Usability
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- puter0
Usability-
There is no such thing.What makes a site usable- blue links, left menus, direct text. How do you know the audience finds this usable at all. Surveys? The web is a new medium- when you get on the computer for the first time you are exposed to these concepts-
humans adapt and learn. We are entering a new age of the web were most children grew up using it from an early age. They can adapt and determine the functions.
Would you consider a Play Station joystick usuable? The idea of a mouse when it was first introduced? The concept of your light and heat controls being in different place on different vehicles? The cell phone generation?
The known is only the known becuase it was given to them. Standards are built around that. With more exposure to any new concept- the more known it gets and then the more user friendly it seems.
Honestly, would you consider the computer itself user friendly, especially Windows. Yet 95% of computer users use it- they were introduced to a new idea and adapted to it.
Usability is a lie for the lazy and uncreative. There is no such thing as a "Be All end All" direction to information. And the point of communication design is to deliver something related to the message. A complicated menu system may not work for PNC Bamk, but a simple one would not work for the Memento DVD.
- jevad0
bullshit
- DaveId0
again, I don't see the argument.
Today is J. Joyce's birthday. We wouldn't even know who he was if he hadn't published Ulysses, arguably the least "usable" novel ever published, and also a masterpiece of modern literature. we may not be able to read it, but i would arue that nobody can dispute, that at the very least, it was worth publishing.
the "communication is everything" iideologues are simply advocating a set of rules that don't always apply.
- laurus0
usability and design are the same.
Shaw said (not exact wording, sorry):
most ugly things were made when trying to create something beautiful and most beautiful things were made when trying to create something useful.
- tkmeister0
just show me what i wanna see.
one thing we can't do it to make users feel frustrated.
- -sputnik-0
i'm reading a lot about 'websites' being usable. which ones? commercial? personal? what is the purpose of the site?
you can afford to take chances with a non-commercial site, move navs, change user experience, but when you're making 40M a year on a site are you just going to say fak usability, make it look stylin' and potentially lose 10% of that 40M?
imo usability and design are not mutually exclusive.
- DaveId0
AGAIN: Ulysses
unless those users are looking for "frustrating" experiences.
- jevad0
sorry. but what the fuck does Ulysses have to do with interaction design?
- fate0
puter, you crack me up. Thanks for the laugh.
- monkeyshine0
It sounds like some of you are equating usability with sameness and functional cliche.
I don't think it is. I think form is tied with function, even in experimental work. Even Ulysses. It's form is hard to pinpoint..it's hard to read, perspective is all over the place but even so, it still swivels out from a structural base that is form. Just because we cannot immediately identify function, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
- puter0
elaborate fate- please do.
- woodyBatts0
Good call on Ullyses
Ullyesses broke conventions on how a book should be prepared, led way to "As I lay dying" and other peices of literature
either way it broke the convention and proved that there are different ways in telling a story. just like there are different ways to interact with a user as opposed to the current standards applied now.
- DaveId0
Ulysses is an unreadable masterpiece.
point being that there is a place for people to ignore usability standards.
- dopepope0
I won't name names... but I witness here a lot of crying that everything looks the same, and everything good gets ripped, and ,the vice versa, when something that seems unique and different from the norm gets torn a new asshole for trying something different. Mind boggling. All points are valid. ALL are correct here.
- -sputnik-0
"unreadable" by whom?
- mrdobolina0
I hate dopepope.
- BonSeff0
yo fate, aren't you fresh out of high school?
- puter0
usability is like the missionary sex position. There is more than one way to get it on, and as most might find- even the most unreasonable direction, at first might seem odd, but we figure it out- sometimes even liking it more.
- dopepope0
why hate dopepope?