[thelist] USABILITY ---> DO not confound with traditionalism.

[Martin]

On Sunday, April 28, 2002, at 12:14  am, Erik Mattheis wrote:

>> At 3:42 am -0400 27/4/02, Stephane Gosselin wrote:
>>>  ex --> People are used to having links blue & underlined. I read
>>> this one hundreds of times. Helllllooooo we are in 2002 now.
>>> I mean. Ah.
>>
>> People are used to the accelerator pedal being on the right, and the
>> brake on the left. It's 2002! Let's make an accelerator dial on the
>> passenger side instead ;P
>
> That response perfectly illustrates the pitfall of designing
> according to a set of "usability" rules. An innovation like this
> becomes an impossibility:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/tw/2002/mar27pedal.shtml

Whereas this shows why messing with the user interface of
moving vehicles is a seriously dumb idea:
http://www.asktog.com/columns/027InterfacesThatKill.html
plus I really would doubt a car with that system having any
kind of chance in the marketplace. Ever been on a testdrive
of something confusing? Now spend 10-30k UKP on it after
driving it round the block? No chance.

Please, Erik, do read the subject. It is easy to confuse usability
as performed by someone with 20 years of experience:
http://www.useit.com/jakob/publications.html
with traditionalism. And many inexperienced designers who
come across Jakob and find him restrictive do just that, rather
than reading what Jakob actually says, which is "test the damned
thing... but if you can't, here's some good defaults which will ensure
that most people can use what you produce"

Oh, btw - to point out some errors in the article you cited:
> Meanwhile, site owners prefer more traffic to
> less, and more repeat visits to fewer.
... only the ones who either
1) Are too dumb to understand about LTV and ROI because
    they were out smoking when they should have been in
    Marketing 101
2) Have site designers who are too arrogant and dumb to
    measure anything that gives them anything more sophisticated
    than simple traffic data.
Really - those data are about as useful as measuring diet by
the length of your shite.

> Everyone who argued that HTML shouldn't be used as a layout
> language was wrong.

Actually, no. HTML should never have been used as a layout
language, and it should be used as one now. However, the lack
of anything better made the use of the wrong tool somewhat inevitable
for a while. We are now (fortunately) moving away from that, along
with the ignorant designers who expect that web design is as
amenable to their egocentrism as print design is.

Although, of course, commercial print design is rarely experimental
at all - especially in a field which can accurately measure results
(like Direct Marketing).

Although the conclusion is good:
> The obvious short term effect of this has been the creation of an ocean
> of bad design, but the long term effects will be different - over time
> bad sites die and good sites get better, so while those short-term
> advantages seem tempting, we would do well to remember that there is
> rarely any profit in betting against the power of the marketplace in
> the long haul.
it's clear that the actual profitable sites are those which are most
usable -
and the way to do that is to do like Jakob says and test the damned
things.

Failing that, take the word of someone who's been doing it for 20 years,
and don't arrogantly dismiss that experience as 'traditionalism' -
although
young ignorant punks have done that for thousands of years. Usually
they learn.

Innovate all you want, just don't expect to make any money on any more
than a small percentage of it. If you're happy with that level of
business risk
(and remember that few business funders are), fine, go ahead.

Cheers
Martin
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