I argue that usability isn't just about functionality. In today's world, we can design delightful UIs with broader purposes without sacrificing effectiveness. Let's redefine usability, break stereotypes, and show that it's far from boring and full of creative potential.
A recent post by the folks at Nielsen from their AlertBox service titled “Fresh vs. Familiar: How Aggressively to Redesign” talks about how users tend to prefer incremental UI changes (i.e. familiarity) to something novel and unique. The theory goes that a more aggressive redesign will force a user to relearn and re-familiarize herself with a new visual layout and navigation, thereby reducing the overall usability of the UI in question.
I think that in principle this makes sense – assuming we still live in the 1990s! I can’t believe how traditional usability seems to design for the lowest common denominator user, assuming that any little change, anything that will make a user have to – god forbid – actually modify their behavior (gasp!) is a bad thing. I call this the “1990s approach” to usability, because back in the 90s it made sense to design for novice users: the interwebs was barely hitting the road (and not yet the mainstream), and web designers the world over were just starting to figure out how to design websites and UIs that didn’t confuse people with conflicting colors, black backgrounds, and hideous layouts.
But we’re in the 21st century, people.
This means that for the first time in UI design’s short history we are able to create designs that delight while also serving a broader functional purpose, rather than worry too much about making something purely functional and usable. Sure, there’s a place for functional design that hits all the right usability buttons, but I get frustrated when I see the usability profession, my profession, getting pigeonholed as stodgy and uptight.
A friend of mine who used to work at Apple, someone who I thought understood that usability involves both function and (sometimes beautiful) form, drove it home for me: “Usability? That’s boring, there’s no creativity or design innovation in that. You guys just make sure things are usable.” This isn’t because he doesn’t understand usability; it serves more to illustrate that usability overall has a slightly stale rap – one that I aim to change. Who’s with me?
