In a previous post, I mused about the practice of AB testing in web design. Today's post is another example that I have recently come across.
On one of the apps I use, they pop up "notifications" on the bottom left of the screen. These notifications are unsolicited messages - kind of like the paper pin animation that used to show up in Windows.
Here is what is behind this pop-up window:
Notice that similar to the pop-up from Twitter (see the previous post), there is nothing on the pop-up that allows the user to remove it. I am forced to click on it if I want to sign out of this account. When I click on it, it goes to another pop-up that has an X icon.
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Imagine you're the AB tester. Version A of the test is this pop-up. The metric of the test is how many users click on the notification message. In the online world, clicks is the proxy for user engagement - click gold as they say.
Does the test result represent what the users want? Or what the designer wants?
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