Usability is Not Everything
Posted: September 30th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Inspiration | 6 Comments »“Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.”
- Joel Spolsky
Awesome quote found on UX Myths (although not 100% accurate)
absolutely true…
It depends. If a “usability” practitioner created user requirements for a night club it could very well miss the mark. If usability were indeed implemented on the design of a night club, then mostly all (if not all) heuristic direction would be trumped by user research. Assuming the user group was recruited accurately then the night club design would align very well with the customers.
More often than not, “usability” is taken to mean something which does not necessarily include first-person user research and is “coloured” by the practitioners involvement. However good usability is practitioner agnostic and if done correctly and well, will result in user requirements that align to the majority of user’s needs and expectations.
It is therefore non-information to speak about usability in this context unless the nature of the usability work is defined because at the moment there is a wide range to how usability is executed.
Now, that sounds like *my* kind of club – where is it ?
Well said!
Usability helps the people find the door and easily order a drink. After that–everybody Wang Chung Tonight!
Usability? At the end of the day it is key, but prpoper market analysis wil ‘to a degree’ show an interest in what the market wants – but the true key and understanding, is ‘grasping’ what the people want and why and where they go out to ‘blow off steam’….so at the end of the day, if you cannot put together the where, why, when and market segmentation of a project, you end up wasting alot of money lol. Clubs are meant to get away from the everyday monoteny of weekday life – dont remind them of that experience, but still keep things easy and little thought involved. That strategy works on more fronts then you can imagine (the ol’ KISS strategy – Keep It Simple Stupid lol – then work in the key marketing strategies ;p
Gabba Gabba Hey I so agree. Raised many mugs and shots at places like CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. What made those dives so super user friendly? Simple. You felt like you belonged the minute you walked in the door. Because you were not a user at all – but a FAN. You chose to walk through those doors, even if you were stepping over a few stoney cats to meet your girl. Nothing is better than beng some place – you can’t wait to be. Creating FANS of sites and brands is far more important than creating customers.