Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/) is an Internet-based media company founded in 1995 by David Talbot and several of his colleagues from the San Francisco Examiner; Salon is an online magazine, updated daily, featuring original articles in Arts & Entertainment, Books, Comics, Life, News & Politics, Opinion, Sports, and, Technology & Business. Salon features links to current news items from the Associated Press and other wire news services and hosts two popular online member communities: TableTalk and The WELL. Salon.com is a publically-available web site, however, users can choose to pay for a Salon Premium membership (at an annual cost of $35) to participate in online forums and enjoy reading Salon ad-free.
As a long-time, daily user (and Premium subscriber) to Salon, I have seen numerous iterations of the site with marked changes over the last 9+ years. In order to gain some insights on the usability of the current site to a novice user, I asked my mother-in-law to explore Salon while I observed and took notes on her actions. My mother-in-law, Joan, had heard of Salon, but had never visited the site; I explained that she could choose to view or not view whatever she wanted and reassured her that whatever choices she made would be beneficial for me in terms of this assignment. (Joan has worked as an HR specialist for a Nabisco/Kraft bakery for over 20 years in Portland, OR.; she has limited web browsing experience, mostly due to her own discomfort and unfamiliarity with using any non-work related Internet sites--so she was a little apprehensive about doing "something wrong.")
In order to provide Joan with some general information about Salon and the kinds of articles/genre sites that are available, I introduced her to the site from the Salon Fact Sheet (using the public/non-subscription interface); she read this page for a few minutes then clicked on the Salon.com icon that took her to the site's home page. After a few minutes of scrolling up and down and scanning the blurbs for several articles, she chose to click on the link for an article in the Opinion section, entitled, The billion-dollar gravestone by Tom Engelhardt (5/20/2006). After reading the first two paragraphs, she encountered this message:
Click on the sponsor logo:
to read this article and all of Salon for FREE
Absolutely no registration or membership required for a FREE Site Pass. Now you can read this and all of Salon.com.
Joan stared at this message for a few seconds and seemed unsure of what to do, she then decided to click on the Community tab at the top of the page and abandon the rest of the article. Under Community, Joan spent a few minutes reading the brief summaries about TableTalk, The WELL, and Salon Blogs, then she chose to click on the Books tab (at the top of the page). She briefly glanced at the introductory blurbs for several recent book reviews and author interviews, then she clicked on the News & Politics tab. Here she chose to read an article, The tears of Snow by Michael Scherer (5/17/2006). After the first 2 1/2 paragraphs, she encountered the same message she had seen in the previous article--directing her to "Click on the sponsor logo...to read this article and all of Salon for FREE"; she hesitated for a few moments and then explicitly stated, "I don't like this, it makes me frustrated, and if I weren't trying to help you, I would just leave."
I asked her to tell me what, specifically, she found frustrating and she explained that she didn't want to click on the logo because she assumed that she would really be required to pay (since it said Salon Premium), and that even if she wasn't required to pay that she would probably be required to type in her name, email address, etc. and that she didn't care about finishing the article enough to have to fill something out to read it. (I think an additional, yet unspoken, element of Joan's wariness to click on the logo was a result of having just heard her son/my husband remind our 6 year-old daughter not to fill-out the 'Click here' ads on the Barbie website.)
To help allay Joan's frustration, I informed her that she really could just click on the logo, without being required to register in any way, watch a brief ad and then return to Salon and finish the article, or any other article, without having to click on any logo again. She did click on the logo and then finished reading the Scherer article. She then stated that she felt like she had seen all she wanted to, so I asked her if I could log into my Salon Premium account to see if she had any comments about the two interfaces, she agreed.
After scrolling up and down for a few minutes she said that she didn't have anything else to say, so I asked her if she were looking for a film review what she might do. She clicked on the A&E tab at the top of the screen, and scrolled for a moment and then asked me what the name of the film was that has recently been causing "all of the controversy." I said, "The Da Vinci Code?", and she immediately scrolled to the Search box at the top of the screen and entered: divinci code (not noticing that the review for the film, entitled, The Da Vinci Code, was toward the bottom of the A&E page she was currently on.)
As Joan entered her search string, she stated, "I'm not sure if I am spelling it right, but it should know what I mean", so she was understandably frustrated when she received this message:
Joan then returned to the A&E tab, and using the "Browse all topics by letter:" feature, she clicked on "D" (presumably for Da Vinci"--which wasn't listed), then "M", where she scrolled down to and clicked on"Movie Reviews" and found the review by Stephanie Zacharek of The Da Vinci Code (5/18/2006). (I then thanked Joan for her patience and willingness to participate and assured her that she had provided me with ample information to write about.)
Joan's experience using Salon was interesting to witness; I was impressed with her use of the lettered indexes to find the Movie Reviews (in all my years of reading Salon, I have never used the "Browse topics by letter" tool, even though it is a readily-available searching Index feature in each of the 8 main topic/genre categories of the site.) I imagine my familiarity and frequent visits to the site (not to mention the RSS feed of recent articles Salon delivers to my Bloglines account each day) enables me to find the information that I want to read (e.g., author interviews, entertainment columns, feature stories, AP articles, etc.) without needing to browse the site's Index. Also, if Joan had been more familiar with the site, she probably would have noticed the review for the Da Vinci Code toward the bottom of the A&E page, or if she had entered: di vinci code, or even, vinci code, as her search string, she wouldn't have needed to Browse for the film review at all.
Regarding the logo, based on what Joan stated, if I hadn't told her that clicking on the logo wouldn't require registration (and that it was okay to do so), she would have closed the window and 'in the real world,' may or may not have gone to a different news source (print or online) to find more information on a topic of interest to her. I also cannot help but think that the coincidental corporate sponsorship by Salon Premium (as opposed to other Salon corporate sponsors like Visa, or Evian) and the placement of the Salon Premium logo under the "Click on the sponsor logo...", that is the identical logo featured prominently on other parts of the site to become a member of Salon, significantly added to Joan's confusion about what clicking on that logo would do or require her to do. Salon's message ("Click on the sponsor logo...to read this article and all of Salon for FREE") is a fairly straight-forward and encouraging directive to users interested in accessing the rest of an article for free, but the eye is most easily drawn to the graphical icon--and having a paid version of the site you are using, sponsor the free version of the site you are using, immediately above the Join Salon link, is just confusing.
Joan's stated desire to leave the site when she felt frustrated is understandable and is a common usability concern, especially for e-commerce sites. A cursory glance at Salon's Audience Profile indicates that neither Joan's age, education level, annual income, or 'online activities' qualifies her as a typical Salon reader, so perhaps most Salon visitors would not have found aspects of the site to be so challenging. (Although, evan as an 'expert' user better represented by Salon's user demographics, I can understand the confusion and frustration surrounding each of the problems Joan encountered and wholly suspect that she is not the first or last user to feel that way.)