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It's Not Just About Usability. It's About The Beer.  

:: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 ::

Today's post arrives to you thanks to Peter DaVanzo, who was put on this planet to yank my chain.

He found an article on usability and posted the link in the Usability section at Cre8asiteForums. The article goes all over the place, beginning with why usability is a waste of time, money and effort.

Then it branches off into social interface design, which IS interesting. But, the writer, Joel Spolsky, had to go and write some things that really ticked me off. I responded in the thread called Usability Doesn't Operate in a Vacuum

When I get past the initial onslaught on the career in which I earn money to support my kids and which allows me to spend a million volunteer hours at Cre8asiteForums, I find the occasional gem from Joel's article, such as:

     "When you're writing software that mediates between people, after you get the usability right, you have to get the social interface right. And the social interface is more important. The best UI in the world won't save software with an awkward social interface"

He's referring to sites such as Orkut and LinkedIn. And at least when he gets going on the social design discussion, I agree with him until I start thinking about Instant Messaging and Xanga and the social ramifications of kids, computers and social interface.

He doesn't address this. But his article is a good read for anyone keen on human and computer interaction and the software applications we develop to play with. And, it would appear, drink beer by.

Related

See also Report: That Engagability Thing by John Knight.

     "John Knight of The User-Lab described the aims of the conference. 'There has been a lot of interest in engagability and the conference papers began to focus on defining engagability. The main themes of the papers concern how products and experiences connect to the human as visceral, behavioural, reflective and social interfaces.

'I am hoping that next year's papers develop this definition with case studies of design and experience to see how useful the model is in the real world.'"

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 9/08/2004 11:34:33 AM

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