grabbing the viewer with a brilliant “above the fold” has always been a vice to get the user engaged; I would be curious to see if this idea still applies in the ever changing web world.

What going on down there? Below the fold

Sounds like a great sticky topic to tackle! I’d love to hear more about the trends on this, as screen resolution gets bigger and bigger by the year…

I’d love to read this story. Do people ACTUALLY scroll?

I would love to read more about this!

I’m writing usability guidelines now. This would be a great addition but a hard sell without some back up. Write it!

In our usability lab we keep finding people don’t scroll for the types of site we’re involved with.
So I would love to see this paper, especially if there is a good analysis for which contexts the findings hold true for, and where they can’t necessarily be applied.