[Sigia-l] Comment - The New Nielson

[christina wodtke]

> Usability (or lack thereof) is a relative term. Given (artificially)
> restricted options, people get used to just about anything. Witness an OS


this is not entirely true. We think of Windows as not usable when it's
actually just difficult and unpleasant. I've seen and experienced companies
that bough huge CMS's or knowledge management packages that were literally
unusable.

It's a range where unusable is at one end (know one can figure the damn
thing out and training isn't helping) and intuitive and joyful is at the
other.

pretty much everything is in the middle somewhere.

Joyful and beautiful are not always the same; it can be fun to just google
strange terms (googlewhackign anyone). Easy can be fun, hard can be fun also
or the video game industry wouldn't do as well as they are. it's all
relative; it's all complex.

Complex doesn't make for attention-grabbing headlines like "flash 99% bad"

Complex does lead to higher consulting fees, though.