Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Jim said: Go back even further. I heartily recommend a study of heraldry %u2014 coats of arms. Layering of colors, readability at a distance, points of difference%u2026 there's a lot of good basics there that have been around for 1000 years. Agreed! In a different context, look even further back at Chinese calligraphy, if you can find someone knowledgeable to explain it. Fascinating to explore the way it's evolved from pictographs, and I only know a little of it. It's a very rich non-linear language because each character in its essence represents not a sound but an idea. Jeff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23618 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
For many years we stayed away from the design part -- now see both as very intertwined - user research, wireframe, usability test, repeat ... Usability results can be harder to communicate without a design to talk to. Talking to the design or leading up to communicating the design around the usability results is very rewarding. Also we have seen great results when you sit a usability and interaction designer together moving towards a solution. Happy UXmas! Daniel Szuc Principal Usability Consultant www.apogeehk.com T: +852 2581 2166 F: +852 2833 2961 Usability in Asia The Usability Kit - www.theusabilitykit.com On 19/12/2007, at 10:55 PM, Eva wrote: But I don't see how you can separate usability and design. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
At least a few posts seem to suggest that design is more art than science. This is a serious -- and possibly widespread (in the community, may not be in this forum) -- misconception, and is founded on a misunderstanding of the term 'design' which deems the terms 'art' and 'design' to be near synonyms. I seriously doubt if artists, prior to the 20th century would have called themselves designers. In fact, I doubt if serious/successful artists today would like the appelation 'designer' applied to them. I have a friend who would like to be an artist full-time but works as a designer to 'pay the bills'. This conflation of art and design may have something to do with the visibility and iconic status of architects from around the beginning of the 20th century (Walter Gropius/Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc.). Architects -- as distinct from civil engineers, or 'mere' builders -- were/are supposedly persons of vision and flair who 'imagined habitations' rather than drew up buildings. They became celebrities whose rock-star status often camouflaged the impractical nature of some of their designs [of current notoriety is Frank Gehry's leaky design for MIT]. The term design means, among other things something deliberate, intentional, considered, and ... horror of horrors! ... calculated. Before I discovered psychology, anthropology and computer science, my first degree was in Mechanical Engineering and my senior thesis involved the DESIGN of a heat exchanger for a nuclear power plant. Now, despite the fact that I was the college cartoonist at the time, there was nothing art-related in my project. Sure, I did engineering drawings of the heat exchanger, but it was calculated to avoid Three Mile Island sort of situations. No jury awards and all for flair and panache and all that sort of thing. Design means working to a purpose, and to claim that Design is all or mostly about 'that ineffable something' strikes me as being a little scary. Ineffability is great for pure art, but Design better be pretty darned effable. One thing I noticed from many posts is the preponderance of people with a formal/semi-formal background in art and hence having strong visual/spatial skills. Also, a significant proportion seem [and I could be totally mistaken here] to work on/with websites rather than with physical artifacts such a cellphones, ATMs, hearing aids, etc. If one is tasked with designing the billionth website or corporate logo on this planet, then yes, you've got to go into that state of ineffability to conjure up a visual design that has that ol' je ne sais quois: something unique, distinct, and fresh. Undoubtedly, the visual impactis an important consideration for a website, and to be able to come up with a unique website design in this vast web ocean requires an immense amount of creativity and original, unstructured thinking. Once you've come up with that fresh new angle that projects a unique identity, there's a lot of science to making a site successful. As far as physical artifacts are concerned, there are far fewer archetypes within a specific domain than the potential (visual) variety of websites; the visual is just one among many aspects, and thus visual aesthetics no longer occupy center stage (there are tactile and auditory issues too, among others). It's interesting that while this is a forum of interaction designers -- with the emphasis on 'interaction' -- that there is so much focus on the visual and spatial. Sure, finally most of what is designed will manifest itself in visual form (except for purely auditory design); but designing the INTERACTION PROCESS which is more critical than the visual presentation is nearly pure science. Jakob's Nielsen's site is pretty ho-hum looking, but from an interaction perspective, I think the man has it all down pretty well. Perhaps this reflects my bias -- I didn't get into this field from the world of art (despite a personal passion for art, and though I sport earrings, an artsy two-day stubble and love my latte; and yes, I do own a black beret, but it's in a box somewhere); my formal training is in engineering and the social/behavioral sciences. Everything constructed deliberately by human beings, is, by definition, art (everything else, is nature). Science does not -- and perhaps never can -- precisely determine how a design will manifest itself; but it sure does set a whole bunch of boundaries (and constraints) that delimit its scope. -murli -- murli nagasundaram, ph.d. | www.murli.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | +91 99 02 69 69 20 - The reason why death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity -- it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can. - Yann Martel, The Life of Pi. *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today:
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
[I sent this earlier today and apparently left off the ixda list as a cc. Jared, perhaps you haven't seen it either.] Jared, Allow me to apologize. My tone has been confrontational rather than seeking to find common ground. But you got my hackles up when you, not once, but twice in the same posting, referred to my opinions as a load of crap. I regret tossing the same phrase back at you with a little added sarcasm -- tit for tat rarely gets us anywhere. I also regret that my comments were construed as an attack on, or lack of appreciation for, usability, its practices or practitioners. What I was trying to do, admittedly with more heat than was helpful, was champion the role of the designer, which I think is tending to be diminished by the current ascension of usability. I don't however, see it as a zero sum game. To champion the role of the designer does not imply criticism of the role of usability or usability practitioners. Both are necessary -- and the better they both are, the better the outcome. In my humble opinion however, the people who are really good at one, are rarely really good at the other (design and usability). The more of a mix of skills and talents in these domains that someone brings to the process, the better it is for the whole. But I've yet to meet someone who really excels at both. Perhaps it is only because I pushed you too hard, but I came away with the impression that you don't feel there is that much difference between the two roles, really. It sounded as if you thought it was more a matter of the skills and training in one's toolkit -- and not, as I believe, the result of significant differences in temperament. You might be interested in a learning styles survey I conducted at Tristream years ago. A major component of the survey was to discover how people tended to organize information and was based on a system usually referred to as GASC -- short for Global, Abstract, Sequential, Concrete. What I found was remarkably consistent. The people who were the best interaction designers were consistently Global/Concrete in their approach to organizing information. They needed to start with a global perspective and then they could take it down to concrete form. The people who were the best at analysis and critique were Concrete/Sequential, they needed to start with a concrete perspective and then apply sequential processes to analyze it. One of the results of this survey was that we became more conscious of making sure any teams assigned to projects had a good mix of both -- but it was always the Global/Concrete person that took the lead in designing solutions. It was also always the Global/Concrete person who became frustrated most easily with process, process, process, and they often needed to come in early, or work at home, so that they had the space to be creative. The Global/Concrete interaction designer was also easily frustrated by specific design solutions suggested in response to iterative reviews or user testing. They would rather hear what the nature of the problem was and then go and design a solution -- because the specific solutions presented rarely meshed well with the overall, global design. I hope that helps clarify my point of view. If not, let us, as you already suggested, agree to disagree. I for one have to get back to work :). I hope you get a nice break for the holidays. Respectfully, Joseph Selbie Founder, CEO Tristream Web Application Design http://www.tristream.com *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
