6: Information Pollution

In a short article titled “Information Pollution”, usability consultant and human-computer interaction specialist Jakob Nielsen discusses the problem posed by excessive or extraneous content in both the cyberspace and material world. Nielsen motivates his argument by first citing several instances of information pollution he’s encountered whilst traveling — one such example is that of a sign in the John F. Kennedy International Airport, which cycles through four messages that convey the same meaning (“For your information and convenience” / “the monitor underneath will” / “indicate the schedules of all” / “airlines at JFK airport.”) as a distilled single-frame version (“Schedules for all JFK flights.”). After some equally mundane vignettes, he delivers the punchline:

Each little piece of useless chatter is relatively innocent, and only robs us of a few seconds. The cumulative effect, however, is much worse: we assume that most communication is equally useless and tune it out, thus missing important information that’s sometimes embedded in the mess.

Nielsen advocates a ‘less is more, more is hazardous’ design approach — and the implications in the age of information are clear. Given the deluge of information available on any given website, let alone the web as a whole, we may all well be guilty of “packing the forest with cardboard rabbits,” as he puts it. Nielsen is even willing to suggest we’re guilty of attention theft — a tad extreme.

Interestingly, the piece was published in 2003, well before I considered the Internet ‘polluted’, even to the point that it exists as something of an anachronism. The rate at which cyberspace is flooded with erroneous information has increased dramatically, such that the Internet of 2003 compares to the present much in the same way a pond compares to an ocean. Nielsen, though, is a business consultant; his advice is (maybe) not directed at a general audience. Even so, the portion of his argument devoted to attention theft hinges on user victimization:

The Web is a procrastination apparatus: It can absorb as much time as is required to ensure that you won’t get any real work done.

He talks of web content as though it has some malicious sentience, seeking to sap our productivity. In a BBC article on information pollution published in 2003, he states:

It’s where it stops being a burden and becomes an impediment to your ability to get work done.

I don’t know that I buy what Nielsen is selling. Not that the Internet isn’t a perfectly good vector for procrastination — but to regulate content in the interest of shielding seemingly defenseless users from information pollution? It reminds me in a distinct fashion of recent legislation against the maximum salable size of sugary drink in New York City, in that the problem lies with the consumer and not the producer, but it is being legislated as though the converse is true. In the same BBC article, Nielsen proposes penalties for perennial polluters — is there truly a clear and present need? I’m not convinced.

To the point of the guidelines offered by Nielsen, I think they’re beginning to show their age. The face of the web has changed drastically since he first offered these tips and templates, so much so that I found it difficult to find a really poorly organized site. It was necessary to move back into pages that exist as Web 2.0 holdouts (like Nielsen’s) to find something, since so many sites have embraced a blog-like front page.

GOOD — OregonLive, a news website dedicated to happenings in the grand old state of Oregon. Maybe not the most attractive, but definitely exemplifies the importance of headings and brief sentences.

BAD — SuperVideo, an electronics “information” website. This truly sucks. It took me a couple of scans to understand the purpose of the site. Also, the background is unbelievably distracting.

Oof. Nothing about this makes me want to read it.