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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: October 20, 2002 Usability must die? (SIGIA-L) -- "I think the fact that s/he can't count -- not to mention spell or capitalize properly -- says volumes about the rest of the observations.", says Cinnamon. "...ironically, Chris uses Jakob's own dogmatic and extreme titling style", say Jess McMullin. "Probably not much argument from our little fenced-in garden here at SIGIA on this point. Too bad usabilitymustdie.com doesn't allow comments.", says Andrew Otwell. All these comments were made on the SIGIA-L mailing list about UsabilityMustDie.com, run by Chris McEvoy ("Mac" to us Webworders). (MadMan comments: Since Mac's site doesn't allow comments, I'm creating this entry so the SIGIA-l folk can post them here.)
Reader Comments...
I am happy to defend/answer any questions on my views presented in UMD. Just on the 'missing P' question, there is a link at the bottom of the page about the missing P, which is not a broken link, but links to this page. Most people who see this page 'see' a 404 error page because it follows a standard 404 design. I was trying to make the point that many people don't read the pages they see (me included). As to my inCorrect capitalisation and poor grammar, I plead guilty. But I offer the fact that I spend most of my day writing code as a mitigating factor. Posted by: Mac on October 20, 2002 10:21 AM
A bit of background to my cynicism. A while ago Ron Zeno made the following statement about UMD: > It's humorous, but easily dismissed. Here is my reply with guilty names removed: Easily dismissed ? I created the site out of a sense of frustration after my experiences with usability. After years of promoting usability and UCD it appeared like our small band were finally making some progress. Our company XXXXXXX were going to make a commitment to usability and give it their full support. But then they went and blew it by spending a lot of money on a purpose built usability lab in an off-site location that had a full time staff who have managed to make usability at XXXXXXX a laughing stock (in my personal opinion). They set themselves up as new high priests and seemed to spend most of their time showing executives around their expensive wendy house. The usability advocates in XXXXXXXX either jumped on the official band wagon or went to hide under a rock. I spent months trying to argue that they needed to do something to bring usability closer to the designers and developers as well as having their 'show lab'. I was no longer able to carry out any 'unofficial' usability testing as it all had to go through the lab. All of the reports that have come out of the lab have been very weak and all of the teams using the lab just treat it as a tick on their check list, before they go live. In the end I boycotted their lab and carried on with my guerilla usability work. I felt cheated that the so called 'usability professionals' had stabbed us developers in the back and left us worse of than before. So I created UMD to vent some of my rage. I have had made over 30 contacts from the site, and whilst some of them have been downright hateful ("setting usability back 10 years" etc etc) most have been along the lines of "I like your site and agree with some of what you have said but.....". I have made a few new friends so it has been a postive thing, for me at least. It shows that there are some of us who are very unhappy with 'official usability' and we're not willing just to buy the reports or watch videos from the lab. At the end of the day UMD is 'a bit' negative, but I think it makes a very small contribution to the ongoing debate. Posted by: Mac on October 20, 2002 01:13 PM
And here are some links to other 'public' comments about UMD: Adam Greenfield - 18 Oct
I'm not saying this just because I like Mac a whole lot, but I like UMD because it is the type of feedback that keeps the rest of us on our toes. He's not the only one who has/had a (legit) negative opinion about Usability. Plenty of bozos took advantage of companies that didn't know any better and were frantic because they thought they were losing potential business with unusable websites. It's just like anything else - if you aren't careful and you don't make up your own mind about something, you can easily get hoodwinked by new technology and by consultants who aren't above board. I like people who have a healthy mistrust of the practice of usability. It just gives me an opportunity to show them what I know, put their mind at ease, and get them feeling good (and in control) about applying usability to their development process. This can only be a good thing. Posted by: Lydia on October 22, 2002 05:38 PM
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