[Sigia-l] Visio not usable?

[Chris Chandler]

<prai at prady.com> wrote:

> > ...I've never heard a single complaint
> > that the students couldn't accomplish what they needed to after such a
> > minimal introduction.
>
> Have you used any other tool yourself, to evaluate the difference?
> Have you ever given the option to your students to use any other tool
> after they have have done with Visio?... to see their response change?


I've used many other tools for site maps -- Illustrator, Freehand, PowerPoint and Inspiration come to mind. The computer
lab has Visio, so that's what I teach. I've taught over 50 students to use Visio for site-mapping over the last three
years. I've also taught workshops on Illustrator -- now that is a tough program to learn!


> In my opinion, if you are educating your students about 'Visio' to achieve
> site map, they will learn it. That's not to determine 'ease of use' for
> visio. Why they didn't complain, dosn't make visio perfect either.


It's far from perfect, but it IS easy to learn.



> I use visio (one when I can't ignore it) and Freehand(all the time) for
> all these purposes. A user like me can can tell you about ease of ot both
> of these tool and IMHO, Visio is difficult and frustrating even after you
> 'learn' it.


By any chance did you learn Freehand (or Illustrator for that matter) before learning Visio? In my experience, people
tend to feel very attached (or perhaps just competent and comfortable) in the program they first learn.


> Regrading 'learnability' - Completely aggree that it has an important
> aspect to usability, however, after learning it, tool should allow me to
> focus on my work (and not piss me off, everytime). Although, if we draw
> comparision, we will find that 'Freehand' is more 'Learnable' than 'Visio'
> -- that is to say, as I learn 'freehand' more it starts making sense,
> start becoming intuitive, less obtrusive in my work, and improves my
> productivity.


I appreciate your subjective experience -- mine is quite different. I use Visio every day, and am quite proficient,
productive, and rarely pissed off.

The reason I offered my example was not to compare individual experiences, but to make a point from a larger sample. I
can't say that Visio is more usable than Freehand for sure, only that it is very easy to teach and to learn.


> Although, it is not to deny that 'Freehand' has higher
> learning curve.


I teach an 8 week summer course in Information Architecture. The students generally feel quite overwhelmed by the amount
of material to be covered. I would be concerned that they simply wouldn't have time for a tool with a steeper learning
curve.


> But at the worth investing your time learning 'Freehand'
> 'cos it will do 10 more things for you, and will connect with 10 more
> applications seamlessly.


That's an interesting statement! And I'm curious -- what 10 more things will it do for me, and which 10 more
applications will it connect with seamlessly?


-cc