The Three Click Rule

Poster: pbowers
Dated: Monday December 1 2003 - 7:32:24 GMT

Slashdot has a current topic called "Web 'Rules' Changing?" at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/30/1416221&tid=

Below is the text that is most relevant to website navigation (from the above link):

What interests me the most, however, is the change in two of the hallowed GUI 'Rules' - the three click rule and the 7 +/- 2 rule. The Three click rule (which states that any page in a site or function in an application should be accessible in three clicks) was just debunked by Josh Porter in an article called Debunking the Three Click Rule. The 7 +/- 2 rule states that a user should never be presented with more than 5-9 choices at any given point in the site or application.

Here's a funny comment from spin2cool:

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These make my head hurt. Here is the complete list of web designer battle stories [tofslie.com]. Some notable excerpts:

Client: "We want a website that can play DVD quality video, but we don't want to use streaming video and the load time must be zero."
Designer: "That's impossible. Everything has a load time. DVD quality runs about 100 megs a minute."
Client: "We'll take our business elsewhere..."

Designer: so who will go to this site and for what reason will they go there?
Client: i don't know
Designer: well what is the purpose of this site!?!?
client: i don't know

client - I don't care if it doesn't work in netscape - I want it!
Designer - umm.. okay...
client (2 weeks later) -It looks all broken!
designer - Huh? Nothing looks wrong on my end. ..blah blah blah... What version of IE are you using?
client - Netscape.

Client: Could you use a different font for every name, you know make it cool.
Designer: Uh, that's probably not going to look so good, it'll be all cluttered and ugly
Client: No, it'll look cool, so let's do it.
(after doing what they want...)
Client: Now it looks all cluttered.
Designer: Aarrrgghhh

And my favorite:
"Can't we make the text blink?"
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Paul