I wasn't trying to say that being a usability professional is like being a movie critic in terms of **specific** methods. I was using the movie critic as one example of the age old debate as to whether being able to critique, evaluate, measure, analyze a domain, bestows on one the ability to design or create at an equally high level in that domain. My answer is no. Well, then perhaps *communication* is the hardest element of all. Re-reading everything you've written, up until these retractions / clarifications, you've been saying design professionals require more skill, talent, etc, and design is inherently more complicated or difficult somehow than Usability practice. Jared clearly disagrees with you. So do I. And it's not that common that Jared and I agree on something completely. Usability practice is very complicated, takes quite a bit of creativity, and very much requires both sides of your brain. You have to be able to collect, analyze, and communicate data in a very succinct fashion, at the very least, and also be able to deal with those crazy users all the time, read between the lines to understand the problems that lie beneath surface observations, and many other things. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Design is definitely a complex and oft-difficult exercise, and yes, some people are better at being designers while some are better at research and evaluation, etc. This does not mean that either profession is inherently more difficult or complicated than the other. More likely, it means you don't fully understand what a good Usability practitioner really does or how he does it. Visual design may look like magic to you, while Usability work apparently appears to lack anything magical, but I assure you, it's every bit as complicated a practice as design. It takes talent far beyond the skill and experience one depends upon, just like design does. Maybe it just isn't *interesting* to you and you're therefore unimpressed with the skill and talent involved. Regardless, you've said several times I was only trying to convey ... in an effort to clarify your original statements. This tells me you are most lacking in the area of communication. You may be a great designer - I have no idea - but you clearly have trouble communicating your ideas. A Usability professional has to communicate very well, and the good ones do. Perhaps this seems less than magical to you, but if you've ever been able to read a UIE report or an AlertBox article and walk away feeling wiser, it's because you've just read something by a great communicator. Communication is a lot more complicated than it looks. The ones who do it well make it seem easy. Those who do it poorly ... well, they find themselves having to say things like I was only trying to convey ... a lot. Without beating this to death, next time, just consider making sure you're making the point you wanted to make before you hit Send in the first place. The root cause of this whole debate, I think, has been a lack of good communication. -r- *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
*Good* designers are, in fact, more enlightened about good design than *good* usability practitioners and it is that indefinable something that separates art from science that makes it so. H. Not all of us live in that dichotomous world that divides art from science. We may have to agree to disagree, if our perceptions about that are so different. It seems you assume that a designer can't be a usability practitioner, and I think he or she must be both to be good at either one. I perceive usability and design as complementary considerations that combine to yield varying degrees of satisfaction in user experience. It sounds like your definition of a usability practitioner is one who, like Jakob Nielsen, only assesses the work of others and designs nothing himself. Or one engaged in the metrics of usability. Am I interpreting you correctly, Joseph? I don't meant to be contentious at all, only to understand your perspective. Evaluating the usability of design -- we're talking interaction design, right? not something painted on afterward or applied as a skin? -- is a rightful part of the design process, and many factors argue for its integration long before a prototype is presented for testing. Similarly, it makes no sense to ignore accessibility considerations from the start. Accessibility and usability are hard to separate anyway. Good design doesn't need to be retrofitted with anything, because it's designed with all essential criteria in mind from the beginning. Of course, these are ideals and our real-world experience has to make allowances for all kinds of circumstances. But given the opportunity to do it right, my own life experience with everything from fixing cars to fixing websites tells me that it's very hard to go back in and retrofit usability when it was not considered important at the outset or at other points in the design process. Regards, Jeff Seager _ Get the power of Windows + Web with the new Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_powerofwindows_122007 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
So I didn't read the screed, but I did download the usability study. It was eye-opening for me, and I have some experience at crafting accessible websites. The NNG did a careful study of visually and physically disabled people attempting to perform common web tasks (look up a bus schedule, buy a CD) on existing public sites. The study participants had a hard time of it, and clued me into some accessibility issues I hadn't previously know about. I'm carefully reviewing a volunteer side project I'm working on at home in light of this report; it's a website redesign with improved accessibility one of the key goals. Thanks for posting this link, Jeff; highly recommended reading. Michael Micheletti On Dec 17, 2007 10:59 PM, Jeff Seager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you read far enough in the Alertbox missive he sent out today, you'll see he's giving away a 150-page study that includes 75 well-summarized accessibility guidelines. Grab it while you can, folks! It's a good reference with actual user testing to back it up, especially handy if you ever need to teach newbies about accessibility ... which I'll be doing next month. You can find it here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 18, 2007, at 2:21 PM, Jared M. Spool wrote: 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). Generally speaking good designers are more enlightened about good design. If a usability wants to learn more about what it takes to craft good design, then that person will become enlightened. However, given equal education in theory and academics, unless a person *crafts and makes* a product with their own two hands, there's no way they will ever know as much as the person who does. Simple as that. 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. Agreed. 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. I disagree. They are simply making a suggestion, nothing more or nothing less. Unless they actually design and craft the solution to the suggestion they are making, they are simply contributing, but they are not designing. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Nicely summarized, Murli. BTW, one could conceive of such a thing as: Design for Unusability -- think security devices: you might want them to be unusable (by the bad guys). Or is 'unusability' merely a special case of 'usability' where 'usability' = 0 or a negative value, in a mathematical sense? Tongue not entirely outside cheek I'll leave the quantification of it to the mathematicians, but I can think of one such 'unusability' design off the top of my head. The holsters used by most police officers these days are designed to resist someone else pulling the weapon out, which could easily happen in a crowd. Officers are trained in the proper way to release the firearm from the holster, and (by design) it might take the rest of us a while to figure it out if we'd never encountered it before. This gives the officer time to react and deny access to the would-be assailant. Usability for one is not usability for all, and to deny access intentionally is Good Design because that was one of the design criteria. Unusability can be really simple and unintentional, too; you can deny access with something as simple as vocabulary, by writing in engineer-speak or accountant-speak ... or, as we often see, by delivering all content in English even though the intended audience is multinational. Jeff _ Get the power of Windows + Web with the new Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_powerofwindows_122007 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
