What we have here is a failure to communicate. Comparing 'usability' to 'design' is like comparing 'cooking' to a 'watermelon'. It's a non-sensical notion, in my mind.
Usability is a quality of a design, like performance or elegance. It can only be thought of relative to other designs. One design is more or less usable than another, based on the criteria one uses to assess usability. (Like performance, which is measured by "fast" or "slow", usability is measured my frustrating or delighting.) Design (the verb) is an action (in contrast to design, the noun, which is a result of the action). You don't measure a design. You measure a design's qualities, like usability. You'll notice, in my original post, that I used the term usability practice, which is a verb, like design. You *can* compare usability practice to design, though that's sort of like comparing eating to cooking. I'm not sure what the benefit of such a comparison would be. What it sounds like you're trying to say is that somehow designers are more enlightened about good design than usability practitioners. I think this is a fallacious argument (and, to some, probably insulting). Designers and usability practitioners have different roles in the design process and, when they work together well, they can produce amazing results. Of course, it takes little skill to do something poorly (damn, I really want to get that on a t-shirt), so when they work together poorly, which takes virtually no skill or effort, then the results are likely to be less-than-desirable. I don't know what a "usability expert" is. (I've been called one, but there is so much I don't know about usability work that I don't know how the label applies to me.) However, when someone who thinks they understand how to make something more usable makes a suggest on changing a design, they are, in fact, designing. For the record, someone who knows nothing about making things more usable could just as easily make suggestions to improve the design. And they have an equal likelihood of being right. When I said I was spending a lot of time thinking about the delight side of the equation, I wasn't so much thinking about the design of delightful things, but instead how we measure when we've achieved delight. Of course, I need to find things that purport to be delightful, so I can develop my measures and calibrate them, and that probably involves some sort of design. However, I don't consider myself a designer. I consider myself a researcher. I don't design things, per se (though, as the owner of a small business, I do take part in the design of my own customer's experiences). I research how to effectively do great design. It's the difference between an artist and an art historian. I'm more of the latter -- I look at what's been done and try to apply models to assess its effectiveness. Hope this helps clear up the confusion. Jared On Dec 18, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Murli Nagasundaram wrote: > Jared, I realized after I hit 'Send' that I was danger of implying > that 'design = making things pretty' or something similar, but the > deed was done. Design and Usability can be treated as: > > 1. Two ends of a continuum/spectrum > 2. Two sides a coin > 3. Two intersecting circles in a Venn diagram > 4. <insert your favorite metaphor here> > > Now, there is a wide variety of professions that use the term > 'designer' in their title, and these range from 'people who make > pretty things' to 'people who build railroad tracks' (to pick > something really mundane and far removed from art and prettiness). > Perhaps there's no need to make distinctions between Usability and > Design. Then there's certainly no need to have two separate > professional associations (UPA and IxDA). I know that this debate > has been going on for a while and probably will never be resolved, > or eventually become irrelevant. > > Now, coming to what 'Usable' means. Does 'delight' also come under > the category? If so, where do we draw the line? Was the act of > designing a feature/attribute that caused 'delight'? Let's take > response time -- say, I click on a link and the page comes up in 2 > microseconds -- I'm delighted. Does that make the site more > usable? It certainly makes it more likely that I will click on > that link again. > > But delight is a general response to a variety of phenomena. I see > something pretty, and I am delighted. I learn that I don't have to > wait as long as I had anticipated and I am delighted. The first > response was grounded in aesthetics, while the second was in > efficiency. My delight was a result of an absence of frustration. > The 'mere' elimination of frustration, pain, effort generates delight. > > When I, Usability Expert, advise a client to Do This In Order to > Make Your Site More Usable, am I providing Usability or Design > advice? When you "spend a lot of time thinking about the delight > side of the equation and what designers can do to increase it", > aren't you, in fact, engaged, at least to some extent, in the task > of design? > > I'm not trying to contradict you -- what you say is perfectly > reasonable. I'm just not sure where 'usability' ends and 'design' > begins. There are people who work at the extreme ends of the > spectrum (assuming there is a spectrum) and there are those > (probably the majority) who are simultaneously attending to design > as well as usability. I suppose, wherever design involves human > beings, one cannot but attend to both simultaneously; even a hard- > core, salt-of-the-earth, no-nonsense, beer-swilling, gruff, hairy, > pot-bellied, engineer when designing a car, is unlikely to build a > seat with spikes all over them; it most probably will be 'seat- > like', even if he has never seen a seat before. > > So, > > Does it make sense to make distinctions between actions that > 'increase usability' and actions that 'improve design'. How are > these two different? Do they actually mean the same thing? Can you > enhance/reduce one without affecting the other -- i.e., are > 'usability' and 'design' independent? I resolved this issue for > myself by making what is perhaps an artificial distinction -- > individuals probably draw the line of distinction (if any) at > different places. > > -- murli > > > -- > murli nagasundaram, ph.d. | www.murli.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | +91 > 99 02 69 69 20 > > - Find your purpose; the means will follow - Mahatma Gandhi ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
