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

[Erik Mattheis]

>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

Yes, people _are_ used to identifying blue underlined text as a link
... the problem is that making a rule of it that cannot (or even
should not) be broken would turn web design into the assembly of
particular information in a particular format ("usable", as defined
by neither the user or designer).

This open letter to Jakob Nielson lays out the wrongness of being
overly enthusiastic about someone else's concept of usability:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/nielsen.html


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- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

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