The complexity principle

Added on 8 March 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Overly complex interfaces significantly impact usability and must be avoided. While there are plenty of studies researching this issue and plenty of data to point to how complexity hurts a product, in order to truly address the root of problem, designers must understand where complexity originates.” (Design by Fire)

Experience Design and the Design of Experience

Added on 7 March 2004 Peter Bogaards
“(…) we enter the era of what I’m calling Experience Design. A quick scan of our sociocultural landscape suggests that, in terms of artistic practices, mass entertainment, sports, and emerging technologies of pleasure, productive forces are increasingly targeting experience itself – that evanescent flux of sensation and perception that is, in some sense, all we have and all we are.” (Erik Davis – techgnosis) – courtesy of brad lauster

The Risks of Discounted Qualitative Studies

Added on 5 March 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The discerning usability analyst should employ a mix of both qualitative and quantitative methods when discovering usability problems. The risks of relying heavily on a qualitative approach can lead to a severe misdiagnosis especially when usability problems are difficult to detect. This article is a response to Nielsen’s ‘The Risk of Quantitative Studies’ and shows how the problems voters had with the ‘butterfly-ballot’ in the Florida 2000 election would not have been detected with popular discounted qualitative methods. The problems with relying on one-size-fits all usability guidelines such as ‘testing with only five users’ and the inherent bias of pay-for-hire guru’s are also discussed.” (Jeff Sauro – measuring usability)

Do you ‘google’? Understanding search engine use beyond the hype

Added on 4 March 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Much anecdotal evidence suggests that Google is the most popular search engine. However, such claims are rarely backed up by data. The reasons for this are manifold, including the difficulty in measuring search engine popularity and the multiple ways in which the concept can be understood. Here, I discuss the sources of confusion related to search engine popularity. It is problematic to make unfounded assumptions about general users’ search engine choices because by doing so we exclude a large number of people from our discussions about systems development and our understanding of how the average user finds information online.” (Eszter Hargittai – FirstMonday 9.3)