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User Experience (Usability)
291 hits
| Nov 28, 2003 5:21 pm |
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re: re: Usability or Design -- who should win out? |
Tim Bakke
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It all comes down to balance in my opinion (but then again doesn't everything). You have to balance the marketing department's needs with what the users require of the site/application/device/chair/dental appliance -- anything that gets 'designed'.
If you can get all parties involved from the begining, and have the suits or inside decision makers VALUE the user's wishes you can win the day.
I've found that a culture where the "user" (a real person with real frustrations and real desires, a family, a commute home, soccer practice after work, etc.) is not objectified as some clinical thing but personalized as a human being just like the decision-makers, creates an environment where objections over usability deminish greatly.
The issue is one of cultural change which can be very difficult.
/tim
> Haim Hirsch wrote:
> Great observation, and excellent question!
>The answer: both should work together.
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>I have also found similar results to your guerilla study, comparing redesigns with existing sites.
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>Every single time without exception, the customers asked for the old design over the new one.
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>One of those was (back in 1995) from a 98% bold, ugly text design to a neat, clean slightly more graphical design.
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>So we did a little more testing. People who didn't already know about the old website chose the new design as being better on all metrics. As Jef Raskin writes (paraphrasing "The Humane Interface") people want an interface similar to the one with which they are already familiar (either from the old product or a competitor's).
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>A few years back eBay had the same issue after creating a new design with superior usability. They put it live and were instantly barraged by unhappy users.
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>So, instead of shoving it down their users' throat they snuck in the redesign bit by bit over a period of time. By doing small changes, it was more work, but ultimately they weren't inundated by complaints - and the users gained a more usable site.
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>I completely agree with Stephan, as well; "However Design and Usability rather should (or would I say must) go hand in hand."
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>The graphical look and feel of a site does impact the users' perception of the site's usability, trustworthiness, professionalism, etc. I have a number of interesting anecdotal and experimental examples that bear this out (the impact can be positive or negative to the user).
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>Rules can be broken where necessary, but I believe usability professionals and graphic designers can work together for the benefit of the total user experience.
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>-Haim
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>> Rebecca St. Martin wrote:
>> I've been following along...what a great discussion!
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>>Here's something interesting. One of my clients contacted me to help redesign a massive web site. Since there was so much content (and money) invested, I suggested that we do a guerilla study on a new prototype (HTML backbone, graphics free) against the old site (graphic rich) -- and that we did. Here's what we found:
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>>Users completed their tasks ~85% to their satisfaction on the prototype (vs.~less than 50% on the old site)
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>>Users completed their tasks ~50% faster on the protoype.
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>>Not one said they liked it. They said they'd rather use the old one -- which, as the numbers show, still produced a good deal of frustration and inefficiency.
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>>So I think that the important thing in web/application design is not one discipline or the other -- design or usability-- but an appropriate balance of both.
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>>If you look closely at all of the web disciplines and the guidelines each follows as apart of good practice, you'll find that a rule in one breaks a rule in another. Private Reply to Tim Bakke (new win) |
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