These conversations are why I have joined this list and find this to be the best professional group I have found in a long time. These conversations are painful, but they should be! To be successful we need to synthesis all of our backgrounds into this practice of interaction design. If you consider yourself a designer and know nothing about usability, then you are really an artist. You are designing for yourself. If you are a usability professional and know nothing about design, then you are an obstacle. You place road blocks in the way of a project and offer no value in overcoming them. Bill Buxton's new book (Sketching User Experiences) has it right: where we are at now is analogous point to where the Industrial designers where 90 years ago. The Industrial revolution created a need for Industrial designers. The information revolution (ugh, but what else to call it?) has created a need for Interaction designers. When the Industrial designers figured out their profession, all of the contributing professions still existed afterward. Manufacturing engineering, material sciences, set design, etc.. did not all go away. Instead they contributed to this new field. They same will happen to us. The need for usability experts, for visual designers, for software engineers will not go away. But a new role will be created that combines these. No single person can be in the top of their field in all of these areas. But they can know enough to drive the development of software down the correct path and know when and how to use these folks who are the experts in their respective areas. Nick Iozzo Principal User Experience Architect tandemseven 847.452.7442 mobile [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.tandemseven.com/ *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 2:00 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: On Dec 18, 2007, at 2:21 PM, Jared M. Spool wrote: 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). Generally speaking good designers are more enlightened about good design. If a usability wants to learn more about what it takes to craft good design, then that person will become enlightened. However, given equal education in theory and academics, unless a person *crafts and makes* a product with their own two hands, there's no way they will ever know as much as the person who does. Simple as that. Yes, yes. Many people who conduct usability practice these days are not specialists, but generalists on the design team with other responsibilities, including design. Because design teams have been shrinking over the last ten years, you rarely find teams consisting of specialists. (Wrote about this here: http://tinyurl.com/2oba65) The result is, as already has been mentioned in this thread, that many usability practitioners also regularly craft and make elements of the designs their teams produce. I don't understand why there's a need to drive this dividing line between design professionals and usability professionals. I understand that many people don't like Jakob's approach to expressing his notion of right and wrong, but he doesn't represent the state-of- the-art in usability practice any more than Steve Jobs represents the way things are done across all of design. Why is it important that designers distance themselves from the evaluation side? Where is this coming from? Jared *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Jared, I appear to have touched a nerve. My comments below: If a designer isn't more enlightened about good design than a usability practitioner, than I would have to say they probably shouldn't be designers. I'm not sure why this has to sound like it would be insulting to usability practitioners. Designing is a different process than evaluation. Clearly, both designers and usability practitioners have to understand the principles of what makes a site, or software or product usable, but this doesn't mean that the person who is the usability specialist would be an equally good designer. With all due respect, let me say this: This is just a load of crap. Good design is an end result that is the product of the work of a team. To produce good design, all members of the team need an almost equal understanding of good design. I have watched well over 100 different teams design web ware, and I have never seen a team where all members of the team have an equal understanding of good design. There are always one or two people who take the lead and create the design. The rest contribute information and critical evaluation to the process certainly, but they do not have an equally broad holistic view of the project - nor do they design. Interaction designers will know how they contribute to that goal, as will visual designers, but they won't necessarily have cross-over skills. Of course, designing is a different process than evaluation. In fact, I defy you to tell me what the process of design is, particularly, as it leads to the predictable and reliable creation of good designs. In a way you are making my point for me here. You can't define the process of design. It is an art, not a science. It is creative, something new comes out of it that is not the result of process, which is the result of the design talent of an individual. Designing is not a unified, singular process. It's stylistic. It takes a lot of different components. It requires a specific type of culture to do well. It thrives in certain contexts and fails in others. It involves skills from all over the organization. (http://tinyurl.com/2wyjj4) Even the best organizations, have tremendous trouble doing it predictably (Apple's iPhone vs. Apple TV -- both announced on the same day and produced in the same culture, but have very different results). Unless you're a one-person company, more than one person contributes to the final design. I contend that all the members on the team have to have an equal enlightenment about good design (and about how their individual skills and talents will contribute to that good design) for a good design to result. It would be good if they did all have equal enlightenment but it just doesn't happen in the real world. I have seen a lot of design teams take a beginning design that looks like a horse with only two legs and end up with a horse that has four legs in all the right places. Teams like this create end products that are neither really bad nor really good. They are adequate, and fulfill the long checklist of requirements attached to the project. I have seen other teams start with a racehorse and turn it into a camel. The design process as you like to call it just means that eveyone's opinion is to some extent honored (usually on the basis of how much status they have in the organization, rarely is it based on enlightenment :). Excellent design gets lost in the process. If you don't have someone on the team who can design elegant excellence, no amount of team process is going to make it so. I will also say (clearly opening myself to heated disagreement) that designing something is much more difficult than evaluating and incrementally improving something already established. It requires a holistic appreciation of many factors. And it takes talent -- which is not simply the sum of all the skills and experiences the designer has picked up over the years -- it is more than that. *Good* designers are, in fact, more enlightened about good design than *good* usability practitioners and it is that indefinable something that separates art from science that makes it so. I'm glad you recognize this is clearly opening yourself up to a heated disagreement because, again with all due respect, this too is crap. There is virtually nothing in this statement that is accurate. If you believe that designing something is more difficult than evaluating something, (a) you've probably never seriously evaluated anything and (b) you probably should be an evaluator, since design seems so difficult to you. Try being at the leading edge of evaluation for 25+ years and then tell me how difficult it is. Doing a quality job at evaluation is extremely challenging for even the most talented in the field. Sorry, but I disagree. This is an age old debate. But there is no question in my mind that it is harder to write a book than to write a book review. It is
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Nick Iozzo wrote: The Industrial revolution created a need for Industrial designers. The information revolution (ugh, but what else to call it?) has created a need for Interaction designers. For consistency, I would phrase that as: The digital revolution has created a need for digital designers. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 12:51 PM, Jared M. Spool wrote: Why is it important that designers distance themselves from the evaluation side? Where is this coming from? I'm not sure it's important. I only distance myself from the likes of Nielsen simply because he has never built or designed anything in his life (that I'm aware of) and seems to go out of his way to make my job as a designer harder, not easier, by making absurdist proclamations to executives who want to believe his brings the truth because they have paid him a lot of money. If he actually took the time to practice what he preaches with useit.com, or even took more time to learn what kinds of compromises, solutions and constraints designers have to work with in order to actually build digital products, I might think differently. But he doesn't. He's still basically hurting the design profession more than he helps it, imho, so he reaps what he sows. However, outside of that, you have to recognize that designers are the most exposed people in companies in terms of their work. It's the one thing people can criticize and toss around opinions about all the time. So evaluation tends to make our lives even more stressful than it already is. To the degree that most of us have a really hard time learning to dealing with it. Let me put it this way: When I was working InDesign ten years ago (wow.. its been that long), I was managing the next versions of Photoshop and Illustrator at the same I was doing the design work on InDesign. The team was in Seattle, so I had to literally wake up at 5am every Tuesday, drive to San Jose Int'l Airport, catch a 6:30am flight to Seattle, drive to the office in downtown Seattle and get to work at around 9:30am. I worked all day, caught the evening 8:30pm flight back home and got back home around 11pm, only to have to do more work on stuff I missed that day. I did this every