Gorilla spotting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (via)

There’s an old tenet of web design that says if you need to explain how a page works, then you need to redesign the interface. Fair enough: no amount of explanatory copy can make up for bad design. But what to do when a page is necessarily complex, as is sometimes the case with detailed transactional experiences? Or when the client requests a level of complexity you’ve recommended against?

Content strategists often face this problem. An extra bit of directional copy would—theoretically, at least—clear up confusion about what to click and where to go next. Problem is, if users are already engaged in a task (say, if they’re on step 3 of a 5-step process), it can be nearly impossible to reach them. Even if you flash a dancing gorilla on the screen. Seriously.

This lack of awareness is called “perceptual blindness.” In a classic test of experimental psychology, two Illinois professors showed a short video to their students. The video featured a several people passing around two basketballs. Before show time, the professors instructed their students to count the number of times the ball was passed between the players. Watch the video here and see if you get the right answer.

Notice anything strange about the video? No? Just a bunch of chest passes and bounce passes? Watch it again. The professors’ test revealed that at least half the people who saw the video did not see the person in the gorilla suit walk leisurely into the frame, wave at the camera, and walk away. I know I didn’t see it on my first view. Silly as it may sound, the test has strong implications for interface design. The professors engaged their audience in a task, albeit a simple one: count the number of passes. Once the audience was engaged and busy counting the bouncing balls, they failed to notice the proverbial gorilla in the mist. Their perceptual blindness was matched only by their eagerness to complete the task at hand.

I recently experienced this phenomenon first-hand during user testing of an unusual credit card application. When users are thoroughly engaged in a task, it doesn’t matter if you flash directional copy in bright orange letters at the top of the page (we tried this), or show a colorful, interstitial alert layer of copy (also tried this). Most users won’t see it, or they’ll click the nearest available “next” button without reading the body copy (happens every time).

Eventually, we solved it. Our solution was to cut our losses and figure that some users just wouldn’t get the interaction design in the first place. It was a complicated page, but for the right audience it was a puzzle: they enjoyed poking and clicking the page to see what would happen next. Sometimes your design isn’t for everyone. And the sooner you can retire your invisible gorillas, the sooner you can focus the experience on the elements that matter most to the right audience.