[IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!

[Katie Albers]

It appears to me that you are equating "transparent" with "conforms 
to a set of known standards" and to me that makes no sense.

I see no inconsistency at all in doing something better than the norm 
and building a "transparent" interaction.

I understand that you aren't disagreeing with the idea of the 
"better" but I think letting the equivalence stand unchallenged is 
dangerous. I have sat through way too many meetings regarding a 
usability tested prototype that tested out much better than the norms 
have, only to have some VP say "but that isn't the Best Practice." It 
is not necessarily more transparent to use the same solution that has 
been used before. In fact, I've sat through enough "Oh, thank God, 
you made this easier" moments in usability testing that I pretty much 
expect that the Standard is so because people stopped thinking about 
how best to solve the problem and went for the established Best 
Practice instead.

To my mind, usability is about making sure that you're asking the 
right question (for example, how to do indicate a country in a form) 
rather than the top of mind question (how do you order a drop down 
list of countries) and the technology is changing so fast that the 
best answer to that is going to change quickly as well.

Transparency is more nearly synonymous with highly learnable than it 
is with standard. For example, the interface of a book is so 
transparent we seldom think of it as having one, but the process of 
learning to use it is quite extensive. It's highly learnable because 
at each stage, the next stage and the end stage are readily 
apparent....first you learn about book covers and then you find out 
that they have contents which remain the same, and that the contents 
are made obvious by the cover, so you don't bring Dad "Leo the Lion" 
when you want him to read "Sam I Am" and then you match up pages with 
words and memorize them and realize that somehow those words are 
captured on the page...and so forth. It's very complex and it's 
evolved to be completely transparent.

Okay...enough on that...

Katie


At 11:57 AM -0500 12/18/07, Bryan Minihan wrote:
>I agree with you that many usability practitioners push hard to make the
>interface transparent in the face of the content or process at hand.  Funny
>enough, though, NNg's own Intranet Design Annual includes one category
>called something like the "Wow factor", which is some element of the
>interface that (in their words) is innovative and really improves the user
>experience through sophisticated behaviors not found anywhere else.  I have
>the words a little off, but essentially intranets get bonus points for
>breaking the norm in a usable way.  I don't really object to the category,
>but giving points for inconsistency (however good) doesn't exactly follow
>the mantra of "Good design is transparent" taught by their consultants. 
>
>Not making a judgment either way - I think they included the category
>because they can't ignore the benefit that innovation in the right direction
>provides.  Just think it doesn't fit their model exactly...
>
>Bryan
>http://www.bryanminihan.com

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Katie Albers
User Experience Consulting & Project Management
katie at firstthought.com