On Aug 16, 2009, at 10:33 PM, Diana Wynne wrote:
A side note that I recently discovered the learn more ? balloon on the NYTimes website.
Here's the thing that so many people don't understand about "usability" - it's a sliding scale. Interactions can be intuitive or immediately obvious, predictable, discoverable, learnable, etc. all the way down to none of these, which results in unusable.
In the case of LAT, well, perhaps we have evolved, or started to evolve to the point where we don't need to underline links anymore. If they are put in a predictable location, then perhaps that's good enough. Only time will tell and I can tell you having worked with LAT in the past, I'm sure they're tracking this stuff.
As a side note, let's not forget that our brains can evolve and map to new interactions. We've gone from hammering out letters on stones, to typewriters, to desktops, to laptops, to pocket Macs. Anyone remember the 3.5" disk drives? 5.25" floppies?
The no link colors is a gamble, but perhaps that's what we need for the web to evolve. After all, the Internet was a bit of a gamble to begin with.
Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel Principal Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [email protected] AIM: [email protected] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com Twitter: zakiwarfel ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ 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
