Andrei probably isn't one who worries about being stalked on dark streets, thus his concept of something being easily usable (once one knows something exists, where to look and is able to find it) isn't typical of the female user who would probably more often need this button (trying to be PC here). Although I'm sure it does happen to men, it's much more often females who are followed on a dark (and possibly unfamiliar) street. I think in a life or death case, something needs to be immediately learnable. People need to make an emergency call in as little time as possible - as you said, it can make the difference between living to tell this story and not.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joan Vermette Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 2:52 PM To: IXDA list Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] We don\'t make consumer products, hence no need for a User Centered Design development process. All that said, even now that I'm sitting perfectly safe in my home office and you've described the appropriate button for me to use, I still can't find it. I do recognize that there is a distinction between learnability and ease of repeat use but they are not entirely separate, are they? Certainly, both last Sunday evening in the dark and fully spooked - and here safe in my office looking for the button - that distinction seems quite blurred, indeed. On Aug 27, 2009, at 2:23 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: > > On Aug 27, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Jordan, Courtney wrote: > >> But it still holds true that to the user, Joan, it wasn't >> "immediately learnable" given a high-stress, potentially dangerous >> situation. > > I don't agree that "immediately learnable" equates to hard to use. > >> I wouldn't expect to see emergency call on the keyboard of my phone, >> and would never think to look there. To me, it might as well not be >> there at all, for all that I would be able to find and use it when I >> needed it. > > Again, this has little to do with "hard to use" in my opinion. Once > you do see it or know it's there, one can make a pretty good case it's > quite easy to use. > > -- > Andrei Herasimchuk > Joan Vermette email: [email protected] primary phone: 617-495-0184 ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
