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May 28, 2004
Web Credibility -- Why our popular guidelines stink
One day in 2002 I received yet another email request: Can you suggest guidelines for designing credible websites? I had said no to this request many times before. We were NOT going to create guidelines, I said. Read our research papers. They are easy to understand. Read what other researchers have done. Learn the principles of credibility and think about it deeply. But something snapped that day. As I sat in my lab I suddenly changed my mind: "Sure, we'll give you some guidelines!" One hour later I had cranked out the first draft of the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility. I now get requests to republish these guidelines in newsletters, web pages, and even books. These guidelines have been the most popular thing our lab has ever produced. And it stinks. First of all, guidelines gloss over the complexitities of how people assess credibility. Yeah maybe the guidelines are helpful for people in a hurry. But if credibility is so important online (and it is), don't you think people should take the time to dig a little deeper. If you follow our guidelines to the letter, you may still end up with a site that lacks credibility, depending on your user, the topic, and the context of use. The guidelines give a false sense of security. Besides, the complexities -- the anomologies and unexplanables in the research -- are where things get interesting. In contrast, consider our first guideline: "Design your site so that it looks professional." How interesting is that? Not all all -- a real snoozer. Next, because we've issued these guidelines people tend not to read our published papers or my book chapters on credibility. That's too bad. People wouldn't need guidelines if they read these things, because they would develop a deeper understanding of what matters in web credibility in different situations. It's like the difference between following prescribed dance moves and really dancing! Finally, our guidelines stink because believe them. Yes, each guideline is backed up with research. But so what? People should question these 10 guidelines; they are not the 10 commandments (as one person called them on his site until the Stanford legal team stepped in). We probably should have never created these guideWe've never published these guidelines without a note saying that people should read our research. If you want to see our lab's best work on web credibilty, you'll find it in a two-page paper. If you understand this paper, you won't need guidelines.
They give a false sense of accuracy
They shortcircuit deeper thinking
They stop people from reading our real research
The skew information: they don't convey relative importance
They seduce even us -- Oh, these must be right. "Most credible website" student papers marched down the guidelines one by one. This site is credible because it fulfills all the guidelines. That turns my stomach. It's understandable students would do this, but it shows I'm failing to educate them. So it's fine to consult our guidelines, but please read our papers too. The guidelines took a maybe four hours to draft and polish; the research took years.
Posted by at May 28, 2004 12:37 PM
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