Ken Corey wrote > > > ....If the HIG are not scientifically provable "usability", but simply > subjective statements, then how can we measure "usability"? > >
The enterprise is fundamentally mistaken. We have to start by recognizing there is no such thing. One size does not fit all. Different people, different working situations, different configurations. If you think about some areas where usability standards do work, what they have in common is an identical set of tasks and a requirement to be able to move from one machine to another without disruption. All cars now for instance have gear shifts, gear locations and signalling controls in the same place and they all work the same. But we are all driving the same roads to the same rules. A halfway example from UI in computers is double click to open. But, my experience is that given a choice, at least a third of people will choose single click in the file manager. And yes, this does contravene HIG rules, because it leads to some openings needing double clicks. Contrary to the myth, they adapt without any difficulty and positively prefer it this way. Not all. But a substantial minority. The right approach is not to try to define something called usability and then try to implement it. The right way is to enable the user to choose how he wants to work. The OS News readership is obviously very unusual, but you can see this diversity every time they run a feature on readers desktops. The variety is simply wild. Yet all these desktops are the result of someone's seriously finding them nicer and more usable. Flux for instance is right for me. I agree with Richmond that XFCE is very nice - have that on a laptop. But Evolution has a large following and apparently the new Gnome has enthusiasts. The lesson is, there are preferences, and usability is not a useful concept in the way its being employed now, because no preferences are better than any others. Its a bit like asking how we find the correct size or style for shoes. The answer is that the right size and style is the one that fits and allows the wearer to move as he or she wants in the environment they are in, and a lady at a formal dinner won't want construction boots. If you want to test an application, maybe the right test is user errors. Track them and see what's going wrong and change it. In defiance of professional advice, I once permitted users to edit a data file directly, not giving them a more long winded but more controlled interface. It was faster and simpler but error prone. This was the source of lots of errors, and it had to be changed. Once I found that people were opening the same application twice, and had to correct what was giving rise to that. The mistakes people make when trying to use what we have written is probably the most valuable test. -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/OT-How-long-before-tp4653161p4653267.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
