I followed a link to a Business Journal article and when I saw a little red circle at the bottom with a number in it, I thought “Hey, I have some unrea…. Wait-A-Minute!!!”
Did you think the same thing? Many of us have been conditioned by Mac OS X, iOS, Facebook, and other applications/interfaces to instinctively click on any icon with a red circle and a number it in. Those of us who are obsessive will click on these things for just one reason, to make them go away.
Whenever my wife would log into Facebook I’d yell “You have messages, click on the red thing!” so much she banned me from looking at her screen until I stopped. She never clicked on it, and didn’t care about, and I eventually came to accept that.
Hey Business Journal, you almost got me. I almost clicked on it… but I didn’t.
So for those of you in the web design, marketing, advertising, publishing, and UI/UX worlds… Is this clever as heck, or deceptive as hell. (Or both!?)