[Sigia-l] We could just use whiteboards instead.

[Jon Hanna]

> > The point is that usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. I don't
> > find audio books useful. [snip]
>
> Absolutely wrong. The concept of 'beholder' is limited to the expressions
> of 'Art'. Design (and usability) withing the context of 'usefullness' does
> more than 'self expressions'. And fundamentally, product of 'design' are
> different than product of 'art'. So, "usefulness is in the eye of the
> beholder" is twisted.

On the contrary, usefulness is completely a matter of the beholder and is
very important to matters of design. This is why it is advantageous to allow
users to alter things to suit their needs and preferences whenever possible
(offset by the fact that this in itself is often a hard process to design a
good UI for).

That usefulness is a matter of the beholder is easy enough to prove.
Something has usefulness if it is useful, the beholder is the person trying
to use it, hence its usefulness is a function of both the product and the
user (beholder). Q.E.D.

With art on the other hand the position of the artist himself or herself
and/or some absolute concept of "beauty", "truth" or whatever it is that the
particular critic believes art should strive for arguably (that is,
according to some schools of criticism but not to others) is of value beyond
that of any beholder or beholders.

As for audio books however, they are just one of a number of possible UIs on
the same data; print, Braille and on-screen rendering being others. Darci's
find them un-useful does not mean that others will.