Posting Date: November 06, 2002
Slow download speeds capture interest of Internet surfers -- "In each of the experimental designs, audience members exposed to slow-downloading pages and then given the opportunity to freely browse the Web were more active in their investigations. They tried more hyperlinks and visited more sites than audience members who viewed pages with faster initial download speeds." (Comments: Wow.)
The Tease Effect of Slow Downloading: Arousal and Excitation Transfer in Online Communication -- "When a website image takes a long time to load onto our computer screens, the wait may be frustrating . But it can also be physiologically arousing. That is, the effect of a slowly-downloading image can be likened to the tantalizing effects of strategic concealment found in striptease. While traditional research has examined the effects of sexual and violent content on arousal, this study examined the effects of download speed on arousal."
This study is somewhat incomplete. How did they distiguish between arousal and irritation? What is the effect on second and subsequent visits? What if there is a readily accessable competitor? Given the option of a fast download or a slower one, which is to be preferred? What meaningful advice can this add to the profession (besides the hint that slow loading sex sites are OK?) Perhaps that images should be timed with a delay to load (perhaps via javascript) after the html page has been received? LOL!
I don't find these results surprising. What is, however, is that this passes for meaningful to any audience outside the porn industry. What about their other examples?
I believe this is a case where money was wasted on experiments where the value of the results were destined to be less than the cost of the trials.
Anticipation.
Anticipay-yay-tion is making me late,
Keeping me way-ay-ating...
That's all it is. And I could imagine that on a more normal page, if we see a similar effect, it's due to a browser being distracted from their original goals, while, to kill time waiting for the page to download they have to imagine what will finally be downloaded.
So, when the test subjects got faster links, they browsed less? Not waiting for pages to load, what other activity filled the available time? This study is either badly reported or makes no sense.
Someone who 'reads the book' rather than 'watching the film' will always learn more and be more involved in the subject matter.
What to say?
1- the title is wrong. It is culturally biased. Usually we associate "interest" with "something with a value" we imply "something good". In this case it's simply attention or better: an amodal (generic) excitement of the nervous system. It happens every time we have to code a stimulus. It prepares the brain for the cognitive processing and an answer for that stimulus. If the amodal excitement is low, we could lose some elements while processing or we could take more time to give an answer to it (some stimuli are not so patient!). In interest, a processing has already been made.
2- It doesn't distinguish between the orientation reflex and other kinds of amodal excitement. Good and bad expectations raise the arousal too The case of nude photos underline this confusion. In this case the arousal is influenced by something we know is pleasing plus the frustration of the waiting (even Pavlov's dog understood it well). In web surfing (not in porn sites), slow download time has an effect on the orientation reflex: the screen is always changing in a discontinuous way so recognition is frustrated, the orientation reflex is stressed and the arousal is still up! With the raising of the arousal, the brain "hopes" to have an answer faster. The aim? Come back to homeostasis. This is well known by TV directors. They use various ways to have your brain in "stand by": stressing the orientation reflex (changing cameras every 10 seconds) or stressing the cognitive or emotional coding (letting some people talk at the same time, showing the audience reaction while you still have to give your emotional answer. This produces an hypnotic effect. It is common watching a TV program, finding it boring or awful but we persist in watching that program. At the end, will you say: "oh, it was interesting!" ? (By the way: some commercial web sites use similar strategies to persuade). TV commercials work in the opposite way: they are pleasant, satisfying (for a while) your needs (personality and situational needs). It goes like this: the TV commercial "gives an answer to a desire" as you identify yourself with the testimonial, who never ends frustrated ( Freud named it: hallucinatory satisfaction of a desire), this satisfaction is the answer to the arousal raised by the TV program too. So the TV program inoculates a stress and the TV commercial is the medicine! Reading it, our loveable researches could conclude: so let's put more TV commercials, because we care of people wellness! Lowering the stress, changing the program? No way, it could reduce involvement.
3- Come back to our web interests! Arousal is raised by ambiguity too. A bad navigation system and lots of links in a page raise up the arousal, introducing ambiguity. So fuck off IA, info design, info visualisation etc. because they could reduce the arousal! Fortunately it is not true. Those disciplines help you to design something that reduces a continuos orientation reflex and ambiguity (a distress) and raises motivation (an eustress). Motivation raises arousal too (oh my God!).
4- In the paper they say: "test subjects spent more time on those websites and visited more links". A noisy variable was not controlled: those sites were well or badly designed? If badly designed we have given various answers above. But what if they were well designed but with big jpegs? A possible answer is given by the "cognitive dissonance" effect ( by Festinger and Carlsmith …those old bastard psychologists). The subconscious process is: my time has a value because I value, if I waste my time I have lost value and I am stupid if I lose value, but I'm not stupid and I've spent my time well, that web site is even interesting, let's see more links! Cognitive dissonance could answer to the other paper that dealt with good graphic design and credibility. If we do that research again dividing test subjects by personality, the amiable and the expressive ones could confirm the data, while the analytical not, I bet. In fact only 7.6 of the experts, who usually are more analytical, were influenced by design.
5- The research lacks a second session. Which sites will see those guys in a second session? Arousal is correlated with memory. We remember positive experiences, but we especially remember the negative ones!
6- Personal considerations. Are those researches idiots, are they kidding? No, research is their business. "SCLs measure only the intensity…..could not differentiate between those emotions" so they have to do more research. Please give them more money, they have found something interesting. Is there a Pavlov foundation over there? Maybe they'll make a research with a more efficient variable. Maybe the substantia nigra's neural activity is the key answer! In the meantime let's cook some sinful lasagne with mozzarella everywere (…for the arousal of course)!
Have a good dinner
Lorenzo
Actually, this makes some kinda sense, at least to me. For instance, if a user with a slow connection clicks on link A and waits for the page to load, he/she will probably notice another interesting link (link B). Slow-loading pages -- or pages loaded within the length of our attention span -- probably do allow users to see (as opposed to merely looking) more of the site. Users with ultra high speed will simply whiz through a site simply 'cause they know what they're looking for and the connection speed allows them to ignore the riff raff, no matter how interesting it could be. Does this make any sense to anybody else here?