On Sep 20, 2009, at 7:59 PM, Dave Malouf wrote:
Hi Jared,
re: "usability" I said how I'm thinking of it. It is rooted in my
pretty broad experience of practice, my reading of peers case studies
(the ones they make available to me) and my listening to
presentations. It's all I got. I do not see anyone practicing the kind
of usability practice or creating a qualitative measure of usability
as part of a usability practice the way you are describing, so despite
the source, which I respect, it just doesn't match anything I see,
read, or otherwise experience. So I'm sticking with my efficiency +
success (maybe + learnability) definition of usability.
I get that you're going with a traditional (circa early 2000's)
viewpoint of usability practice.
I think this is part of a larger problem though. If you're going to
restrict your definition of usability to the efficiency notion, then
you're really only dealing with a limited subset of what people are
dealing with. I'm not the only one looking at the delight side of the
spectrum -- there are lots of us tackling it from a variety of
perspectives, but you are correct that it is advanced thinking.
We've come upon it because, while usability practice started with
aiming towards the reduction of frustration, now that we're coming
close to it in lots of designs, we realized that once all frustration
is realized, you're left with something pretty dull. Usable, but dull.
So, pushing into the arena of delight was the natural extension. (A
lot of this thinking comes from some really great work in video game
design, where games have to be delightful to succeed.)
Amongst the usability professional community, I've been fighting a
battle to get people to think of aesthetics as something beyond color
palletes and font choices. Shouldn't we be pushing the design
community to think of usability as something beyond pure efficiency?
Wouldn't stretching those boundaries help us grow as a community?
As to the examples. The clearest one in my mind is well the iPhone.
The keyboard lacks all manner of efficiency, yet it is part of a
beautify system that increases pain tolerances for the pains of that
keyboard. The system's overall experiential aesthetics of engagement
trump the usability of the poor experience of the keyboard.
I agree that Apple's done a great job of using aesthetics to
compensate for the various design compromises they had to make (such
as the keyboard). Interestingly, none of the non-keyboard competitors
(such as the BB Storm or the new LG) have managed to capture that
sense of aesthetics.
But, I wonder if there's a future design of the keyboard on the iPhone
(or its successors) that doesn't have today's constraints. I'm
assuming you'd still want the great aesthetics.
I'm also wondering about the alternative design. In your principle,
"Beauty over usability", you implied that the designers *could* have
gone in the direction of usability. What would that design have looked
like? Would it just be the keyboard of today without the nice
experiential aesthetics? I'm just not seeing the choices that the
iPhone designers made to follow your principle.
I can think of a host of systems where the experience of the content
(I.e. the value embedded in the aesthetics of the content system)
totally trumps the usability of that system.
Again, if you improved the usability, would it take away from the
aesthetics?
As to Craigslist, the love is wearing off w/ that most heinous of ugly
and unusable sites. It has survived on the strength of approachability
+ critical mass of content b/c there was nothing like it for so long,
but so many other new services are making craigslist the secondary
choice for more and more people.
Craigslist usage numbers are higher than ever. In our studies, their
brand engagement and user satisfaction is also higher than we've ever
seen before. While there are niche services nipping at their heals,
we're not seeing any mass movement amongst their core users.
So, I can't say I agree with the love wearing off in any measurable
way. On the contrary, we're seeing more mainstream adoption than ever
before. If the love is wearing off, it's only with the bleading edge
folks.
Again, I can define usability and aesthetics to be synonyms if i was
so inclined. This making the line item useless ... But the point is
not to re-define for the person putting out the principles, but to
analyze them within the boundaries of their use.
Oh, well maybe I didn't understand the point. If that's the point, I
can't help you there, because I'm not seeing the tension between the
attributes, and thus can't grok what the boundaries might be.
Further I have to say that I'm annoyed (this isn't personal to anyone)
by the tendency that people engage in just a point that spirals out of
control, and then loosing site of the whole message or the whole
thread. the concept of "principles" in your design is much more
important than a single line item in either mine or Thomas' list.
