The Thomson Corporation: Being too Flashy

Designers are allowed too much fun at the expense of usability and readability.

The Site

The Thomson Corporation, a leading provider of business information, has an interactive version of its annual report which it uses to showcase not only the business but also its command of technology.

A home page link leads to its annual report, available in PDF or the ‘interactive version’. The introduction to this is Flash-driven and opens a global map on which 14 Thomson locations appear in sequence, with a summary of each showing for about two seconds as the map is built. When it is complete an invitation is added to rollover a location marker to read the summary. The map is followed by five themed overviews of Thomson’s take on the business marketplace; pages hold until readers opt to move forward or back, but the full-screen image above the text fades and is replaced three times from when the page is opened. ‘Next’ and ‘previous’ links allow each screen to be skipped before its content loads fully.

Other sections of the interactive report have a more conventional text and chart format with menu-based internal navigation.

The Takeaway

Given the business it is in, it is understandable that Thomson should want to use its site and featured content to show off what it can do electronically. While it serves its financial and professional audience with a PDF report, its designers have been allowed too much fun at the expense of usability and readability on the Flash version.

To get the full benefit of the text being built, visitors have to be quite dedicated (more so if they have a slow internet connection). The building of the global map, with its too-brief glimpses of location summaries, and the image sequences in the overviews are a monumental waste of time with limited counterbalancing benefits. Users can skip to the next page, but if they do, how do they know they are not missing something useful? And what the thought behind having the Flash animation in the first place?

At a time when Flash is finally being used to provide real added-value by many companies, it is a shame that throw-backs to the age of technology-for-the-sake-of-it are still appearing, especially among the world’s biggest information groups.

First published on 08 June, 2006