week for almost nine months straight. When I was there, we'd often have a 3pm review meeting, where... I kid you not... there were 9 to 12 people in a room to review the design work. Product managers, QA, engineers, even tech support folks. The purpose of the meeting was to do nothing but provide feedback on the design work I was doing. So basically, it was 9 to 12 people all giving me their opinions and I had to sit there and listen to them. Week after week. Needless to say, it got a little much for me to deal with, especially when their opinions or ideas went counter to the longer term design strategy I was implementing to make the Creative Suite possible. I don't care if people have opinions or evaluations of my work. Everyone has an opinion and part of the job being a designer is to deal with it, but it doesn't make us happy campers when its not done in a way that supports designers and their work. What I need are people who can not only give me feedback, but feedback I can actually do something with, or ideas that can be implemented or meet the same design constraints I have to use in designing the solution. Feedback that I can't do anything with comes across as complaints, and listening to complaints day in and day out can make one about as likable as the folks who sit at the DMV processing paperwork. So in order to get feedback from evaluations that a designer can actually do something with, the person providing the evaluation needs as much understanding about the problem as the designer. And I don't mean just the user understanding. I mean the business, the technology, visual, interaction, project deadlines, etc. I've worked with plenty of researchers and usability folks who get this. The ones who don't generally don't like me. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 4:11 PM, Joseph Selbie wrote: I appear to have touched a nerve. Yes. You have. I read what you've written and think your promoting a design approach that is based on an outdated understanding of what modern usability practice is. It comes from two assertions in your responses: 1) Your assertion that the something magical component of design is relegated only to people with the role of designer on the team and that other people can't contribute equally. (“If a designer isn't more enlightened about good design than a usability practitioner, than I would have to say they probably shouldn't be designers.) 2) Your assertion that somehow the work of some members of the team is naturally harder than the work of others. (I just said design was harder because it has to include the awareness of usability along with creativity.) Statements like It is harder to make a movie than to write a movie review implies that you have a very narrow view of what good usability practice can provide the design process. As someone who works very hard (and it *is* hard) to provide good information into the design process, this is akin to having someone describe the design process as making things pretty. Awareness of usability is a 1992 notion of usability practice, not a modern one. It seems only fair, if you're going to preach a position of how design should be approached, that it should take into account modern practices. We can agree to disagree on these points, if this is what you truly believe. I have no further need to argue here. I think I've made my points. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 4:40 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: What I need are people who can not only give me feedback, but feedback I can actually do something with, or ideas that can be implemented or meet the same design constraints I have to use in designing the solution. Feedback that I can't do anything with comes across as complaints, and listening to complaints day in and day out can make one about as likable as the folks who sit at the DMV processing paperwork. So in order to get feedback from evaluations that a designer can actually do something with, the person providing the evaluation needs as much understanding about the problem as the designer. And I don't mean just the user understanding. I mean the business, the technology, visual, interaction, project deadlines, etc. I've worked with plenty of researchers and usability folks who get this. The ones who don't generally don't like me. Brilliantly put. This is what I've been trying to say all along. I should just have you write my responses from now on. :) Jared *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Sorry, but I disagree. This is an age old debate. But there is no question in my mind that it is harder to write a book than to write a book review. It is harder to make a movie than to write a movie review. With all due respect, this is a terrible analogy. Usability analysis and research is infinitely more involved than the writing of a movie or book review. Reviewers in these fields draw on their experience and analytical skills, of course, but they don't need to go out and establish test groups, evaluate huge amounts of data, compile findings, or any of the other things a Usability professional does. They don't have to *prove* anything. A movie reviewer simply writes his opinion. It is harder to pull together all the myriad inputs for web ware and software (usability inputs among them) and design an elegant, user-friendly, simple solution that satisfies all inputs, than it is to measure and critique the proposed solution. If this is true, I agree with Jared that perhaps you should be an evaluator. I've done what Jared does, albeit in smaller doses, and I assure you, design is a cakewalk compared to that nightmare. If you find evaluation easy, perhaps your talent lies there and not in design. I mean no offense by this - it's a suggestion, not a judgment. I have no idea how talented of a designer you are. But I know that if something seems easy to you and hard to everyone else, you're probably either really good at that thing, or foolishly naive. Here is where I think we diverge the most. I am compelled to offer back to you your elegant phrase, This is just a load of crap. As far as I can tell, you tend to think there is a design *process* that results in good design. Get the right inputs into the process and out comes a good design. I highly doubt Jared believes this, but I'll let him speak to that. -r- *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Robert, The word harder has become an issue here that I really never intended. I was only trying to convey the notion that designing is the rarer talent, because it is an amazing synthesis of both left brain and right brain processes. I personally don't find it hard. I would find evaluation hard because I'm not tempera mentally suited to it. But hard has become a distraction in this thread - I wish I hadn't used it seven postings ago J. As to the age old debate, you took the letter not the spirit of my comments. I think the ability to critique things well, whether as a simple review or an exhaustive, complex, challenging process - does not make one equally good at designing or suggesting design solutions. That's all. It's not a complex point. Joseph Selbie Founder, CEO Tristream Web Application Design http://www.tristream.com *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Allison wrote: Actually, I don't know that that's true. If you consider that Alertbox is a newsletter meant to be opened (or not) from an inbox, then the articles titles are 'designed' to get my attention and explain the article's content quickly. If only everyone else who sent me emails could summarize their points so succinctly. This really isn't a good analogy or example. And it's not even design... it's writing. Well, he kind of does. Remember that accessibility article? Check out some of those points. Honestly, this site could do with following one or two few of them. Not buying it. Useit.com suffers from such poor design, readability, usability, findability, and every other ability one can think of its become the ultimate insiders joke in our industry. Further, for someone who gets paid $10,000 for an hour or two worth of work, using the measuring stick of Well he kind of does doesn't cut it. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 5:54 PM, Jeff Seager wrote: On Dec 19, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Allison wrote: Actually, I don't know that that's true. If you consider that Alertbox is a newsletter meant to be opened (or not) from an inbox, then the articles titles are 'designed' to get my attention and explain the article's content quickly. If only everyone else who sent me emails could summarize their points so succinctly. and Andrei responded This really isn't a good analogy or example. And it's not even design... it's writing. Surely you don't mean that writing has no usability component, Andrei ... I don't mean that, which why I didn't say that. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 19, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Allison wrote: Actually, I don't know that that's true. If you consider that Alertbox is a newsletter meant to be opened (or not) from an inbox, then the articles titles are 'designed' to get my attention and explain the article's content quickly. If only everyone else who sent me emails could summarize their points so succinctly. and Andrei responded This really isn't a good analogy or example. And it's not even design... it's writing. Surely you don't mean that writing has no usability component, Andrei ... Usability can apply to anything that affects understanding and functionality. In practical terms, almost any aspect of a website has components that add or subtract usability. Useit.com is not pretty. It has a wow factor rating of something between zero and negative integers. Its interactivity is extremely simple, and designed to be so. But it's very usable and functional in ways other sites would do well to emulate: * Page loads are maniacally fast! The external stylesheet is so simple you can view it in its entirety without scrolling * One article, one page. No spreading articles over four pages to force advertising refreshes. * Font sizes are relative (in 'ems'), allowing full user control for people with impaired vision. * Resize the browser window and the type reflows naturally to any line length you find comfortable. * Want a quick outline of the topic? Scan down the page reading only the section headers. * Want to skip to another section? Cool, the next is plainly delineated. * Uncertain about the meaning of some bit of jargon? Most of it is linked to a definition or otherwise elucidated. * Want to know what Nielsen/Norman say about a related or completely different subject? There's a search engine, a link to an index of articles and breadcrumbs on every page. and BONUS! ... It looks Just As Good in the Lynx text-only browser! (a wee joke, but true) ?;-) Jeff _ Get the power of Windows + Web with the new Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_powerofwindows_122007 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
