Fighting Back Against the Fold

Ensuring that the most important elements in a user interface appear "above the fold" is a concept that dates to print design, specifically newspapers, which have literal folds in them. With a newspaper, any content that appears below the fold is hidden and will be missed by someone passing by a news stand. Today we're designing apps, not newspapers, but the fear of people missing content below the fold persists, and has more influence than it should over the way we design products. I'm going to try and assuage the most common fears that lead us to squeeze as much as possible above the fold.

What if users don't see important content?

Businesses have a lot of important things to say, and there's a fear that users won't see those things if they aren't right in their faces. The fear is valid, but ask yourself this: If you have five important things to say to someone, would you get five people together and have them shout those things all at once? If you did, your intended audience would be unlikely to hear any of the important things, let alone all of them. When we force more and more information above the fold, it has a similar effect of overwhelming the user. It muddies the message.

Additionally, in order to get more information above the fold designers have to resort to tactics like shrinking type sizes and eliminating empty space in the interface. When you start shrinking type sizes, the words in the interface all end up being roughly the same size. This eliminates any visual hierarchy that the designer is trying to establish, which impacts the user's ability to process the information in an orderly and logical way. Without a clear visual hierarchy, every interface element falls back to having the same level of importance to the user. And when everything is treated as important, nothing comes across as important.

Negative (empty) space in the interface is a tempting target for those who are looking to fit more information above the fold. Any empty space is space where you can fit more information. This is problematic because designers employ empty space with strategic intent to accomplish business objectives. They use increased space to make certain information and calls to action stand out more than others, and to create a feeling of calm in the experience. When empty space is reduced, it becomes harder for the user to parse the content and have their gaze flow naturally down the page.

What if users don't know to scroll?

In the early days of the web, scrolling was an unfamiliar interaction for users. With the modern proliferation of mobile devices, scrolling is now an engrained habit. But that doesn't mean we can dismiss the importance of this question just because designers say, "People will scroll."

We cram information above the fold to try and offset the need for scrolling. But we have to acknowledge that no matter what, some people will need to scroll. When you design a newspaper, you know exactly where the fold will be every time. With digital experiences you can't be so confident. A person could have their browser window set to any size, or be viewing the experience on any number of different displays or mobile devices. We can't eliminate the need to scroll. No matter what, we need a scrolling strategy.

Luckily, enticing users to scroll is in the designer's job description. They design experiences that make it clear that there is more to see "below the fold" because designing experiences where scrolling isn't required is not a valid option. Designers employ the aforementioned visual hierarchy and negative space techniques to make sure the content tells a story, and guides the user's eye down the page.

Conclusion

Cramming information and calls to action above the fold can intuitively seem like the right move when you want to make sure that people see important content. But the compromises that a designer has to make in order to get more information above the fold do the opposite of what is desired. You may get more information into the initial view but that information will be harder for users to process and understand. It's far better to structure your content using so that there's a clear visual hierarchy that leads users through the important stuff step by step. We need to embrace the necessity of scrolling and design experiences that encourage users to scroll.