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The central point of the article is that certain people (designers, for lack of a precise term) can use their intuition to get better results than actually test
by boyakasha 16y ago
The central point of the article is that certain people (designers, for lack of a precise term) can use their intuition to get better results than actually testing alternatives; to quote the article:
"Testing can only tell you so much -- and it often only reveals that people only like things that are similar to what they've had before. But brilliant design solutions convert people over time, because they're both subtle and ground breaking."
The article provides no evidence to support its claim. For all the anecdotes, not a single one describes a situation where the intuitions of "designers" outperformed a solution based on testing alternatives.
However, the pro-designer propaganda flies thick and fast, repeatedly implying designers would have made a better solution, or seen the solution as obvious without the need for testing:
- "While that solution seems obvious and not particularly elegant"
- "Is it just us who find our eyeballs spinning in their sockets...?"
- "Obviously, none of these (prototypes) were going to work"
- "A little design know-how would have made that obvious"
- "(They eventually settled on a blue that is basically the average of all the blues used in hyperlinks across the web. Duh.)"
- "Google's 'solution' to providing instant results still seems so primitive and ugly"
- "But brilliant design solutions convert people over time, because they're both subtle and ground breaking."
- "testing artificially limits the worldview of the people"
- "has your G-mail or Google Reader gotten any easier to use, or less stressful on your eyes? Have either of them become a pleasure to look at or play with? No."
The author isn't interested in making a coherent argument. The author's interest lies in unashamedly gratifying the readers' sense of importance. It is a website for designers, after all.
- mattmanser 16y agoI felt that the central point the article was trying to make, and I thought made it well, is that design is not about testing a set of obvious solutions and then declaring X the winner because it was tested well. Firstly that often results in horrid UX experiences, as Google Instant is. It is also, weak for the following reasons: 1. No innovation happens (which is why Apple came up with the smartphone touch UI and Google just copies it) 2. People don't like change, so will favour things close to what they had before You have fallen straight into the same odd thinking dominating Google, that UI is incremental, testable and easily measurable. You want precise and measurable. That's not design. Jonathan Ives is worth his weight in gold for his design skills as much as Linus Torvalds is worth his weight in gold as a programmer. And we as engineers have to accept that. Google will never come up with a great design with the way it approaches the problem. While I love their products, none of them have ever blown me away because of their elegance or coherence. They only know how to do simplicity and are beginning to forget how to do that too.
- lhnz 16y agoI don't know. I think Google Chrome has the best default UX of any browser I've used. And I wouldn't say anything about that was incremental...
- GiraffeNecktie 16y agoNothing about Chrome is incremental? Really? I would have said the UX was entirely incremental. Yes it was arguably better than any other browser at the time it was released but putting the same stuff in different positions or removing some extraneous elements is, to my mind, an incremental change.
- mattmanser 16y agoAnd doing what Google does best, it was simple.
- duck 16y agoAnd doing what Google does best, making it faster (and I think that is why most of us use Chrome).
- points 16y ago"Firstly that often results in horrid UX experiences, as Google Instant is" Am I the only one that loves the UI for Google Instant and thinks it's the single biggest time saver of recent times?
- aik 16y agoI completely agree with you. Today I found myself using a search in another tool and sat there for a moment after I typed, waiting for the results to come in. Once I realized the results weren't going to come until I press enter, I found myself a very tiny bit frustrated that I had to exert additional effort for me to see results.
- vessenes 16y ago