[Sigia-l] Edward Tufte

[Avi Rappoport]

At 12:05 PM -0600 2/14/03, Karl Fast wrote:
>  > What I feel is that we are doing post mortem to a great guy 'Edward
>>  Tufti' with our own convenience.
>
>Tufte's work is excellent and important.
>
>However, his work is largely independent of interaction. The idea
>that people will interact with the information systems we architect
>is THE key element that separates our work from his.
>
>Of course his work is relevant to IA, and ours relevant to his. But
>they are only related; they are not the same. When he says "no need
>for user testing" I suspect that he is downplaying the difference
>between designing visual representations and interactive visual
>representations.
>
>Interaction is not a benign ingredient. It's a catalyst (yes, I'm
>mixing metaphors but it's friday afternoon).

Karl is very apt as usual.  Interactive systems are just harder to 
get right than charts and books, because there are so many nasty ways 
things can go wrong (and they will go wrong...)

My rule of thumb is that if I don't find something surprising in my 
user test, then it's probably not a good test.  Sometimes it's 
immediately obvious, sometimes a subtle confusion.  The best 
designers in the world miss little vital assumptions, they're not 
omniscient and we shouldn't expect them to be.  Testing is a way of 
helping designers (and IAs) view the world like users and keeping us 
grounded.  It's never been a waste of time in my experience.

Avi

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