Post on 21-Apr-2017
NELAUX, PasadenaJune 20, 2014
Is Usability Taking a Nose Dive?
Awareness
Sorry I know what my slides should be like I’m just not that guy
The big, evocative photos guy And I’m not even sorry I’m not that guy Bullets it is
and a template straight out of Office 2004 But you can read it from the back of the room,
right?
© 2001 Steve Krug
The premise On the one hand, it seems like usability is in better
shape than ever
© 2001 Steve Krug
After years of crying in the desert… …suddenly we’re pop- u- lar ♫ ♫ ♫ Or at least it seems like we are Thank Steve for it
Or maybe Steve and Jony He/they convinced people that usability was a
crucial part of his/their enormously successful secret sauce
They did the big case study for “you can make money by making things that people can use”
© 2001 Steve Krug
Mostly good news Granted, usability is now a wholly owned subsidiary
of its newfound big cousin, User Experience Design (UXD)
But there’s more awareness than ever of the whole idea of creating things people can actually use
© 2001 Steve Krug
But Some people heard it as “you can make money by
making things that people really enjoy using” Some heard it as “…by creating delightful
experiences” So for some people usability now equals “delightful
experience” …which can easily translate to “beautiful, novel, and
cool stuff”
© 2001 Steve Krug
Usabilitycirca 2001
Useful: Does it do something people need done? Learnable: Can people figure out how to use it? Memorable: Do they have to relearn it each time
they use it? Efficient: Does it do it with a reasonable amount of
time and effort? and maybe even:
Effective: Does it get the job done?
© 2001 Steve Krug
New, improved usability Now includes: Desirable: Do people want it? Delightful: Is using it enjoyable, or even fun?
© 2001 Steve Krug
My [relatively unchanged] definition Something is usable if
A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience
can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish some desired goal without it being more trouble than it’s worth.
© 2001 Steve Krug
Travel with me back in time Well, OK, only about a year I was working on the new edition of Don’t Make Me
Think Felt the need to “get out of the building” Made an effort to go beyond my usual routines Looked at a lot of sites Suddenly had that “I think we’re not in Kansas
anymore” feeling
© 2001 Steve Krug
Some things looked the same as ever Or better than ever A feeling of maturity
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
On the other hand Many looked like mobile sites that had been fed
growth hormones Had the feeling you could read them from outer
space
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
Mobile to desktop creep? Everything centered Lots of uninformative graphics Very little info on the screen at one time Loss of visual hierarchy Everything on one page
© 2001 Steve Krug
Flat design Don’t get me started
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
Show of hands Flat design:
A passing trend A great leap forward The devil’s handiwork
© 2001 Steve Krug
Granted, this was never a good idea
© 2001 Steve Krug
So what bothers me about Flat? Duck-and-cover threat of skeuomorphism
There were really only a few egregious examples And they never really hurt anybody
I thought we’d won the cool vs. usable battle People finally understood that it can be as cool as
you want, as long as it works, too I hadn’t had that argument in years
© 2001 Steve Krug
Don’t get me wrong I am not a luddite In fact, I’m a hopeless early adopter I’m ecstatic that my Surface Pro 3 arrived today in
Boston Almost all of my PCs for the last 15 years have been
tablets Only problem was the 45-minute battery life, two inch
thickness, and 4 pound heft
© 2001 Steve Krug
Don’t get me wrong I bought iPad the day it came out I try so many apps that I can’t do “Update All”
© 2001 Steve Krug
We’re making more ambitious things Technology is allowing things to do a lot more Accelerometers the size of a grain of sand that cost
pennies to make GPS satellites Gorilla Glass®™ The Cloud
© 2001 Steve Krug
It’s moving awfully fast Developing UX for a new technology takes time A shift as rapid as desktop > mobile requires some
catching up New devices may come faster than new usable
interface ideas
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve KrugSource: LukeW (google: “First Person User Interfaces”)
I’m worried about the little guy Greater demands
Things have to be cooler Things have to be more functional Things have to be multi-platform
Vague emerging standards Too much to learn
© 2001 Steve Krug
Developers are the new MDs There’s so much more to know It’s hard to keep up Show of hands: Do you ever feel like there’s just too
much to know?
© 2001 Steve Krug
Developers are the new MDs “Faking cultural literacy”
Karl Taro Greenfeld, New York Times, 5/24/14 “It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much
without actually knowing anything.” “What we all feel now is the constant pressure to know
enough, at all times, lest we be revealed as culturally illiterate.”
“What matters to us…is not necessarily having actually consumed this content firsthand but simply knowing that it exists — and having a position on it, being able to engage in the chatter about it.”
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
© 2001 Steve Krug
Replacing “progress” with “innovation” skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer.
From “The Disruption Machine: What the gospel of innovation gets wrong” by Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 6/23/14
© 2001 Steve Krug
Thanks for all the fish Send any questions, feedback, gripes to
skrug@sensible.com
© 2014 Steve Krug