2012: The End of the Home Button
I recently reviewed a detailed, independent, Content and Usability report on a site that’s been in development with us.
‘Usability’ was measured with six questions/assignments for the user to accomplish… Five of them were tasks related specific content, and if users could find it. The sixth task was ‘Return to Homepage‘. Interestingly, despite a number of available paths to get home, e.g. back arrow button, breadcrumb, and the product logo itself, some respondents struggled to complete the task.
A better question would be whether or not a User ever feels like they need a ‘Home’ button during the experience at all. When is the last time you used a ‘Home’ button on a website?
The Home button, from it’s inception has always been a hedge against bad, non-intuitive navigation or content structure that does not cross-link content for anticipated intent.There’s only one instance of ‘Home’ buttons that make sense anymore, and that’s the one on Apple mobile products like iPods, iPhones, and iPads.
And to be fair… The Apple ‘Home’ button isn’t a ‘Home’ button at all, it’s a ‘Close’ button that’s just gotten a little ‘Homey’ since iOS included multi-threaded processing.
Enough Said? Let’s make 2012 the year we get rid of the ‘Home’ button for good…