[Sigia-l] is bad design a choice?

[Skot Nelson]

On Oct-17-2005, at 9:48 AM, Alexander Rudloff wrote:

>  E-bay, despite its many perceived misgivings,
> scores wonderfully on the mom factor.

This is a very very good test. It should be noted, however, that the  
question is really "How does it score with the target audience" which  
may, or may not, include your mom.

For most large scale eCommerce related sites, this probably includes  
you Mom (Amazon etc.)

> I can't say that for very many sites, even the ones you often see
> praised (gMail comes to mind..)

Interesting. My mom had little trouble with gMail, and was even using  
it without my help.

Truth be told, I signed her up for a gMail account so she had a host- 
agnostic email address. She's still on dial up, and I worry that when  
she leaves she may lose her other email address. Of course, she's  
never going to move off dial up.

Designers, as a group, are notorious for over designing. Let's not  
over generalize the mom test though.
--
Scott Nelson
skot at penguinstorm.com
http://www.penguinstorm.com/