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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: October 04, 2002 Joshua Davis Interview (studiowhiz.com) -- "Anti-usability ? no. I'm anti-'this site is for all Idiots'... Sooner or later everybody will have a boring usable website and they'll get to a point where they need to execute something to set them apart from all the other sites within their genre. (Mac comments: How do we respond positively and explore the common ground ? )
Reader Comments...
I'd like to visit his site, but I can't because it requires Flash 6, even on the sub pages. I'd really like to, because I am fascinated by anyone who is into tattoos. I don't think usability is boring. It gets a bad rap because of sites like Jakob's, which is both boring and ironically difficult to look at for any length of time. I constantly suffer from a misunderstanding of usability. People are always telling me they don't want a boring site. That isn't all usability is... well... useful for. It's almost identical to the argument people give me about Simplifying (yes, it has a capital letter now). "I don't want to be a tightwad" they say. I'm always amazed by this, because having a simplified lifestyle can be very expensive, actually. It's not about cutting cost, it's about cutting stress and hassle and getting down to the things you really care about and that add value. Similarly, Usability doesn't mean "boring" it just means that you don't have gratuitious bells and whistles and that you arrange things to get maximum bang-for-the-buck for a majority of your audience. Posted by: Lydia on October 4, 2002 01:55 PM
I was ready to give up on usability before I started talking to the people here. Now I'm just mad that we aren't the 'voice of usability'. The Webword collective can do a much better job than all of the gurus put together. (Lyle excluded of course...) oohhh I'm hearing a John Lennon soundtrack in my head, I can see the colour green and there are a horde of enraged monkeys burning reports in the street and stamping on video cameras... I have sedated him now - Heather Posted by: Mac on October 4, 2002 02:04 PM
Don't waste too much time trying to find common ground. Instead:
Ron, I wish I had read this yesterday.
That is a great entry, Ron, and I'm not just saying that because of your kind remarks about my earlier comment. :) I sometimes think of usability like I think about special effects in movies: if you can't tell it is there, then it was done right. Unfortunately, this means that the types who do the obvious 'special effects' are the ones that people think of when they think "Usability." I have been told that if I do a usability review I will "make the site look dull." My response is usually, "Wha?" They don't even know what I'm about to do! Aha. This goes back to Ron's remark about education. I really like the idea of coming up with a definition that can be used as a way of introducing the concept to others. I love to hear comments like what Mac said about how he was going to give up Usability until he started talking to people here. Similarly, whenever I talk to a skeptic and turn them into my strongest ally, I feel like I've done something really positive for the whole practice. The way I like to introduce the idea of Usability to a wary client is to say something like "My first question for you is to ask what you want to do with this site: do you want to blow people away with a killer design, or do you want to communicate information?" The answer is usually "Both" and I say, "THAT'S usability." It is amazing how willing people are to listen after that. Posted by: Lydia on October 4, 2002 04:33 PM
I think this interview has been misrepresented (sorry Mac). Here's his comments on Usability: ---------------------------- Anti-usability ? no. I'm anti-"this site is for all Idiots"
However, I don't think we should assume that everybody is so dumb. We should build projects that educate the user and continue to progress the medium - That way the net can be a place for both idiots and rocket scientists. (which is nice) My work on barneys.com and motown.com (with the old crew at kioken) are great examples of sites which are pretty usable and don't sacrifice visually. I don't think I'm alone either. I think many people share this vision / passion. Sooner or later everybody will have a boring usable website and they'll get to a point where they need to execute something to set them apart from all the other sites within their genre. If you have taken the time to read Jakob's books (which I often feel that most artists / designers haven't) he brings up some really great points that we all should take into consideration. HOWEVER, the problem I have is his message has been drilled so hard into the corporate machine, I often feel it makes our jobs of doing anything really amazing in this medium more difficult to pitch. I recently co-taught a workshop in Aspen Colorado with Mark Tribe www.rhizome.org and one of our students was a gentleman from Target, the Department store. We chatted, and he asked if he could e-mail me about pitching some work for their web-site. This process has been slow with a few e-mail volleys back and forth. I imagine it has been hard for him to show his superiors "worth" on praystation.com. Yet time and time again we have clients who tell us we have 2 seconds to capture a visitor's attention - Yet an average visitor to PrayStation.com spends 20 - 30 minutes. There are simply 2 sides to every coin. -------------------------------------------- Posted by: Mike on October 4, 2002 04:46 PM
