Slate published an interesting article on Google’s Master Plan. When I got to the bottom of the article, I noticed they had a multi-page article breadcrumb.
Oh, one of those.
Like many ad-driven websites, they split the article into two parts because it will get them more ad impressions. Okay, whatever. But what’s this?
Notice the option to click “single page”. But in a two-page article, what is the point of that, since I’d still be performing the same act of clicking to another page? Obviously, this functionality is probably automated and it’s in place for heavier articles on Slate where there would actually be a benefit (anything more than three pages).
But it clearly should be disabled for two-page articles. Maybe it’s not Slate’s fault, or maybe they’re just not interested in modifying the plugin or the code used to create that functionality.
As a side point, I clicked around to many different recent articles on Slate, and couldn’t find another multi-page piece. So this doesn’t seem to be a regular thing.
I guess the lesson for UI designers is: Make sure every bit of functionality in your apps and pages has some purpose or benefit to the user experience. Clearly this piece of redundancy doesn’t.
