Must We Click To Interact?

Rockgod writes, "Here is an interesting experiment (warning: heavy Flash!!) that urges you not to click anywhere in the site yet wants you to navigate through it. It's an exploration of the clicking habit of computer users and aims to help understand why it is so hard not to click." The site records the mouse movements of each visitor and offers you a sample of them to replay. Doing so is a little unnerving, like peering into people's minds.

I think I like clicking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving the mouse around to navigate was fine, but after a while I felt a bit like I was chewing without swallowing. There's some kind of satisfaction with the click. Maybe it's just habit, but after swooping around without clickin' I felt frustrated and annoyed. Like the UI was doing everything it could to keep me from that button. If normal mouse-using is me going "i want.... THAT." I felt like I was going "I want... I want... I want... I want..." I must have satisfaction, dammit.

They say one of a baby's first non-verbal forms communication is pointing. Clicking must be somewhere just after that.

HHGTTG

[BenjyD]

The site reminds me too much of the gesture-controlled radio in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: you have to sit perfectly still while listening or you'll change the channel.

No

[RAMMS+EIN]

``Must We Click To Interact?''

No. I can use the shell, read and write mail and Usenet, surf the web, chat with others, manage windows, etc., all without using the mouse. I rarely even find the mouse convenient; it sits there a long movement away from where my hands are (on the keyboard), and it requires adjusting hand movement to the position of a pointer in a different plane.

There's a good reason why people click

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Human being, when they want to manipulate an object in the physical world, first think "reach the object" then "grab onto the object" (or, generally speaking, "do something with the object"). It's not conscious of course, but that's the way the human brain is designed work.

Now the GUI interface is a simulated world with objects to manipulate, therefore it's perfectly normal that people want to click. In fact, I doubt clicking is a habit that can be changed, I think it's hardwired in the brain. Imagine, back in the real world: would you reach for a pen and wait for it to attach itself to your hand? of course not, you close your fingers to pick it up. Well, same for computers: you point an object with the pointer then click to "do something". It's natural.

Re:Must we use Flash to not click?

[njdj]

but is Flash really required for this? Couldn't it be done another way?

No, Flash is not really required. It could all have been done with Javascript and images, plus possibly image maps.

I imagine that clicking is easier to manage than careful mouse manipulation for people with disabilities.

I'm not disabled, but I'm getting on a bit, (age > 60) and I find clicking a bit troublesome. (Double-clicking is really troublesome, I can't imagine why anyone ever thought that double-clicking was a good idea.) Remember that the sensitivity of mouse movement is adjustable in most GUIs, so pointer manipulation is unlikely to be a problem for anyone.