There's little doubt that self-promotion is high on Nielsen's list of talents, Ben, but I also think he has a pretty good grasp on the essence of usability. If you read far enough in the Alertbox missive he sent out today, you'll see he's giving away a 150-page study that includes 75 well-summarized accessibility guidelines. Grab it while you can, folks! It's a good reference with actual user testing to back it up, especially handy if you ever need to teach newbies about accessibility ... which I'll be doing next month. You can find it here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility Jeff Seager From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:06:09 + CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!! What Jakob is best at is causing a stir! He's been doing it for years, resolutely throwing up over-contentious headlines (remember Flash 99% bad! ?) and refusing to make his own web site any more appealing (they even joke about that in NNg seminars). He does this in order to make ripples, with people like us having to take a position one way or another. All that keeps him in people's minds and on their lips. I'm sure we all know the truth is somewhere in between yes, sometimes / no, usually and it depends, and so does Jake! - Ben _ Don't get caught with egg on your face. Play Chicktionary! http://club.live.com/chicktionary.aspx?icid=chick_wlhmtextlink1_dec *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Hi Jeff, You elude to an important point for clarification. That one is an expert in usability, does not mean they are an expert in interaction design - or an interaction designer. Usability is a large area - only a portion of which is focused upon interfacing with software/web. Likewise, I interaction designers must think well usability. Many of us on this discussion group use usability or interaction when we mean quite the other and should be more specific. Jakob's expertise is in usability. Mark On Tuesday, December 18, 2007, at 07:15AM, Jeff Seager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's little doubt that self-promotion is high on Nielsen's list of talents, Ben, but I also think he has a pretty good grasp on the essence of usability. If you read far enough in the Alertbox missive he sent out today, you'll see he's giving away a 150-page study that includes 75 well-summarized accessibility guidelines. Grab it while you can, folks! It's a good reference with actual user testing to back it up, especially handy if you ever need to teach newbies about accessibility ... which I'll be doing next month. You can find it here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility Jeff Seager From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:06:09 + CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!! What Jakob is best at is causing a stir! He's been doing it for years, resolutely throwing up over-contentious headlines (remember Flash 99% bad! ?) and refusing to make his own web site any more appealing (they even joke about that in NNg seminars). He does this in order to make ripples, with people like us having to take a position one way or another. All that keeps him in people's minds and on their lips. I'm sure we all know the truth is somewhere in between yes, sometimes / no, usually and it depends, and so does Jake! - Ben _ Don't get caught with egg on your face. Play Chicktionary! http://club.live.com/chicktionary.aspx?icid=chick_wlhmtextlink1_dec *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 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
On Dec 18, 2007, at 8:16 AM, Murli Nagasundaram wrote: I hope I am making sense. Hi Murli, You are making sense. However, you're not correct. In particular, this statement: Usability is about ensuring that your design is NOT BAD -- i.e., does not in any way impede, restrict, prevent, the user from accomplishing her goals through using an artifact. This is a limited viewpoint -- the equivalent of saying, Design is about making things pretty, which we both know is not true. Usability practice is about measuring how usable something is, on a scale from extreme frustration to extreme delight. Using the information gained through good usability practice, a designer can work to eliminate the user's frustration, then learn to enhance the user's delight. I would agree that many usability practitioners focus primarily on frustration. The field is far more developed on that side of the problem. However, that behavior doesn't define the entire field of practice, nor does it define those usability practitioners who excel. Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about the delight side of the equation and what designers can do to increase it. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Jared, Are you suggesting that the domain of usability is growing? Nearly everything I have read and most of what I have heard about usability is in fact 'working to make the interface transparent' - which implies staying out of the way, or making the interface 'not bad'. It does not seam the norm for usability experts to be concerned about delight or pleasurability. Is this a domain shift - or is it how you are now approaching the topic? Mark On Tuesday, December 18, 2007, at 11:19AM, Jared M. Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 18, 2007, at 8:16 AM, Murli Nagasundaram wrote: I hope I am making sense. Hi Murli, You are making sense. However, you're not correct. In particular, this statement: Usability is about ensuring that your design is NOT BAD -- i.e., does not in any way impede, restrict, prevent, the user from accomplishing her goals through using an artifact. This is a limited viewpoint -- the equivalent of saying, Design is about making things pretty, which we both know is not true. Usability practice is about measuring how usable something is, on a scale from extreme frustration to extreme delight. Using the information gained through good usability practice, a designer can work to eliminate the user's frustration, then learn to enhance the user's delight. I would agree that many usability practitioners focus primarily on frustration. The field is far more developed on that side of the problem. However, that behavior doesn't define the entire field of practice, nor does it define those usability practitioners who excel. Some of us spend a lot of time thinking about the delight side of the equation and what designers can do to increase it. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks *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 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Murli, I think that's a really useful distinction -- good design versus not- bad design. Perhaps unusually for a designer, I long ago put myself in the not- bad design camp. To flourish as a designer and business person, I had to let go of the conceit that every job has to be award-winning -- or even portfolio-worthy. So much of what we do as designers is turn things from bad into not-bad. And it's still, as often as not, putting lipstick on a pig. Very seldom do we get the chance (or the inspiration, or the budget, or the daring clients) to do something great. And usually, the only people who can tell it's something great are other designers. 95% of what's wrong with most web sites can be cured by applying the not-bad prescription. And, as you point out, most of this prescription is an objective set of rules and standards that any clever, motivated person can understand. (Unfortunately, democratizing design will always scare the people who have a vested interest in exclusivity and mystique. But that's another topic...) I have to view Nielsen's design-agnostic persona (and website) as a design statement in itself. I think his point is, people don't care about the wrapping as long as they're convinced they want the present inside. Or, put another way, content is king. And yes, I do think he's thumbing his nose at all those lipstick- wearing pigs out there. -- Kim + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Kim Bieler Graphic Design www.kbgd.com 240-476-3129 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