FWIW - my approach in the work I do is somewhat like Lydias, except usability in and of itself doesn't really get talked about. What we talk about are goals for the site (both sets of goals - the person paying the bills and the target audience), and how we can check our progress against those goals during and after the development process. Sure, we're doing usability when we're doing that checking, but to clients it's just more formal design process. I can't imagine, in my local market, pitching myself as a straight "usability" guy. There just isn't the demand. Posted by: Mike on October 4, 2002 04:51 PM
The design should be engaging. It something that should draws users in, engage, ask users politely to explore, pick it up, play etc etc But I think after a *certain* amount of time (and I dont know what amount of time this would be) the design politely steps aside to introduce the *tasks* and the 'what do I do with this thing? AND how do I *use* it?' If the product can do both smoothly ... its on the road to success. Posted by: daniel szuc on October 5, 2002 12:19 AM
Noone (no matter how intelligent) wants to faff about with an unintuitive interface, get lost and miss things, unless they're willing to put themselves through this because, overall, they find it's well worth the effort. Even then, the learning/exploration processes involved must themselves be rewarding if the user isn't to feel resentful. And that's my problem with a lot of designer's Flash sites - they're slow & awkward to use, don't convey the content in a straightforward fashion, and don't totally wow me. They're not worth the effort. Other sites strike a better balance, perhaps going all-out for making users jump through hoops but producing an impressive experience in doing so, or keeping interaction simple & immediate to suit a more modest or urgent pay-off.
Mike, I would hope that people would read the full interview and not just comment on the bits that I picked out. I would be interested to know which bits you would have picked out for the summary? Posted by: Mac on October 5, 2002 01:30 PM
Well, since I haven't a clue who Joshua is, I wouldn't have posted the link to begin with... And I might have choosen the same blurb, but since it seems like the guy has a reasonable view of the design/usability relationship probably wouldn't have seen the need to "respond positively". After reading that comment I really expected another usability-bashing interview... Posted by: Mike on October 6, 2002 05:24 PM
Most graphic designers have a clue who Joshua Davis is, because he was annointed a couple of years back as "the man" by certain sectors of the design community. Design needs its regular rock stars, and Joshua is a good choice; lotta tattoos, likes the loud music, and barmy. He is, in many ways, an Anti-Jakob. And in many other ways, he's the design-Jakob. I think the interesting thing that this interview reminded me of was this: people that design "unusable" sites are often doing so because they are passionate -- rather than ignorant -- about how people use their sites! They don't want their site to be transaprent, clear or toneless. Simple as that. People often confuse "usable" with "easy to find stuff on". I think that the game Mario64 is one of the greatest examples of usable design ever. Period. Does that mean it's easy to find stuff? Hell no! But it does have a low entry point. And carefully designed tiers of effort > reward. And unfolding structures of information and navigation. What _can't_ some sites be like games? With a natural evolution in the user's ability to use the site? Why do usability discussions enevitably fall into the trap of assuming that every site needs to have an equivalent use case scenario to a Farmer's Almanac? BTW: Barneys as an example of reasonably usable design? puhleeze?!? Try surfing with a _modem_ sometime, ya broadband pipe smoker!
Barneys is horrible, all that hassle and then you find there aren't even any product details or online purchasing, just lists of brand names.
Can someone in the UPA say Thank You to Lydia? (I knew that A to Z would come in handy). Posted by: Mac on October 7, 2002 03:26 PM
Mike, I do think it is easier not to say "Usability" straight away when doing a full site design, just because it tends to put people on guard or something. But, sometimes you get people who hire you specifically for your focus on usability, and the subject cannot be avoided. That's when the evangelizing comes into play. Sometimes, people hire usability consultants because they think they have to, and they are (perhaps without knowing it) slightly hostile from the get-go. It's our job to put their mind at ease, get them comfortable, and get them on our side. From there, everything else is like rollerskating downhill. Major red flags for potential push-back and hostility include "our advisord/investors said we had to get this reviewed for usability." Oboy. Even worse: "Well, I picked up one of those books by Jakob Neilsen, but our CEO said we should get this checked out anyhow." Ack! Mac, getting to talk to a group of people with such diverse opinions and ideas about usability is the best reward I could get! (Well, aside from fruit-shaped marzipan.) Posted by: Lydia on October 9, 2002 03:27 PM
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