Posted over at Johnny Holland.
Brandon Stephens, Axure? Really?
Courtesy of Douglas Wray. Very funny. And true.
Reputation and trust is essential in a world where we don’t meet the people we do business or trust our information with. The reality of this world is that many companies have much more information about us that we prefer to have (or, what does VISA know about your buying habits online or at a physical adult bookstore?).
But that’s different, because we’re making a conscious choice to share information by making that purchase. Only when companies don’t disclose their intentions (like downloading our entire address book, for example, and then explaining that since it wasn’t required in the TOS, we didn’t notify the user) is our trust broken. And rightfully so.
Companies like Southwest Airlines have built trust with their customers by offering plainspoken terms of business. It’s essential that online companies (especially startups) do the same. When we expose our lives online, it’s essential that we know the parties at the other end have the best intentions.
From Ghost in the Pixel:
Trust is an absolutely fundamental element of a user’s experience and core to the creation of a viable customer relationship, even the business model itself, embedded in the value proposition. Yes, trust is a cornerstone of the business. It ensures a healthy customer – provider connection with positive multiplier and viral effects. Trust is infectious as “good word of mouth” spreads, and transactions increase, usage grows, value is augmented. It’s a virtuous cycle.
But just as infectious is distrust. A violation of the customer’s sense of identify, privacy, and sense of their own dignity. But especially their sense of pride in a brand they enjoyed and believed in and defended, trying to persuade friends to participate and join in. All of that gets eradicated in a few seconds.
The “path” (ha!) from success to disaster is a quick and easy route. And saddens everyone, including it’s fan base of faithful users.
That’s about right:
Usability is user experience
The fundamental difference is “Can easily use” vs. “Want to use”. Let’s take the best possible example here – the usability guru: Jakob Nielsen’s website. Usability guru that he is, his site is very functional and easy to use. But how do you think it scores on user experience? Would visitors love to browse the site for better experience? The answer is no.
Again, there are some practitioners who believe building a good user experience is all that’s needed for making the site usable. That had led to the myth in question. Superior user experiences have failed miserably in usability, as it’s just one of the dimensions of usability. It is still important to have the right balance.
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Usability is good design
Good design (leaving apart the subjective angle) is only an element or output of usability – in practical sense. Otherwise, it’s more like a philosophy. Usability done with a philosophy of good design, would make it effective, error-tolerant, engaging, etc. This part I echo. My argument is towards the literal aspect about the myth, that a good design brings usability. In a way, this has a resemblance to Usability is User Experience. A good user interface design is not going to save a product if it is not useful or low on performance or erroneous. The usability and acceptance of such products have no connection with the presence or absence of good design.
This had to be shared immediately. Not completely safe for work — towards the end.
From StuffThatHappens.com.
Ian was the 3,000th follower.
The George Foreman Grill is on its way, Ian!
Mobile first is winning. That’s what Kayak (one of my favorite websites and iOS applications) is doing, moving the design of their applications to the web:
Normally a web-based company that decides to make an app wants to translate the look and feel of its site to that app. But Kayak has been there, done that. And from the design team to the executive team, those within Kayak say it now makes more sense to do the opposite. “I got to the point where I actually liked iPhone app better than our website, I thought it was aesthetically more beautiful,” Kayak co-founder and CTO Paul English told me in an interview last week.
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At its design lab up on Concord, Mass. Kayak does eye-tracking studies to see what users are or are not using. “Our design goal – if something is on the screen and people aren’t clicking on, we remove it,” said English. The overall goal in making the site look more like a mobile app is to shed unnecessary details and simplify.