The new york times had an interesting article on how yahoo finance visits compare to google. I found a particular snippet very interesting.
James Pitaro, vice president of Yahoo’s audience group, said, “In our research with users, we found that the more information that was displayed on the page, the greater the anxiety.”
He said Yahoo deliberately adopted what he calls “the Apple model — simplicity in design; a clean, simple look, not overburdening our users with too much information on the page.”
This is a brilliant concept that we sometimes overlook as designers. “less is more”. When designing applications, or interactive websites I usually go through an exercise of labeling items on a page with a question mark. The question that needs to be answered is, is this a distraction? Does it really need to be on this page. Sometimes we tend to provide to much information on a page. I never put the term anxiety to what users are actually thinking, but I think it makes perfect sense. Sure, people can be exaustive when navigating a page, but if they are subconciously anxious — then you are not doing your job as a designer.
A great book that articulates this point is “Dont Make Me Think”
http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107
