The use of carousels in web design has become quite the controversial topic. Brad Frost takes it on very well in his post Carousels. He starts by explaining that in most cases, it’s not a good idea to use carousels, because of reasons like this:

From universities to giant retailers, large organizations endure their fair share of politics. And boy does that homepage look like a juicy piece of prime real estate to a roomful of stakeholders. It’s hard to navigate these mini turf wars, so tools like carousels are used as appeasers to keep everyone from beating the shit out of each other.

It’s far harder to have an honest content strategy conversation and determine what truly deserves to be on the homepage.

Brad goes further to give some good tips for improving the UX of carousels — if you really need to use them. For more, also check out Peep Laja’s roundup of thoughts and research on carousel usage at Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels, Ignore the Fad.