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No, they are not the same thing, but that doesn't mean they aren't related. If you have a very negative aesthetic reaction to a web site, it will affect your us

by pdubroy 18y ago

No, they are not the same thing, but that doesn't mean they aren't related. If you have a very negative aesthetic reaction to a web site, it will affect your use of the site. Don Norman talks about this in his book Emotional Design. Everything we use elicits some kind of emotional response in us, and that affects our experience with the thing. Something is not "usable" if it's so repulsive that no one will use it. In this case, the goal of Jakob's site, for him and for us, is for us to read the articles. If we don't want to look at the page for more than 30 seconds, it's difficult to accomplish that goal.

ajross 18y ago
But that's not "usability", it's style. Is style impotant? Yes. But it's entirely possible to have eminently usable software that is ugly to a bunch of people. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your ideas about "ugly" are the same as other peoples'. The implied irony was that a usability expert produce a site with poor usability, and it's just plain wrong. Visit the link. It's not even that ugly, frankly. It is spare, clean, and very well-organized. It just happens to look a lot like default HTML rendering. Shrug.
- tipjoy 18y ago
  No, style and aesthetics are intrinsically tied to usability and studies have shown this again and again. Check out Malcom Gladwell's Blink for a few colloquial examples. For more formal research studies, email me.
- pdubroy 18y ago
  > But that's not "usability", it's style. I guess it depends on your definition of usability. Jakob Neilsen himself believes that user satisfaction is a part of usability: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html I agree that it's possible to have eminently usable software that is ugly to a bunch of people. But it entirely depends on how that software is being used. In the case of a web site, Jakob says it well (from the same article I linked above): On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. I would add: if the site is ugly, people leave. Your web site might be "eminently usable", but if people don't read it, it's a failure.

by pdubroy 18y ago

ajross 18y ago

But that's not "usability", it's style. Is style impotant? Yes. But it's entirely possible to have eminently usable software that is ugly to a bunch of people. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your ideas about "ugly" are the same as other peoples'. The implied irony was that a usability expert produce a site with poor usability, and it's just plain wrong. Visit the link. It's not even that ugly, frankly. It is spare, clean, and very well-organized. It just happens to look a lot like default HTML rendering. Shrug.

tipjoy 18y ago
No, style and aesthetics are intrinsically tied to usability and studies have shown this again and again. Check out Malcom Gladwell's Blink for a few colloquial examples. For more formal research studies, email me.
pdubroy 18y ago
> But that's not "usability", it's style. I guess it depends on your definition of usability. Jakob Neilsen himself believes that user satisfaction is a part of usability: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html I agree that it's possible to have eminently usable software that is ugly to a bunch of people. But it entirely depends on how that software is being used. In the case of a web site, Jakob says it well (from the same article I linked above): On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. I would add: if the site is ugly, people leave. Your web site might be "eminently usable", but if people don't read it, it's a failure.