Re:Book design inspired by Edward Tufte
by lnanek2 on Tuesday November 18, 2014 @06:17PM
(#8627047)
One of the studies we were shown in a usability class was that pretty interfaces are rated by users as more satisfying and actually are better at letting them accomplish goals as well. If you went to a really ugly web site with lots of clutter, like the myspace era, and got a progress dialog, for example, you might just ditch the web site. Whereas if you went to a beautiful web site and it gave you a progress dialog, you might be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, for example. Sort of like how tall, good looking people earn more money. Sad, but factual.
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Right, many software devs have read The Design of Everyday Things [0] and understand the value of usability. But they didn't read Don Norman's follow up book Emotional Design [1] which explains that usability is only 50% of the answer - emotion is the other 50%. And emotion often means pretty, or at the minimum a positive UX.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expande...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Love-Everyday-Things/...
Re:Book design inspired by Edward Tufte
by taeric on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @01:13AM
(#8628534)
I wouldn't be surprised to find that emotion is actually higher than 50%. Though, I like to gripe about how overblown the study of doors is in that work.
Re:Book design inspired by Edward Tufte
by InclinedPlane on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @03:18AM
(#8628846)
One interesting aspect of that is progress bars. Regardless of the amount of time an operation takes people will have a slightly different subjective opinion of how long it actually took depending on the behavior of the progress bar. Progress bars that slow down near the end seem to take longer than progress bars that accelerate near the end, even if the elapsed time is exactly identical.