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On The Durability Of Usability Guidelines
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."
Sadly, for the US military/taxpayers at least, things HAVE changed in that launching nuclear missiles against stationary targets such as cities and military bases is one thing; attempting to stop committed combatants from creating explosives out of cheap, plentiful ingrediants then adopting suicide bomber or roadside bomb tactics is quite another.