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And yet all kinds of claims are made on Hacker News, like how to be an entrepreneur or the best way to run a start-up, and no-one ever asks for the data. It see
by alsomike 16y ago
And yet all kinds of claims are made on Hacker News, like how to be an entrepreneur or the best way to run a start-up, and no-one ever asks for the data. It seems like this demand for data is highly selective and used to justify the lazy attitude toward UX that plagues the majority of software. It's a dodge that I see all the time - a UX person proposes some improvement, a developer says "Well I don't think that's a good user experience, we should really A/B test it, oh wait, we don't have the time for that right now, that's too bad..." And the proposed improvement is something totally obvious, like the one in this article: buttons should have accurate, non-generic labels. You have to wonder if someone who disagree with something that obvious is arguing in good faith, or just doesn't like being told what to do.
- patio11 16y agoI agree that people use "show me the data" as an argumentative strategy in a selective fashion. That said, "show me the data" to "X is the best way to run a startup" is fundamentally non-interesting, because typically that claim borders on philosophy and when it doesn't there is no convenient test you can do to get actionable data. But UX improvements about button calls to action? Come on. Anyone here can test this, in less than two minutes of work. You could have an interesting discussion about metrics selection, but arguments which collapse to "I have an aesthetic preference for this alternative" leave me a little unsatisfied.