Is Usability Taking a Nose Dive?3. Sorry
I know what my slides should be like
I’m just not that guy
The big, evocative photos guy
And I’m not even sorry I’m not that guy
Bullets it is
and a template straight out of Office 2004
But you can read it from the back of the room,
right?
© 2001 Steve Krug
4. The premise
On the one hand, it seems like usability is in better
shape than ever
© 2001 Steve Krug
5. After years of crying in the desert…
…suddenly we’re pop- ♫ u- ♫ lar ♫
Or at least it seems like we are
Thank Steve for it
Or maybe Steve and Jony
He/they convinced people that usability was a
crucial part of his/their enormously successful
secret sauce
They did the big case study for “you can make
money by making things that people can use”
© 2001 Steve Krug
6. Mostly good news
Granted, usability is now a wholly owned subsidiary
of its newfound big cousin, User Experience Design
(UXD)
But there’s more awareness than ever of the whole
idea of creating things people can actually use
© 2001 Steve Krug
7. But
Some people heard it as “you can make money by
making things that people really enjoy using”
Some heard it as “…by creating delightful
experiences”
So for some people usability now equals “delightful
experience”
…which can easily translate to “beautiful, novel,
and cool stuff”
© 2001 Steve Krug
8. Usabilitycirca 2001
Useful: Does it do something people need done?
Learnable: Can people figure out how to use it?
Memorable: Do they have to relearn it each time
they use it?
Efficient: Does it do it with a reasonable amount of
time and effort?
and maybe even:
Effective: Does it get the job done?
© 2001 Steve Krug
9. New, improved usability
Now includes:
Desirable: Do people want it?
Delightful: Is using it enjoyable, or even fun?
© 2001 Steve Krug
10. My [relatively unchanged] definition
Something is usable if
A person of average (or even below average) ability and
experience
can figure out how to use the thing
to accomplish some desired goal
without it being more trouble than it’s worth.
© 2001 Steve Krug
11. Travel with me back in time
Well, OK, only about a year
I was working on the new edition of Don’t Make Me
Think
Felt the need to “get out of the building”
Made an effort to go beyond my usual routines
Looked at a lot of sites
Suddenly had that “I think we’re not in Kansas
anymore” feeling
© 2001 Steve Krug
12. Some things looked the same as ever
Or better than ever
A feeling of maturity
© 2001 Steve Krug
15. On the other hand
Many looked like mobile sites that had been fed
growth hormones
Had the feeling you could read them from outer
space
© 2001 Steve Krug
19. Mobile to desktop creep?
Everything centered
Lots of uninformative graphics
Very little info on the screen at one time
Loss of visual hierarchy
Everything on one page
© 2001 Steve Krug
22. Show of hands
Flat design:
A passing trend
A great leap forward
The devil’s handiwork
© 2001 Steve Krug
24. So what bothers me about Flat?
Duck-and-cover threat of skeuomorphism
There were really only a few egregious examples
And they never really hurt anybody
I thought we’d won the cool vs. usable battle
People finally understood that it can be as cool as
you want, as long as it works, too
I hadn’t had that argument in years
© 2001 Steve Krug
25. Don’t get me wrong
I am not a luddite
In fact, I’m a hopeless early adopter
I’m ecstatic that my Surface Pro 3 arrived today in
Boston
Almost all of my PCs for the last 15 years have been
tablets
Only problem was the 45-minute battery life, two inch
thickness, and 4 pound heft
© 2001 Steve Krug
26. Don’t get me wrong
I bought iPad the day it came out
I try so many apps that I can’t do “Update All”
© 2001 Steve Krug
27. We’re making more ambitious things
Technology is allowing things to do a lot more
Accelerometers the size of a grain of sand that cost
pennies to make
GPS satellites
Gorilla Glass®™
The Cloud
© 2001 Steve Krug
28. It’s moving awfully fast
Developing UX for a new technology takes time
A shift as rapid as desktop > mobile requires some
catching up
New devices may come faster than new usable
interface ideas
© 2001 Steve Krug
29. © 2001 Steve Krug
Source: LukeW (google: “First Person User Interfaces”)
30. I’m worried about the little guy
Greater demands
Things have to be cooler
Things have to be more functional
Things have to be multi-platform
Vague emerging standards
Too much to learn
© 2001 Steve Krug
31. Developers are the new MDs
There’s so much more to know
It’s hard to keep up
Show of hands: Do you ever feel like there’s just too
much to know?
© 2001 Steve Krug
32. Developers are the new MDs
“Faking cultural literacy”
Karl Taro Greenfeld, New York Times, 5/24/14
“It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much
without actually knowing anything.”
“What we all feel now is the constant pressure to know
enough, at all times, lest we be revealed as culturally
illiterate.”
“What matters to us…is not necessarily having actually
consumed this content firsthand but simply knowing
that it exists — and having a position on it, being able to
engage in the chatter about it.”
© 2001 Steve Krug
34. © 2001 Steve Krug
Replacing “progress” with “innovation”
skirts the question of whether a novelty is
an improvement: the world may not be
getting better and better but our devices are
getting newer and newer.
From “The Disruption Machine: What the gospel of innovation gets wrong”
by Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 6/23/14
35. © 2001 Steve Krug
Photo © Jeff Jeffords www.divegallery.com
36. © 2001 Steve Krug
Thanks for all the fish
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skrug@sensible.com