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So, is any of this actually backed with usability studies, or is it just pontificating? The implicit advocation here is "design for the least common denominato
by cheald 14y ago
So, is any of this actually backed with usability studies, or is it just pontificating?
The implicit advocation here is "design for the least common denominator". That means no hovers, no gestures, no secondary/tertiary clicks, no modified clicks, no long-presses, no multitouch, and big fat click targets that allow for lots of slop. That's all well and good until you realize that this leads to designs which are wildly inefficient on certain classes of devices and drive users away because the information density sucks and the interaction models are stunted. If you can get away with it without damaging your UX, then by all means, go for it. Device-agnostic design is awesome, but it's myopic to damage the UX for the vast majority of your userbase because someone might access your website on their XBox and use their Kinect to navigate it.
Know your audience and design appropriately. You're never going to design a perfectly futureproof website; make sure that your users today and tomorrow have a great experience, and then just keep iterating on that.
- stucox 13y agoIt's a technical analysis – I didn't make any claims of user preferences. "Know your audience and design appropriately." Agreed. The aim of the post was to highlight that what people think they're using as a rock-solid feature detect is in fact seriously flawed. If you understand those flaws and you're happy with them, great.
- hdragomir 13y agoIt's not about audience. You can implement all those "gestures" but only as shortcuts to functions that can be accessed in other fashions as well. Don't make me have to middle click for something and make that the only way to perform said action. The author even stresses this trend to focus too much on providing great interfaces for mobile and not for other platforms. :-)