[Sigia-l] Comment - The New Nielson

[Anders Ramsay]

yes, the article is interesting, except that there really is nothing
ground-breaking about what he has to say.  The biggest irony is that Jakob
appears to think that fun as a factor of usability is front-page news.

And IMHO, his opening paragraph seems to be an attempt to project the faults
of his own (pre-Macromedia) preachings on the usability community at large:
This paragraph - 
"The usability movement is sometimes criticized for being dull and for
promoting boringly invariable designs. The chief reason for this is that
some people equate design conventions with creative restrictions."

 - might read more accurately as:
"Jakob Nielsen is sometimes criticized for being dull and for promoting
boringly invariable designs. The chief reason for this is that Nielsen
equates design conventions with creative restrictions."

my .02
-Anders

On 7/8/02 12:28 PM, Adam Korman at adam at futilitarian.com wrote:

> Is it really any news? He's still beating the testing drum:
> 
> "Traditional user testing is great at debugging user interface designs to
> find the elements that make the system difficult to use. Test methods are
> less evolved, however, when it comes to determining the enjoyable aspects of
> a design."
> 
> There's no amount of user testing that will result in an enjoyable software
> interface. Why is he so afraid of suggesting that software should be
> thoughtfully designed in the first place?
> 
> Regards, Adam
> -----------
> Adam Korman
> adam at futilitarian.com
> 415.336.9143
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
> Coughenour, Jim
> Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 8:40 AM
> To: 'Sigia-l at asis.org'
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Comment - The New Nielson
> 
> Is anyone else's head spinning with the new Jakob Nielsen news Flash? His
> current Alertbox espouses "the fun factor" in interface design - "usability
> methods to further strengthen joy of use."
> 
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020707.html
> 
> 
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