Weren’t Splash Screens Dead?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Few days ago while I was at home in Ipoh, my dad (who’s not tech-savvy at all) wanted to check out Singer’s(they make famous sewing machines) website for some information about a contest. They were looking for the oldest sewing machine (of course, made by Singer) in Malaysia. Nevermind the contest, looking at my dad finding his way to the contest information made me realize quite a number of things, namely about requirements screens and flash-splalsh screens.
First off, not knowing the exact address of Singer Malaysia, he just pointed the browser to “www.singer.com“, which lead to “Singer Global”. We were greeted by some flashy animation, and little text at the bottom: “North America, South America, Europe…”. My dad was instantly at a loss.
“What’s this?”, he said, while staring at the changing banner. Saving lengthy explanations, I simply directed him to click “Asia Pacific > Malaysia”. He could have figured that out given time, but the page could have given much more clear instructions. Since it was a flash page, usability was definitely poor.
Next, still at singer.com/global,
It had my dad thinking that that was Singer Malaysia’s homepage, thanks to the misleading “Welcome to Singer Malysia” heading. Absolutely wonderful. And we’re not even at Singer Malaysia’s real homepage.
So the next logical thing to do clicking on the tiny “url: www.singer.com.my”. An ta-daa! A requirements page.
My dad was still “processing” the word “requirements”. He asked me briefly what was it about, and since I’m not much of a patient person, I just clicked “enter” for him (the button itself wasn’t striking). I could imagine that my dad would have no idea what on Earth is Macromedia Flash MX, and I doubt he knows what the heck resolution is. I wonder how long would it take him to figure out that he should simply click “enter”, that is, if he does figure that out.
Finally, after all these “obstacles”, a little flash thingy showed up. It seemed at that time that it would take a good hour or so before the “loading” thingy would reach 100%. Yes, there’re still folks out there on dial-up. Since my dad would be waiting for it to load, I doubt he’d notice the “skip” text at the bottom, or realize it’s function.
Without my help, he’d have wasted so much time. Finding his way to Singer Malaysia’s homepage would seem like finding your hotel at a foreign city, aided by nothing more than a map. Incidentally, the contest page showed exactly the same information seen in the local papers.
So the next time you see “Log on to www.whatever.com.my for details” in some ad, think twice before you actually do that.
