I'm no usability professional, it's true. But I love spending time correcting people who are. I thought that pomp and self-righteousness are what it means to be a Slashdotter:)
I do think you're right though, and that possibly the sign of a successful company is one that anticipates the return to customer behavior based on genuine need, not marketing-induced euphoria. However, it seems like there always exists a company to cater to those customers on the periphery who relish the gimmicks, or vice versa. Examples might be iPod vs. Neuros, or Palm vs. Zaurus.
The usability guru Donald Norman, of Nielsen Norman Group fame, writes in his book "The Usability of Everyday Things" that when plotted against time, the usability of any given product is a bell curve. First-generation devices are highly usable; yet, as the competition evolves, manufactures add gimmicks and sacrifice usability. At some point there is a return to simplicity that represents market recognization of the consumers' original need.
What Norman, and CNN, don't realize is that these gimmicks, difficult as they make devices, exist only to meet market demand. People use the games on their cell phones; if they didn't, the business wouldn't be profitable and the manufacturers wouldn't cater. Articles like the one from CNN are about those who live outside the standard deviation; those who are lost by the gimmicks and await the manufacturer's return to simplicity.
During the months after 9/11 my parent's house was for sale, and they were allowing potential buyers to wander around the house taking pictures to help them decide whether or not to buy. I was at college, but in the closet of my room, there was a potato cannon I had built some time earlier. One couple took several high-res digital photos of my closet and the cannon, and sent them off to the state police. Without informing my parents. Both the FBI and several state troopers knocked on the door a few days later, asking to see the "explosive device." I'm not sure how I feel about being invaded like that; after all, the cannon did indeed look pretty mean. If anything this story is more of a testament to the buyer's stupidity than to the Orwellian nature of the government investigators. Shortly thereafter I thought to myself what I would have done if I had gone into someone's house and noticed what I believed to be a genuine terror device; say, bricks of semtex stitched to a vest and attached to detonators. I came to the conclusion that I would act the same way those who turned ME in would; I would take pictures and report it, quietly getting the f out of the house. So, in the end the potential buyers acted rationally but just happened to be idiots. Thoughts?
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I'm no usability professional, it's true. But I love spending time correcting people who are. I thought that pomp and self-righteousness are what it means to be a Slashdotter :)
I do think you're right though, and that possibly the sign of a successful company is one that anticipates the return to customer behavior based on genuine need, not marketing-induced euphoria. However, it seems like there always exists a company to cater to those customers on the periphery who relish the gimmicks, or vice versa. Examples might be iPod vs. Neuros, or Palm vs. Zaurus.
The usability guru Donald Norman, of Nielsen Norman Group fame, writes in his book "The Usability of Everyday Things" that when plotted against time, the usability of any given product is a bell curve. First-generation devices are highly usable; yet, as the competition evolves, manufactures add gimmicks and sacrifice usability. At some point there is a return to simplicity that represents market recognization of the consumers' original need.
What Norman, and CNN, don't realize is that these gimmicks, difficult as they make devices, exist only to meet market demand. People use the games on their cell phones; if they didn't, the business wouldn't be profitable and the manufacturers wouldn't cater. Articles like the one from CNN are about those who live outside the standard deviation; those who are lost by the gimmicks and await the manufacturer's return to simplicity.
During the months after 9/11 my parent's house was for sale, and they were allowing potential buyers to wander around the house taking pictures to help them decide whether or not to buy. I was at college, but in the closet of my room, there was a potato cannon I had built some time earlier. One couple took several high-res digital photos of my closet and the cannon, and sent them off to the state police. Without informing my parents. Both the FBI and several state troopers knocked on the door a few days later, asking to see the "explosive device." I'm not sure how I feel about being invaded like that; after all, the cannon did indeed look pretty mean. If anything this story is more of a testament to the buyer's stupidity than to the Orwellian nature of the government investigators. Shortly thereafter I thought to myself what I would have done if I had gone into someone's house and noticed what I believed to be a genuine terror device; say, bricks of semtex stitched to a vest and attached to detonators. I came to the conclusion that I would act the same way those who turned ME in would; I would take pictures and report it, quietly getting the f out of the house. So, in the end the potential buyers acted rationally but just happened to be idiots. Thoughts?
Why, AOL of course!