I'm really suprised by Macromedia. You'd think they'd have a better understanding of their audience. This is like get Roger Ebert to write a best practices for creating a hollywood movie. I would have been much more impressed if they got someone like Edward Tufte to draw up some flash usability guidelines. Not only is Tufte a brilliant usability expert (though he does tend to be print-based), everything he designs is freakin' gorgeous, the exact opposite of Neilsen. And as a sculptor, Tufte certainly understands the value of art in design. Which makes me wonder, what usability experts do other flashkit members look up to?
Back when I was in a technical communications program, I did some user testing on about five different sites, with a random sampling of ten different users who ranked everywhere from Internet novices to experts. And of the sites I tested, the one that every single person rated as least usable was useit. People hated the lack of any sort of visual hierarchy, they had no idea where to click or what to do. They hated the scrolling, and they hated the two-column layout. When I asked the users if they appreciated the fast loading times of the site, one user responded, 'When I sit on the toilet, no matter how long it takes it's still crap.' Which, though vulgar, is my favorite comment about useit.
Problem with design is that it's easy to point out flaws in other people's work. Look at Vincent Flanders' Web Pages that Suck; anybody could write that book. On the other hand, getting agreement about what constitutes good design is much more difficult. Usability in my mind always comes down to audience and content. Neilsen likes to believe that if something is on the Internet, the entire population of Internet users is the target audience (which makes about as much sense as saying, 'if a book is in a library, then all library users must be that book's target audience). As far as content goes, the form has to fit the information. To use one form for all information (as Neilsen does) is to say that all information is inherently the same. Personally, I don't believe that it is. Going back to MacLuhan, the 'media is the message' is an overused but none-the-less true statement, and the Internet adaptation might be something like 'the interface is the content.'
I think erova's point is very valid about how a lot of the sites posted on flashkit could use some usability tweaking. Flash is probably going through the same phase right now that HTML went through about 7 years ago. There's a lot of flash design out there right now that appeals only to other flash developers. Which isn't a problem.
One of my key philosophies is that as information developers, we have a responsibility not only to convey information, but to expand users' cognitive skills, rather than always reducing our work to the lowest common denominator. If usability experts of the past had reduced themselves to the lowest common denominator, we wouldn't have the mouse, the GUI, or the Internet.
Obviously, any mention of Neilsen gets me as riled up as the next developer. So I'll shut up now and let the next person have their turn.
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