Posting Date: November 16, 2002

Useless Usability? -- "Supposedly it makes computers easy to use - no, we're not kidding. Chris Long has been finding out how they do apply it at that software behemoth Microsoft." & "If you're going to talk usability, there's really only one man to approach - Jakob Nielsen, widely regarded as THE authority in the field. We first caught up with him two years ago but a lot has changed since then - or has it?" (Comments: Listen to Brad Weed of Microsoft justify Clippy. Oh boy! Also, listen to Nielsen talk and talk about usability. He loves Google. He states that a large fraction of people can't use Windows at all, or they suffer a lot. He bashes Apple. He bashes Linux.)

Reader Comments...

Was this transcribed to HTML anywhere? Some of us do not have and will not use WMP.

Posted by: Adam Greenfield on November 17, 2002 03:16 AM

This was actually a fairly interesting interview. I have never seen him speak. He's a forceful speaker and doesn't have any of the annoying pauses that I sort of pictured him inserting into his speech.

He's like a bull with his head down - he just isn't seeing anything else except for USABILITY and how it is all-important. I don't think he'd be quite so exasperating if he would allow other points of view to seep in from time to time, taking a cue from his good buddy Don.

I found their interview with the Microsoft labs guy interesting, but a little too simplified. It probably worked for their target audience, though. They did include a bit about going in to user environments and seeing what they do, but if they could have explained the significance of why this is done (i.e. seeing post-it notes and calculators next to computers, so building in those utilities to the computer) it would have been a more well-rounded report. Also, I like how the guy seems to take credit for an HCI practice that is as old as the discipline - "We realized around 1995 that seeing them in the labs alone wasn't good enough." Er, OK.

Posted by: Lydia on November 20, 2002 05:30 PM

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