At 2:01 PM -0400 10/11/2000, Joshua Bell wrote:
>It's well known in UI circles that what seems perfectly logical and
>intuitive to the designers and expert users can be completely unusable
>in practice or when other groups are exposed to it. That's why we do
>usability trials on UI designs.
Yup. As I was writing the tutorial contents for an application that was
being developed this summer, I was shocked at all the problems in the UI. I
told my boss about them and he told me to go ahead and tell the client, but
the client essentially poo-pooed my comments.
It was amusing to see all the end-user test comments on the talklist over
the next few months, most of which reiterated my comments and caused a
major overhaul late in the project's development...
Well, it was amusing until I had to redraft the tutorial to the new UI
configuration, anyway. But kcetching aside, some of the stuff they assumed
was easy and simple and self-explanatory shocked me, for how confusing it
was.
Gord
