Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

On The Durability Of Usability Guidelines

Posted by timothy on from the buggy-whip-orange-by-default dept.

Ant writes "Useit.com's Durability of Usability Guidelines article says about 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid. However, several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today... The 944 guidelines related to military command and control systems built in the 1970s and early 1980s; most used mainframe technology. You might think that these old findings would be completely irrelevant to today's user interface designers. If so, you'd be wrong."

1 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Re:some of them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    you forgot microsoft's additions..

    5. use lots of animations that do not do anything but make the dumbest of users feel better

    6. rearrange the UI every release to confuse and infuriate the users.

    7. claim that changing to a different UI would be too difficult, ignoreing your own major UI changes.

    8. get your fanboys to believe that changing to a different UI is not only difficult for Costly for a company, roll out new windows version with a completely different UI claiming it is better and easier.

    9. Get Fanboys to swallow the above tripe again.

    10. make people believe that security is hard and makes the computer less useable.

    11. get the Fanboys to agree with the above statement.

    12.. generate more ideas that are against common sense and contradict what the company preaches.