[Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long

[Erik Moeller]

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The campaign this year is hugely effective. The banners are smaller and the
> campaign will be significantly shorter than in previous years, and yet we
> will raise more money: that's excellent.

I think the change that's pointed out in this thread is that the
banners that were running as of this weekend(?) expand to take up
about more than 2x the vertical size with an in-banner donation form
even if you just move your mouse over them. That's a change from the
previous approach, where you had to click the banner to expand it.

I agree that this is counterintuitive - elements shouldn't jump
around, or expand when you don't expect it. It's always a balancing
act, but I feel that we should steer away from dark patterns like
pretending that moving your mouse into a banner area suggests strong
intent -- I'd rather run the previous banner for a longer time. YMMV.

Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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