UI design so users will actually *read* disclaimer screen/text?

Question

Client insists that users see disclaimer/legal/iAccept screen/text on their way into the web application. Same Client already perceives users as not reading that sort of text when presented with it.

How do you design/decorate/etc this sort of screen/text in a web application so that users will actually read the content?

I'm hoping someone has something truly and consistently effective, as most everything I've seen isn't effective -- users just blindly click buttons and move on. I can't just out and out anger the users along the way, but I'm interested in even the most creative UI ideas to get them to read.

EDIT: The text all fits on one screen. It's not just ooodles and ooodles of text.

Answer 1

Test them on the contents.

Answer 2

You could scroll the contents at a constant speed, and not allow them to finish until the whole thing has scrolled.

Answer 3

Is this directed to end customers? If so, anything perceived as "yet another standard TOS" will be rejected by readers and skipped.

You should formulate your text to be short, direct, and to the point. If you need it, the full terms of service written in legalese may be attached somewhere below. A great example is the "human readable" form of the creative commons license.

Answer 4

Make it short. Most users will not really read it anyways, but if you present them with a wall of text, nobody will read it. If the text is short enough there is a better chance some people will read it.

Now my evil idea, which I strongly suggest you don't use:

The user has to answer some multiple choice test about the contents of the disclaimer before he is allowed to use the application.

Answer 5

By forcing the lawyers to reduce the contents to no more than three bullet points.

Answer 6

Add an old-school game captcha.

"Please enter the fourth word in the sixth paragraph here:"

They won't acutally read it, but they'll have at least skimmed it.

Answer 7

It's all about signal-to-noise.

Don't present reams and reams of legalese, just highlight what matters - and that can be done by literally getting rid of copy or by just making the important human-readable bits big and blue, or anything else which makes it seem different. Humans are good at spotting differences and pay attention to them.

Link out to legalese if you must, but don't force it.

Answer 8

I heard a story of some software that was around about 20 years ago.

When you started it for the first time, it asked "Have you read the manual? Y/N?"

If you typed "N", it said words to the effect of "This is a complicated piece of software; it is important to read and understand the manual before you use it."

If you typed "Y", it said words to the effect of "No, I am serious. It is important to read the manual before you use it. Go and read the manual."

In the fine-print in one of the later sections of the manual, it said "When you get asked the question, type 'K'."

[I am not, for one second, recommending this! But you asked for creative ideas...]

Answer 9

Whatever you decide on, you should test it on your client first. Design a gateway that presents the disclaimer in the same fashion before they're able to go to the site that they want. Now force them to use that gateway for a week. Think of it as dogfooding your UI design. If the client can't stand to use the gateway for a week, or they're caught cheating, then it probably isn't a good idea to include it in the production site.

Who knows? Maybe after the client sees how annoying their proposal is, they'll change their mind about this part of the specification.

Answer 10

You should be using more bullet points and info-graphics that simply describe the TOS. The web is a medium that people generally scan instead of read - so you need to target that style of usage when designing content for a user (including the TOS).

You might want to draw inspiration from a Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

They have simple icons (info-graphics) and a layout that is friendly to users that scan content.

Answer 11

I agree with most of the above and Palantir in particular. You need to keep it short and to the point.

If that is not possible, you can always require it as part of some functionality.

I did a website for a lawyer who sells books on gun law and self-defense.

He was VERY insistent that people read his looooooong disclaimer so that he could cover his "liabilities" ;-).

So, I told him that no one would eve read it. He got really upset.

But then I told him as long as you can show that there is NO WAY for people to order without seeing the disclaimer and accepting it, then he should be okay.

Life is about choice. Most of us choose NOT to spend hours reading legal-eze and dialogues that we do not think pertain to us.

So, what I did was make it so that when the customer adds items to their shopping cart and clicks the pay button, a dialogue comes up and gives them the legal info, and has only a single "accept" button.

Then, and only then, does their transaction get processed and their order completed.

This "bottleneck" is what covers my client, but does not punish the user by forcing them to read it. It merely strongly suggests they read it and lets them know that they lose their right to come back later and claim they "didn't know".

Answer 12

I'll probably take flak for this, but I would make a short dynamic typography animation displaying the license text, possibly alongside a voice-over of the same text. It'll be short and relatively inexpensive to produce or outsource, strongly encourage people to pay attention, and make the client look either snazzy and hip or professional and refined, depending on preference and corresponding style of animation. It can be made in Flash, embedded as a YouTube video, embedded as an ordinary video, or made in dynamic HTML.

I'm in New Media, so this is how I think. I hope it's at least a marginally useful suggestion.