[Sigia-l] seeking rules

[Tanya Rabourn]

> Anyone have any of these (anecdotes not necessary, but always welcome for
> entertainment value)

This might fall under the anecdote category, but Jeffrey Zeldman was
speaking to an audience the other day who are suckers for those sorts of
rules (if any member of said audience is reading this I of course don't
mean *you*). He didn't go into a general rant about all the ridiculous
absolute rules that float around, but instead just said "if users don't
click, scroll and read on the Web, I don't know what they're
doing." The audience laughed in a way that gave me the vibe that his
statement really resonated with them and they understood that he was
urging them to question all such absolute statements.

I don't know. Maybe it was the way he said it.

Victor Lombardi wrote:
> I'd like to make a little plea for the novice
> designers who actually benefit from these sorts of
> rules.

I think that these statements that are passed off as rules happen for two
reasons, a fundamental misunderstanding of the word heuristics, and a need
to feel secure in the face of too many design options and not enough
knowledge about who will be using the site.

If they are presented as heuristics and not rules I think it's o.k. but
somehow they are always misinterpreted as rules. I like this definition of
heuristics from a cognitive psychology text book I have:

"Strategies that are reasonably efficient and work most of the time. In
using a heuristic, one is in effect choosing to accept some risk of error
in order to gain efficiency."

It seems to stress the trade-off in just using a heuristic instead of
putting a lot of time into figuring out the best way to do something.

-Tanya
___________________________________
Tanya Rabourn <rabourn at columbia.edu>
[User Services Consultant]
AcIS R & D <www.columbia.edu/acis/rad>
tel: 212.854.0295