I'm disappointed by the tone of his article. Jakob Nielsen is known for a dramatic flair and absolute statements and he has shown it once again in his text. I think he could have softened the blow by taking a more objective tone. None of what he says is untrue, but there are several path breaking RIA examples that changed paradigms for the better (Google Maps). When well researched prior to implementation, there's no reason why they should be counterintuitive. The problem with an article like this is when it is read by business influencers who are not very close to this domain. Nielsen is well known across multiple disciplines and can influence IT management decisions in the adoption of this technology. He may well end up 'dumbing-down' several bright initiatives by associating high risk to them once this article proliferates. - Riddhish -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Schraad Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 9:29 AM To: Jeff Seager Cc: ixda Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!! Hi Jeff, You elude to an important point for clarification. That one is an expert in usability, does not mean they are an expert in interaction design - or an interaction designer. Usability is a large area - only a portion of which is focused upon interfacing with software/web. Likewise, I interaction designers must think well usability. Many of us on this discussion group use usability or interaction when we mean quite the other and should be more specific. Jakob's expertise is in usability. Mark On Tuesday, December 18, 2007, at 07:15AM, Jeff Seager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's little doubt that self-promotion is high on Nielsen's list of talents, Ben, but I also think he has a pretty good grasp on the essence of usability. If you read far enough in the Alertbox missive he sent out today, you'll see he's giving away a 150-page study that includes 75 well-summarized accessibility guidelines. Grab it while you can, folks! It's a good reference with actual user testing to back it up, especially handy if you ever need to teach newbies about accessibility ... which I'll be doing next month. You can find it here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility Jeff Seager From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:06:09 + CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!! What Jakob is best at is causing a stir! He's been doing it for years, resolutely throwing up over-contentious headlines (remember Flash 99% bad! ?) and refusing to make his own web site any more appealing (they even joke about that in NNg seminars). He does this in order to make ripples, with people like us having to take a position one way or another. All that keeps him in people's minds and on their lips. I'm sure we all know the truth is somewhere in between yes, sometimes / no, usually and it depends, and so does Jake! - Ben _ Don't get caught with egg on your face. Play Chicktionary! http://club.live.com/chicktionary.aspx?icid=chick_wlhmtextlink1_dec *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 *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 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Kim, to reinforce your point, I was sent a link to a simple flash-based game that I passed on to friends and family. It's a very simple, very crudely-designed game, but has turned out to be so addictive that it has led some to joke that it's threatening to tear apart families and destroy productivity at some corporations where it has been spreading around like wildfire. If nothing else, Jakob is reminding us to focus on the essence of the site/application rather than being carried away by the promise of shiny bells and whistles available in hot new tools. Incidentally, this discussion also reminds me of the distinction (in my view) between a couple of generations of iMacs. (For ease of reference, I'll use the following idiosyncratic generational nomenclature: 1. Jelly Bean 2. Desklamp 3. Monopod I 4 Monopod II (current generation) I refer here to Desklamp and Monopod I. Desklamp was a truly original design which couldn't have emerged from 'Usability Principles' alone. There was a great deal of novelty in its physical appearance and the elements of which it was constituted, which would have required a great deal of Productive (vs. Reproductive) Thinking. Monopod II, on the other hand, is a stark, minimalist design, more likely to have been created from Usability Principles alone. There was a zen-like stripping down of the design to its bare essentials. And what could be more bare and essential than a flat panel monitor with just one foot/leg. I actually felt very sad and disappointed to see Monopod I replacing Desklamp, but Monopod has grown on me, with time. Desklamp is a delight to look at, intriguing in its juxtaposition of fshapes, but Monopod works well without attracting any attention to itself beyond a 'Oh, that's nice, now let's get on with our work.' -m ps: oh btw, in case you've been a little too worried about your high productivity, here it is; you may have already received it from some friend or family member: http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf On 12/18/07, Kim Bieler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have to view Nielsen's design-agnostic persona (and website) as a design statement in itself. I think his point is, people don't care about the wrapping as long as they're convinced they want the present inside. Or, put another way, content is king. And yes, I do think he's thumbing his nose at all those lipstick- wearing pigs out there. -- murli nagasundaram, ph.d. | www.murli.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | +91 99 02 69 69 20 - The reason why death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity -- it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can. - Yann Martel, The Life of Pi. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Correct me if I am wrong here, Joseph, but from your perspective the term Usability should be used only with regard to Testing and Evaluation. Am I right? (I'm not challenging your perspective, only trying to determine if there is a consensual or at least majority view here.) On 12/19/07, Joseph Selbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have always thought this was the wrong way to view the difference between usability and design. It makes it seem as if they are part of the same process. My way of thinking about them -- which at least makes it clear for me -- is that usability testing *measures* the success of design. Once you get your measurement of success or failure, then you *design* a new solution -- two different processes. -- murli nagasundaram, ph.d. | www.murli.com | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | +91 99 02 69 69 20 - The reason why death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity -- it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can. - Yann Martel, The Life of Pi. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Correct me if I am wrong here, Joseph, but from your perspective the term Usability should be used only with regard to Testing and Evaluation. Am I right? (I'm not challenging your perspective, only trying to determine if there is a consensual or at least majority view here.) That is a good question. My take is that usability as a *process* is measurement (testing and evaluation). Usability as a *concept* refers to qualities of the design. So you could make the statement that good design is highly usable - which mixes the two ideas - but, in my view point, it doesn't mix the two processes. Joseph Selbie Founder, CEO Tristream Web Application Design http://www.tristream.com *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
It appears to me that you are equating transparent with conforms to a set of known standards and to me that makes no sense. I see no inconsistency at all in doing something better than the norm and building a transparent interaction. I understand that you aren't disagreeing with the idea of the better but I think letting the equivalence stand unchallenged is dangerous. I have sat through way too many meetings regarding a usability tested prototype that tested out much better than the norms have, only to have some VP say but that isn't the Best Practice. It is not necessarily more transparent to use the same solution that has been used before. In fact, I've sat through enough Oh, thank God, you made this easier moments in usability testing that I pretty much expect that the Standard is so because people stopped thinking about how best to solve the problem and went for the established Best Practice instead. To my mind, usability is about making sure that you're asking the right question (for example, how to do indicate a country in a form) rather than the top of mind question (how do you order a drop down list of countries) and the technology is changing so fast that the best answer to that is going to change quickly as well. Transparency is more nearly synonymous with highly learnable than it is with standard. For example, the interface of a book is so transparent we seldom think of it as having one, but the process of learning to use it is quite extensive. It's highly learnable because at each stage, the next stage and the end stage are readily apparentfirst you learn about book covers and then you find out that they have contents which remain the same, and that the contents are made obvious by the cover, so you don't bring Dad Leo the Lion when you want him to read Sam I Am and then you match up pages with words and memorize them and realize that somehow those words are captured on the page...and so forth. It's very complex and it's evolved to be completely transparent. Okay...enough on that... Katie At 11:57 AM -0500 12/18/07, Bryan Minihan wrote: I agree with you that many usability practitioners push hard to make the interface transparent in the face of the content or process at hand. Funny enough, though, NNg's own Intranet Design Annual includes one category called something like the Wow factor, which is some element of the interface that (in their words) is innovative and really improves the user experience through sophisticated behaviors not found anywhere else. I have the words a little off, but essentially intranets get bonus points for breaking the norm in a usable way. I don't really object to the category, but giving points for inconsistency (however good) doesn't exactly follow the mantra of Good design is transparent taught by their consultants. Not making a judgment either way - I think they included the category because they can't ignore the benefit that innovation in the right direction provides. Just think it doesn't fit their model exactly... Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -- -- Katie Albers User Experience Consulting Project Management [EMAIL PROTECTED] *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Actually, I was equating many usability practitioners sense of transparency with equates to a set of known standards. Particularly, many who have just begun learning their craft and follow Jakob Nielsen with a vengeance. I fell in that camp only 7 years ago and have since evolved a better understanding of the principles you describe below. So...I agree with you, but was commenting on how NNg recognizes when usable innovations trump more comfortable patterns. NNg doesn't come out and SAY that (I asked awhile ago), but it would be nice if they did, especially in Jakob's Flash Will Kill Us All alertboxes. Cheers =] Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Katie Albers Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 3:08 PM To: 'ixda' Cc: 'ixda' Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!! It appears to me that you are equating transparent with conforms to a set of known standards and to me that makes no sense. I see no inconsistency at all in doing something better than the norm and building a transparent interaction. I understand that you aren't disagreeing with the idea of the better but I think letting the equivalence stand unchallenged is dangerous. I have sat through way too many meetings regarding a usability tested prototype that tested out much better than the norms have, only to have some VP say but that isn't the Best Practice. It is not necessarily more transparent to use the same solution that has been used before. In fact, I've sat through enough Oh, thank God, you made this easier moments in usability testing that I pretty much expect that the Standard is so because people stopped thinking about how best to solve the problem and went for the established Best Practice instead. To my mind, usability is about making sure that you're asking the right question (for example, how to do indicate a country in a form) rather than the top of mind question (how do you order a drop down list of countries) and the technology is changing so fast that the best answer to that is going to change quickly as well. Transparency is more nearly synonymous with highly learnable than it is with standard. For example, the interface of a book is so transparent we seldom think of it as having one, but the process of learning to use it is quite extensive. It's highly learnable because at each stage, the next stage and the end stage are readily apparentfirst you learn about book covers and then you find out that they have contents which remain the same, and that the contents are made obvious by the cover, so you don't bring Dad Leo the Lion when you want him to read Sam I Am and then you match up pages with words and memorize them and realize that somehow those words are captured on the page...and so forth. It's very complex and it's evolved to be completely transparent. Okay...enough on that... Katie At 11:57 AM -0500 12/18/07, Bryan Minihan wrote: I agree with you that many usability practitioners push hard to make the interface transparent in the face of the content or process at hand. Funny enough, though, NNg's own Intranet Design Annual includes one category called something like the Wow factor, which is some element of the interface that (in their words) is innovative and really improves the user experience through sophisticated behaviors not found anywhere else. I have the words a little off, but essentially intranets get bonus points for breaking the norm in a usable way. I don't really object to the category, but giving points for inconsistency (however good) doesn't exactly follow the mantra of Good design is transparent taught by their consultants. Not making a judgment either way - I think they included the category because they can't ignore the benefit that innovation in the right direction provides. Just think it doesn't fit their model exactly... Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -- -- Katie Albers User Experience Consulting Project Management [EMAIL PROTECTED] *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 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Mark, I don't agree with the conclusion that usability is always about 'staying out of the way' or making the interface 'not bad'. I think it's about ensuring that the design and features are helping the users (and the business) move toward their goals, rather than hindering them. This is as likely to mean adding functionality or visual elements as removing them, and boils down to placing the _proper_ emphasis on elements within the interface. A lot of usability work by necessity focuses on the 'taking away' end of the continuum because most interfaces suffer from feature and information overload rather than the opposite, but that's just the reality we live in. I would suggest that what makes an interface great is not the wow factor of novelty or aesthetic appeal, but true responsiveness to the user's needs, regardless of whether this means an understated design that lets them focus on a business goal or a delightfully fun game that wows them with visuals and helps them forget they're at work. -eva *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Thanks, Mark. I agree. I also believe that usability may be the core component of all design (I don't care if my house/car/computer/website is sleek and pretty if it doesn't function). And though I occasionally praise Nielsen's usability evangelism, this is one of those fields in which I don't hasten to call anyone an expert. (If you want to call yourself one, that's OK with me.) The end user in all his/her diversity is the expert, and the only one who knows his or her experience. We have the privilege of practicing a very interesting craft, but it's all practice and the best we can hope for is to come a little closer to success each time. There is no Holy Grail of interaction design (or usability, or accessibility) because there are too many physical, social, economic and cognitive differences among users. But man, it is fun to try! In terms of usability and design both, the challenge I see again and again is that most people create for themselves and their peers, with very little consideration given to those invisible unknown people out there somewhere who perceive and function differently. I've observed the results many times, and Nielsen writes and talks about it sometimes, and very few others do. I'd like to see a more general awareness of that. And when I say people create for themselves and their peers, I understand that we are all involved in a multitude of peer groups categorized by culture, gender, social status, wealth, ethnicity, education and many other factors. Any one of us may have vast and diverse experience, but even that is not enough without a well-distilled combination of imagination and humility. The great designers are those few who break free of their roles and stereotypes and develop a much broader perspective on interaction design and the consumers thereof. So there aren't many great designers, but that could change if we incorporate these qualities in our goals. Jeff Hi Jeff, You elude to an important point for clarification. That one is an expert in usability, does not mean they are an expert in interaction design - or an interaction designer. Usability is a large area - only a portion of which is focused upon interfacing with software/web. Likewise, I interaction designers must think well usability. Many of us on this discussion group use usability or interaction when we mean quite the other and should be more specific. Jakob's expertise is in usability. Mark On Tuesday, December 18, 2007, at 07:15AM, Jeff Seager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's little doubt that self-promotion is high on Nielsen's list of talents, Ben, but I also think he has a pretty good grasp on the essence of usability. If you read far enough in the Alertbox missive he sent out today, you'll see he's giving away a 150-page study that includes 75 well-summarized accessibility guidelines. Grab it while you can, folks! It's a good reference with actual user testing to back it up, especially handy if you ever need to teach newbies about accessibility ... which I'll be doing next month. You can find it here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility Jeff Seager _ The best games are on Xbox 360. Click here for a special offer on an Xbox 360 Console. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/wheretobuy/ *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
