Historical Parallels in Usability
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This document discusses the historical relationship between design and usability. It argues that usability has always been an important concern for designers, from ensuring legibility in traditional print design to facilitating task completion on the web. The document asserts that designers must focus on making users, not just clients, happy by optimizing for usability. It highlights the value of usability research and testing over purely aesthetic discussions. Finally, it draws parallels between the establishment of conventions in print design and opportunities to define patterns and best practices for interaction design.
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- 1. Usability: Not my problem? Historical Parallels in Usability (it's always been the designer's problem)
- 7. Selected innovations in legibility – 100BCE http://jontangerine.com/log/2008/06/the-paragraph-in-web-typography-and-design
- 8. Selected innovations in legibility – 1482 A History of Graphic Design, Philip B Meggs - P92
- 9. Selected innovations in legibility – 1757 A History of Graphic Design, Philip B Meggs - P121
- 10. Increasing literacy, increasing access to technology – 19th, early 20 th Century 1854 1907 http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/beresiner18.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/designbyok/378432295/sizes/o/ A History of Graphic Design, Philip B Meggs - P138
- 11. Increasing web literacy, increasing access to technology – 21 st Century www.fabricland.co.uk http://lowlowtireprices.com/lowlowtireprices_006.htm http://www.elegantwebstudio.com/ Myspace page – user information obscured
- 12. Polyglot Bible (1569-72); multilingual website (last week) bbc.co.uk A History of Graphic Design, Philip B Meggs - P89
- 15. Artists make themselves happy Artist
- 16. Traditional designers focus on making Clients happy Designer Client(s) Value add
- 17. For usable design, you need to focus on making the end-user happy! Designer Client(s) Users Value add Value add Value add Value add Value add Value add
- 22. There is plenty of room for creativity within existing conventions Multiple images from amazon.com
Notas del editor
- Today, we will discuss the traditions of usability and designs.
- You would be forgiven for thinking that this quote is in reference to the web, or Facebook, or Twitter. It could have been written in the last 15 years...
- But it wasn't, this is from the opening paragraphs of Tschichold's 'The New Typography', issued in 1928, and arguably one of the most important books on desin to come from the 20 th century. The point is that designers have long had a relationship with technology, and a role in making technological progress accessible to people, and just as much, technology has affected the design profession.
- Additional quotes from Tschichold – from even earlier. 80-some years later, web designers still discuss functional requirements.
- This is a piece of Jewish text from 100 BCE, and you will note the horizontal line indicated with the 'a' – this is an early method for indicating a new collection of thoughts – a paragraph.
- In this wood block print we see the symbol for paragraphs. We moved from the faint horizontal line to this the 'pilcrow'. In some texts this would be illuminated with red ink to make it more apparent.
- And here we see the modern way of denoting a paragraph – simpler, unobtrusive, leading to more effective reading.
- The story of how technology, design, and usability/legibility continues – in the 1800's industrialization was taking off in the Western world. At the same time, literacy rates increased. And so the capacity for production of information products (at the time largely limited to printed materials) – exploded at the same time that demand increased. And so we see much experimentation... pushing the boundaries of legibility.
- And we see the same type of thing happening online. The difference is it is even cheaper, changes are happening much faster, and there are even more people participating. As this happens, we see the rules of legibility (usability) being stretched or ignored as people turn to using these tools for self expression. This is especially apparent as we look to technological advancements online that have truly brought publishing and interactions to the masses – services like Geocities, which gave free, ad supported web space, and now Blogs, Myspace, Facebook which allow common users the ability to create, with no technical ability or design training.
- Over 400 years separate these 2 attempts to share information across multiple languages.
- On the left, traditional graphic design has style guides, and on the right, we see design patterns and usability standards. I would submit that these new developments are do not limit creativity, but instead allow designers to focus their energies on new problems – not reinventing solutions to old ones.