"The best open source applications and operating systems are more usable now than they were then. But this is largely from slow incremental improvements, and low-level competition between projects and distributors. Major problems with the design process itself remain largely unfixed." Personal Note: I am not sure how many people feel that Free Software has poor usability. As far as the desktop environment, I find most of linux window managers to be the more user-friendly than Windows and OS X.
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Member since:2005-07-06
You talk a bit like those Intelligent Design guys. You discard objective measurements from professional surveys just as those ID people discard the findings of palaeontology and genetics.
Of course the measurements from usability surveys mean a lot. Here's a simple example: Show 50 people a a red sign with an exclamation mark and and another sign that's just a green circle. Ask them with of these two mean "pay attention". I guaranty you that most of them will point to the red sign. Yeah, you can throw those results away and design an application that displays a green circle on every important question. Your user base will most likely be confused.
Member since:2005-07-06
Nice ad hominem. You're honestly trying to tell me that the "field of usability" is on the same playing field as genetics?
A hallmark of science is being able to get reproducible results. With any given usability study --in the rare event that a study is revisited-- they inevitably get different results from each trial. And then there's the ridiculously small sample sizes of ten or less. I mean, if you're going to base your observations entirely on statistics, at least have an adequate sample to go on.
Human perception is not objective. All you can do is talk about a population's average which has zero predictive power when applied to individuals. Like I said before, I have no interest in being limited by the lowest common denominator of whatever population you managed to slap together. A UI is an inherently personal thing, and all I care about is _my_ user experience.
To really solve this problem, the UI should be completely decoupled from the application so that I can build whatever UI suits me. I shouldn't be forced to use whatever the usability nazis deemed the most usable by they mythical average Joe. That is decidedly the wrong solution.
Member since:
2005-07-06
You can measure things all you want, but it doesn't mean what you measured means anything. Usability studies are about as scientific as psychology --which is to say not very.