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User Empowerment and the Fun Factor (Alertbox July 2002) is poetry:
"Once we achieve ease of use, we'll need additional usability methods to further strengthen joy of use. "
Say it with me:
"strengthen joy of use"
Well, it is certainly nice to hear it coming from him. I know some jokingly refer to him as the dour Dane. I'm glad he points to Amazon as an example of the right way to do things. It is interesting that Edward Tufte, Phillip Greenspun, and Jakob Nielsen all aruge for minimalist interfaces, no more than what is needed, and yet they all cite Amazon as an example of good user interface design. I love Amazon, but I think its interface is busy. I have often hunted for a link and not been able to find it, and my mom is almost hopeless on that site, for the same reason. Its great strength is how powerfully interactive it is. But anyone who thinks its interface is simple should compare it to the Ofoto site that was discussed here on this site a few days ago.
Gods, yes.
I'm an architecture student and the icy sententious seriousness of so much design these days (Charles Moore talked about suburban bank branch design) is stultifying.
I would caution against trying to compare Amazon and Ofoto, it's like apples and oranges. Ofoto has a few dozen homogenous products and Amazon and thousands of heterogeneous products. Amazon with an Ofoto interface would have an incredibly deep hierarchy.
As an experiment, I'd like to see it, but I don't think we want to spend our lives navigating down 12 levels.
I love-it-love-it-love-it-love-it!
It's Don's influence rubbing off on Jakob. See first inklings, ongoing thinking, and public publication.
Do you think he's setting up to start praising Flash?
What do you think that whole Macromedia foofaraw was about??