Sorry if I'm annoying you. I was just trying to understand where you
were going with this. And, to be fair, I did say from the beginning
that I agreed with all your other principles. I could repeat that in
each email, if it would make you happier. I still agree with them. I
think they rock.
a
better response would be here are mine and here's how they differ from
yours and why? If you don't design, but promote design education or
design theories, then what principles are important to your work?
That's just it -- I think you said them very elegantly, except I don't
see the choice to make of aesthetics over usability, but we can agree
to disagree on that one point and agree to agree on the rest.
I haven't really formulated principles this way, since my interest is
more in terms of critique and analysis of what's been done.
Jared
On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Jared Spool <[email protected]> wrote:
Not sure I see the contention between usability and aesthetics.
Maybe you
could give an example from one of your experiences?
I see usability as a scalar attribute, measured from Extreme
Frustration to
Extreme Delight. Efficiency and success rates really only talk to the
frustration portion of the scale. Engagement (both with the design
and their
corresponding brands, thus expanding into the 'experience' aspects)
increases as you move past the neutral center (neither frustrating
nor
delighting) and focus on design elements that enhance delight.
Limiting usability to only deal with the frustration portion of the
scale
would be equivalent, in my opinion, to limiting aesthetics to color
palettes.
I think we can agree that a very beautiful, yet extremely
frustrating design
would be unacceptable. But, I'm not sure how you'd create an
extremely ugly,
yet extremely delightful design.
At some point the aesthetics must become integrated into the
design, along
with the functionality, to create the delight.
Also, I believe that at some point, aesthetics become personal and
contextual. Many users are delighted with Craigslist (surprisingly
so!).
While its clear that an aesthetic makeover would be easy to do with
Craigslist current design, would it truly enhance the experience of
those
users who are already delighted?
I believe that the only way a makeover could truly bring more value
to
Craigslist's users would be if it was very carefully tuned by
bringing out
capabilities currently hidden by the current (lack of) aesthetic
presentation. Yet, because of the simplicity of the overall
functional set,
those capabilities would need be tailored to niche audiences for
their
specific needs (enhancing interfaces for certain types of job
hunters, for
example). The context of use and the needs of the individual user
is the
critical challenge of the design space for Craigslist.
So, in this example, I believe, the "ugly" veneer of the Craigslist
design
contributes to its current level of delight. (For the same reason
that
delighted Costco customers would not be happier if it took on Neiman
Marcus's aesthetic qualities.)
This is all a long way of saying that I think at a certain point,
beauty and
usability converge and thus aren't in contention, instead are
synergistic.
It's all about meeting needs and desires. Only when working
together, does
the beauty and usability of the design reach perfection.
But what do I know? I'm just an academic who has never designed
anything. My
opinion isn't worth the money you've paid for it. :)
Jared
On Sep 19, 2009, at 9:00 AM, dave malouf wrote:
While I agree that a beautiful interface that doesn't work (in some
ways) may become ugly, but I also agree with Norman's assertion that
something emotionally appealing can basically make up for its lack
of
usability. Beauty and the positive emotional impact associated with
that creates a pain threshold that I'm not sure I have observed the
other way around. I have really seen a "usable" product really make
me feel more engaged.
For clarification and for the purposes of my post and I'd like to
suggest for this thread I am speaking usability quite narrowly
possibly. I'm considering usability the quality of a product related
to the efficiency and rate of success towards completing a desired
activity. Basically, whether a user can or with what level of
consistency and efficiency they can complete an intended task in the
product design.
So again, I do think that I would if the 2 areas became in
contention
and I have many experiences where they have, learn towards the
aesthetic over the purely usable b/c aesthetics can be used to
engage
in ways that pure usability does not seem to in my experience.
--
Dave Malouf
http://davemalouf.com/
http://twitter.com/daveixd
http://scad.edu/industrialdesign
http://ixda.org/
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