I don't agree with the conclusion that usability is always about 'staying out of the way' or making the interface 'not bad'. I think it's about ensuring that the design and features are helping the users (and the business) move toward their goals, rather than hindering them. This is as likely to mean adding functionality or visual elements as removing them, and boils down to placing the _proper_ emphasis on elements within the interface. A lot of usability work by necessity focuses on the 'taking away' end of the continuum because most interfaces suffer from feature and information overload rather than the opposite, but that's just the reality we live in. I would suggest that what makes an interface great is not the wow factor of novelty or aesthetic appeal, but true responsiveness to the user's needs, regardless of whether this means an understated design that lets them focus on a business goal or a delightfully fun game that wows them with visuals and helps them forget they're at work. Eva, It seems to me that you are expanding the meaning of usability to include anything good. It becomes fun-ability, can-accomplish-goals-ability, maps-to-workflow-ability, responsiveness-to-users-needs-ability and so on. I prefer to think these are all elements of good design but are not subsets of usability. A website can pass usability tests with flying colors but not include these other qualities. Joseph Selbie Founder, CEO Tristream Web Application Design http://www.tristream.com *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Katie said: Transparency is more nearly synonymous with highly learnable than it is with standard. For example, the interface of a book is so transparent we seldom think of it as having one, but the process of learning to use it is quite extensive. *Brilliantly* illustrated in this hilarious video (Dutch with English subtitles): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6j8XPFOPy4 I'm always mindblown by how many design conventions there are to be found in a humble newspaper.. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Jeff said: In terms of usability and design both, the challenge I see again and again is that most people create for themselves and their peers, with very little consideration given to those invisible unknown people out there somewhere who perceive and function differently. I've observed the results many times, and Nielsen writes and talks about it sometimes, and very few others do. I'd like to see a more general awareness of that. And when I say people create for themselves and their peers, I've just published a short article called Design versus Design Toss, following Jakob's model to some degree, in which I argue for vernacular design, and urge designers to ignore design tossers who try to keep a moat of exclusivity around their skills, but in fact are caught in a trap of addiction to new, edgy visuals, reinforced by the fact that they only seek validation from other designers.. http://webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design-versus-design-toss.cfm Ben *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
[IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
The latest from Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html All hail the mighty one. Perhaps Mr. Nielsen would rather we return the user to a clunky, non-contextual, individual page refresh era. RIA has made tremendous improvements in user experience and is not as dangerous as he would have us believe. *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Perhaps Mr. Nielsen would rather we return the user to a clunky, non-contextual, individual page refresh era. he did not say that, nor do I think that's what he's implying. Here's the summary of the article, in bullet points - simple websites do not need RIA - community/social feature does not necessary suit all kind of websites - specialty mashup in terms of usability - advertising alone is not a sufficient business model - beware of hype, focus on serving your users. Add web 2.0 feature because it helps, not because everyone is doing so. all of those seem like valid points to me. Thanks for sharing the article though. - Alvin W *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
I didn't say that he said that - I was making a joke :-) I did receive an alertbox though with the subject: Alertbox: Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous Summary: AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable. All technologies can be 'dangerous' in terms of user experience if they hinder rather than enhance the user experience... On Dec 17, 2007 10:15 PM, Alvin Woon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Perhaps Mr. Nielsen would rather we return the user to a clunky, non-contextual, individual page refresh era. he did not say that, nor do I think that's what he's implying. Here's the summary of the article, in bullet points simple websites do not need RIA community/social feature does not necessary suit all kind of websites specialty mashup in terms of usability advertising alone is not a sufficient business model beware of hype, focus on serving your users. Add web 2.0 feature because it helps, not because everyone is doing so. all of those seem like valid points to me. Thanks for sharing the article though. - Alvin W *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
I haven't read the entire article, just the summary, a quick scan and years of reading Nielsen is enough :-) He does have a point though - design/development teams deploying new technology just because it's, well, new technology is always a dangerous thing. But that certainly doesn't make it generally bad - as with everything - it's all about the context, how a particular design is implemented, and how that design provides value to users. I did see his comment about the page model being simple, which is good, because users know and understand it. Admittedly, maybe I'm making an assumption because I didn't continue reading the article. But Nielsen seems to not realize why people are familiar with it - *because they're familiar!!*. They've been using the page model for years and years, they know what to expect. There's no doubt in my mind that RIAs can provide huge productivity gains when implemented in the right way. And, it doesn't really take people that long to learn it. After some years go by and RIAs get better and more widespread, the same thing will happen. People will get used to them. Let things progress and change, I say. If Nielsen is missing this, that's really too bad. Jeff On Dec 17, 2007 2:12 PM, dawa riley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The latest from Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html All hail the mighty one. Perhaps Mr. Nielsen would rather we return the user to a clunky, non-contextual, individual page refresh era. RIA has made tremendous improvements in user experience and is not as dangerous as he would have us believe. *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 *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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!
Replace Web 2.0 with Flash and were back to 1999. :) He used the Iron Chef - Facebook analogy and Mr. Nielsen said that: The Iron Chef competition makes for great TV, but has nothing to do with running a restaurant as a successful business. Facebook has much drama that makes for good press coverage, but most of its features are worthless for a B2B site... Facebook-like features would be OK with entertainment/leisure sites but would be a stretch for a business site. I guess it's a rehash of the old Flash is not for all websites. and just a reminder for all designer to not get carried away with AJAX et al. On 12/17/07, Jeff White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I haven't read the entire article, just the summary, a quick scan and years of reading Nielsen is enough :-) He does have a point though - design/development teams deploying new technology just because it's, well, new technology is always a dangerous thing. But that certainly doesn't make it generally bad - as with everything - it's all about the context, how a particular design is implemented, and how that design provides value to users. I did see his comment about the page model being simple, which is good, because users know and understand it. Admittedly, maybe I'm making an assumption because I didn't continue reading the article. But Nielsen seems to not realize why people are familiar with it - *because they're familiar!!*. They've been using the page model for years and years, they know what to expect. There's no doubt in my mind that RIAs can provide huge productivity gains when implemented in the right way. And, it doesn't really take people that long to learn it. After some years go by and RIAs get better and more widespread, the same thing will happen. People will get used to them. Let things progress and change, I say. If Nielsen is missing this, that's really too bad. Jeff On Dec 17, 2007 2:12 PM, dawa riley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The latest from Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/web-2.html All hail the mighty one. Perhaps Mr. Nielsen would rather we return the user to a clunky, non-contextual, individual page refresh era. RIA has made tremendous improvements in user experience and is not as dangerous as he would have us believe. *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 *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 -- Regnard Kreisler C. Raquedan, MSc. mobile: +63.919.2907711 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.raquedan.com yahoo!/skype: rkraquedan -- Building websites the Standards way: http://webstandards.raquedan.com -- Movie TV Review Blog http://screensucked.blogspot.com -- The AIM Blogger http://theaimblogger.blogspot.com *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
