User Interface of the Day #1: Dontclick.it

Commentary Design

This is Humanized’s first “Interface of the Day” weblog posting. Every week, from Monday through Friday, the six of us will share our thoughts on a new example of interface design. For our first “victim,” we’ve chosen dontclick.it, an interface that attempts to completely eliminate the “click” from your usage of the mouse. Dontclick.it’s authors assert that their project improves “total control and quickness” while challenging existing norms and beliefs regarding user interfaces. Is it successful? Read below to find out!

Andrew Wilson

What’s Cool: This site solves the activation and perhaps the pie menu types of things — command issuing, selection of discrete objects, etc. — by indicating them very simply. However …

What’s Not Cool: … the specific implementation of the “select from” widgets is annoying because they keep jumping around. Why doesn’t this site have something I can mouse over that doesn’t move?

So? The underlying interface is worth exploring, but the philosophy driving Dontclick.it does not seem to involve usefulness in any obvious way.

Atul Varma

What’s Cool: I liked some of the indications. And it was very pretty.

What’s Not Cool: It was irritating that they asked if I missed clicking before I started using the site. I don’t know yet! Also, the interface seemed to assume that the cursor was always the locus of attention, which was confusing and would create problems if you were using both a keyboard and a mouse. If you moused over a field, it would automatically select all of the text in that field. If you can’t click, you can’t drag.

So? The idea is worth exploring.

Aza Raskin

What’s Cool: This page features novel methods of providing indications — that is, indicating to the user what is selected, and what will happen when an action is performed — which normally don’t get used with pure clicking. Some of them are clever and deserve more experimentation. Also, these indications are a great way to fend off accidental activations. And I like how Don’tclick.it does gesture-based UI with an almost self-teaching gesturing system. The use of descriptive text (instead of cryptic icons) via their clever use of expandable screen real estate was especially nice.

What’s Not Cool: The implementation is visually jarring and needs work. And while this interface is very mouse-centric — which isn’t bad in itself — I worry about its scalability to include typing. How do you select in text?

So? I’m pleased with the exploration of not-clicking; constraints are the often the best way to fuel creativity. I look forward to an extension of this work to something more useful and applicable to real-world use cases. For instance, this feature set would work well with touch screen products like the iPhone or Tablet PCs — anywhere where pointing and clicking are ambiguous.

Jono DiCarlo

What’s Cool: For certain pointing hardware, like a stylus pen, a clickless interface would make the web easier to use.

What’s Not Cool: Dontclick.it is very passionate about proving that a clickless interface can be done, but they don’t show me how it would be beneficial to users, or superior to the current standard web interface. Also, there’s nothing to do except browse around to find fluffy contents, so it’s hard to judge how usable this would be if I were trying to accomplish more data-intensive interactions, such as reading and writing email. And it’s too easy to activate things by accident just by mousing over them. If you were editing graphics with a stylus pen, how would you drag in order to select chunks of graphics or move them around?

So? I’m convinced there’s a few useful ideas amidst all of the flashturbation, but it needs a lot of work to be really useful. It has potential if used with a stylus, but the site doesn’t talk about that scenario.

Lauri Apple

What’s Cool: I appreciated the opportunity to think about computing in a new way.

What’s Not Cool: Everything about this site seems to promote disruption, from the annoying survey questions to the “you forgot to not click!!” admonitions. This Website needs to shut up. And as someone who has had enough trouble over the years using overly sensitive touchpads, I am not ready to risk transferring a similar problem to my screen. Finally, what’s up with “Can you resist to click?” How about, “Can you hire a copy editor?”

So? Interesting idea, but please tell me why clicking is so harmful to my health.

Scott Robbin

What’s Cool: I love the site, conceptually. It’s a very creative exploration using a single design constraint, regardless of how well it works.

What’s Not Cool: I don’t like not clicking — there’s a certain physical sensation you get when you click, a release of aggression when hitting the return key or space bar. This site’s like a run-on sentence — you never get to punctuate or add finality to whatever you’re doing. Also, I was creeped out by things following me around — for instance, text that would slide back and forth with my mouse movements. It made me feel like I was being taunted.

So? Neat ideas, but the concept of the site itself is too broad. I would like to see the site creator tackle one specific problem in Web design and compare their solution to an existing one, with a detailed, A and B comparison.