On the one hand, Jared's article sounded like it was talking about expectations of placement. I would buy that expectations of placement aren't too important. There are very few standardized locations for anything...thus the success of sites has no correlation with placement.
That said, what if the placement of the search box changes on every page? The first time you view the page it's at the top, the next it's below the fold. The next it's at the bottom. That would be a crappy experience. (thankfully, most designers recognize that *consistency* in placement is important) On the other hand, expectations about things other than placement are very important, as both Robert and Jared seem to say (which confuses me as they/you seem to be arguing). Making the login on Netflix look more like a login allowed people to see it easier...visual expectations *are* important. People type in their login/password in the two boxes that look like the login and password. As Jared argues, that's an important expectation to support. (would love to know how often this happens) Also, behavioral expectations are important as Robert mentions. Like the expectation that a save button is going to save...break that expectation and your experience sucks. If the interface makes a promise, then it creates an expectation. We can also look at this in terms of "initial expectations". Those don't seem very important. But once you start interacting...once the user is having a conversation...then expectations become more important. If Amazon tells me that they're going to get my book to me in 3 days...then I'm expecting 3 days. If they take a week...that's a bad user experience. When Jared said that "it's not about meeting expectations"...that seemed to set up a dichotomy between meeting expectations and meeting user needs. I don't know if he meant that...seems like Robert took it that way...but this doesn't seem necessary...I think it's pretty clear that meeting (or exceeding) expectations and user needs is a good thing. Also, who said that activity-centered design means not doing user research...? Seems odd. How can you possibly do research on an activity without involving the people who are performing it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30048 ________________________________________________________________ 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
