No Next Day
April 6th, 2007
It’s not unusual for a comic strip published regularly on the web to have a Next and Previous link to take you to other strips. Typically, when you’re on the most recent strip, the designers just remove the Next link, leaving the word “Next” without an underline or link. In watching users deal with these terminal navigation points, I’ve often seen them confused without realizing they were at the end of the path.
However, while reading the Doonesbury comic strip at GoComics.com, I noticed that their navigation changed from Next Day…
… to No Next Day.
While I applaud the designers for using something a little less subtle than just removing the link, the phrase No Next Day troubles me slightly. I wouldn’t mind something a little less, well, ominous. (It reminds me of the phrase I dislike hearing when traveling: my final destination. It always sound so “final.”)
April 7th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I’ll think about it tomorrow.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
OK - if “no next day” is way too final, what would be a better option? The endless loop (have I seen that cartoon before?)? A date? A different color? Help the Grasshopper snatch a pebble from your brain.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Why not simply drop out the “no next day” in this context? This would leave the user with:
April 13th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Laurie:
It’s the phrasing, “no next day”, that struck me funny. There must be a better way to phrase that.
It’s possible that, on the pan-ultimate (next-to-last) strip, the designers could just have “today’s strip”. On the ultimate strip in the series, they could have text saying “This is today’s strip.”
Of course, if usability testing shows nobody is bothered by the current wording, then I’m sure they have more important things to worry about.
That’s the very tiny pebble that rattles around my brain.