This Website Looks Worried

People are wired/trained to recognize the the slightest emotion in the human face. The slightest curve of the lip, raise of the eyebrow, or furrowing of the brow implies a different mood. There isn’t one other part of the body that we can analyze as well as the human face. Why is that?

According to the Face Perception Wikipedia entry:

The face is an important site for the identification of others and conveys significant social information. Probably because of the importance of its role in social interaction, psychological processes involved in face perception are known to be present from birth, to be complex, and to involve large and widely distributed areas in the brain.

So we know we’re wired to be able to interpret the face with more complexity. Does that mean that we can explain those complex processes? I don’t think so. I can very easily tell when someone is worried but might have a hard time defining what aspects of their appearance makes me think they are worried. It’s our developed brains that can analyze faces but cannot always verbalize those analyses.

Let’s take this analogy to the evolution of web users. I personally could never stand MySpace. I didn’t know why. It just bothered me. I signed up once and after a week or so and then closed my account. I knew I couldn’t stand the design, but so many people loved it (they won’t admit it now). It was more than the design, however. There was something in my subconscious that was telling me that I don’t like this site. It was something that I wasn’t able to explain in words. I figured social networking just didn’t appeal to me. Then Facebook comes along, and after pushing off signing up for as long as possible, I signed up and I love it.

I still wonder why I have such an affinity for Facebook but still can’t stand MySpace. I think it goes beyond design. It’s a mixture of design, usability, accessibility, and overall usefulness. All these things, combined with some undefinable qualities, create a conscious and subconscious decision on whether I like a website. And while I’d like to think I was ahead of the curve disliking MySpace, I think any new website has to deal with the refined tastes of web users. We analyze websites like we analyze faces. It’s hard for us to tell why in particular we don’t like or use a specific site. It’s just a feeling that we get. Some sites just make us want to use them. This is what developers should be working towards. They should be looking to find those key elements that unlock the “favorable” opinion in our minds. A lot has to do with design. A lot has to do with usability, accessibility, and usefulness. But there is more there that a developer needs to capture in the user’s mind. I know what it is but can’t put it into words. If it was definable, then everyone’s site would be successful.