Usability Ethic

Yes, I believe we need ethic. Ethic for usability is a core value. But with same knowlege about usability, you can do horrible anti-usability or less-horrible but still dirty job for your big boss.

It is tempting when you know what people do in a typical way, you can predict and may utilize it for making more money. But if you exploit and don't share benefit with user as usability expert, you are in hell of usability.

Some stupid design is actually designed for more making money. Actually it is stupid because it is short sighted for short term revenue. You can make a report how much money you could make a money from better design or you can make a report how much money you made from stupid annoying design.

Why I'm sure about it? Why I'm sure usability-abuse will be ultimate failure for your business?
Because user is smart enough.

You have to have love for user. That's 1st principle.

Example.
At front page of Yahoo.com, if you click an interesting news article, you will go that article directly. But if you do same in Naver.com or yahoo.co.kr(Korean version), it will be different. It display all other article in a category of the article. You have to find that article again and click again. Yes it is designed architecture and stupid design.

http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.yahoo.co.kr
http://www.naver.com


Paradoxically, they can't fix it. Because it seems fixing is loosing revenue. No one can promote such idea. But in long term view, I would like to insist it will be big loss. Yes, you are loosing user's love. How can you survive in future without their love?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Alf, I love the benchmark of 'can a baby use the thing'.. Today I put my precious Audi into a repair shop after someone ran into it when it was parked (he actually left his contact details, and the Audi manager said this was the first time he had come across such honesty in the UK in all his working life.. lucky/unlucky for me, the whole thing, then..). The replacement car I got was a BMW. Interesting to compare. The Audi has controls which are intuitively understandable; the BMW is a complete mystery to me, with its engineering-driven UI. I love the BMW quality of drive, but how could I live with such a bad UI? I'm glad overall I bought Audi. Rude English joke from my youth: A man played golf and then gave a ride in his Rolls Royce to a friend who did not play golf. The friend was in awe of the quality of the Roller. On the floor was a golf tee that had been dropped. What is this? Oh, it's something you rest your balls on before you drive off, said the golf-player. Goodness, Rolls Royce think of everything, said his friend. True user experience??!
Tue Feb 26, 07:35:00 AM PST
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