Knemeyer Ends Usability Culture
November 11, 2004 | 
21 Comments
It seems like we’re putting an end to all sorts of things lately. Branding, usability, what’s next? Internet Explorer? One can only hope.
In any case, this week Digital Web has published a great article (which is actually supposed to be the first of an ongoing column) by Dirk Knemeyer titled “The End of Usability Culture.” The article, and the comments following, are very well worth a look, but please read between the lines before you judge too harshly.
It’s an interesting premise, that’s for sure, but I’m pretty sure we’re not calling the folks at Six Feet Under to come cart Jakob Nielson away just yet. It’s really about balance and in that I’m in full agreement with Dirk. Web design especially has swung a bit too far to one site and I feel it needs a bit more balance. Read my entry on the Return of Design for more.
Those of us who are able to marry usability and great IA with functional, beautiful design are going to be the ones to take the professional Web where in the direction I feel it should be going. It’s about “design as competitive advantage” and I don’t see a thing wrong with that.
Filed under: News
Comments
1. Dave S. said:
I think it’s just a natural counter-reaction to the abundance of the last few years in regards to usability, and yes I’ll say it, standards. Design is in the back seat at the moment, and although Dirk may end up getting a bunch of nasty email from those who wish it otherwise, he’s got a point – there’s a point where usability is good enough, and attention should be turned elsewhere.
Nielsen started in a climate where no one was doing anything consistently. Heck, background images were still a new thing when he started writing about the web. There was a lot of growth to happen, and he had a firm hand in making sure it didn’t go the wrong way.
His message has reached a large saturation point though, and sooner or later everyone will realize there’s more to a good web page than the Usability Talking Points.
Usability is great; but not at the expense of design. There’s a balance to be reached, and right now one side is coming across just a bit too strong.
Posted on November 11, 2004 09:08 AM | #
2. Chris Moritz said:
I agree with Dirk’s essay, but I fear the impact it could have in the wrong hands. The people who have had to stew in resentment over the ‘oppression’ of the usability culture may use this sentiment to bring back the bad old days, or as a convenient marginalization shield when usability issues arise.
Of course, for the most part we don’t get to control the trends that rise and fall in the web dev world, so we’ll simply have to manage this one as best we can. Striving for that balance is important; it’s just that it’s important to appreciate the power struggles that inherantly come with such change.
I guess the maxim of “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” holds true.
Posted on November 11, 2004 10:25 AM | #
3. Jeff Croft said:
Dirk’s article generated a little discussion around my office, which afford me the opportunity to say, “yeah, I know that guy – kicked his ass in fantasy football.”
Beyond that, MezzoDave already said everything that I was going to say.
Word to your mother.
Posted on November 11, 2004 10:32 AM | #
4. Mike P. said:
ahem ;-)
I’ll hang my hat on Dave S’ words as well. Kudos for saying it. Standards and all that, once you’re doing it as best you can, can get a little looong.
Innovation and design is where the fun is (for most of us, I think), and as long as we shoot for balance and push when we need to, I think we’re moving in the right direction.
Aside → And ‘arufruf’ to you too Keith ;-)
Posted on November 11, 2004 11:08 AM | #
5. Keith said:
Dave sums it up well. To Chris (#2) – I understand your concern, but try as we might it’s hard to (at times) get people to think critically about this kind of thing. Those who take this as a licence to “go back to the old days” are just hurting themselves.
Those who get it, can (and will) use the advice gleaned between the lines to their “competitive advantage.”
Posted on November 11, 2004 11:16 AM | #
6. Chris Moritz said:
Oh, I agree that those who’d try to go back to the bad old days would hurt themselves; I’m just worried that they’ll also hurt the rest of us. It’s one thing to re-focus on the needs of aesthetics and visual differentiation if you have more or less total control of the IA, coding, and design.
However, a lot of us work in specialized environments, where philosophical shifts affect everyone along the production chain.
True, it could be used as yet another competitive “cutting the fat” technique, which I’m all for. But as Dirk acknowledges in his piece, the marketing/design crowd aren’t known for their enlightened restraint.
Posted on November 11, 2004 11:20 AM | #
7. Kev said:
Every time I read articles like this I end up thinking about the perniciousness of ‘trends’.
I can’t believe that people are so short sighted to keep up the continual band-waggon jumping from one ‘trend’ to another.
Touting an article about the ‘end of the usability culture’ is as self defeating as touting an article on the end of creative design. Neither will ever be true. Why worry about how far the pendulum swings? Why not take a holistic approach that enables everyone to take what is needed from each component of the design spectrum and use it to the best of your abilities? I’ve never understood this rush to imbalance one’s work with either extreme.
Posted on November 12, 2004 01:36 AM | #
8. Small Paul said:
It could be one side coming across a bit too strong, or another side coming across a bit too weak. We’ve all seen a few articles and moans making the good point that usability, accessibility and good code aren’t the end of the line - but if you want the focus on design, we need a) some great designs, and b) some discussions of why they’re great.
Once it’s there, the blogging hive mind can assimilate, develop and generally push forward the ideas like it’s done thus far. The beauty of blogging - if you don’t like the popular discussion, show the way forward.
One example springs to mind. When Tantek redesigned his blog, he mentioned the thinking behind the column order - moving from more personal to less personal stuff left to right. A neat idea, I thought, and one Tantek hadn’t seen it anywhere else. Didn’tn get discussed much in the blogosphere though…
Posted on November 12, 2004 01:39 AM | #
9. Charl van Niekerk said:
Internet Explorer? Don’t worry, taken care of that already… :-)
Posted on November 12, 2004 08:05 AM | #
10. Keith said:
Kev – The continual trend that bugs me is people commenting when they’ve either not read or throught critically about what’s been written. That holistic approach is exactly what we’re talking about…maybe I misunderstood your comment?
Posted on November 12, 2004 09:01 AM | #
11. Jeff Croft said:
For the record, I actually agree that maybe it’s not so much the usbiity side coming on too strong, but the visual design side being too weak.
I sort of got at this when I wrote More Design, Less Standards. The point is simply that we spend a lot of our time talking about CSS and other technical tools, but at alot less time talking about actualy design concepts and ideas. A lot of standards advocates also spend a lot of time denouncing any site that isn’t valid, without realizing that there is a lot to learn design-wise from some of these sites. For example: while I am not a flash developer per se, I often take great inspiration from flash-driven sites. It’s high time we start talking about design already.
Posted on November 12, 2004 10:45 AM | #
12. paul haine said:
Given how unusuable 95% of websites still are, I think it’s a misnomer to say that there even is a usability culture – at best, there’s a usability cult.
I’ve read the article several times now, but in all honesty, I’m not sure what he’s trying to say. If he’s trying blame unoriginal, bland design on usability practices, then I believe he’s very much mistaken. When people start believing that you can have either a usable website or a ‘designed’ website, then you end up with tosh like boo.com. Have we learnt nothing?
Posted on November 13, 2004 02:42 AM | #
13. Kev said:
I think possibly you did. I read and understood the article and it quite plainly refers to the ‘end of usability culture’. I think you saw my comment as a critcism of your entry which it isn’t. What I’m saying is that by using such an incorrect and emotive title the author is doing the industry no good. We’ve seen wild fluctuations in whats fashionable since the start of web design and every time there’s a lot of articles about the end of the previous fashion. All these articles do is set off another windmill for everyone to tilt at for a few years until the next fashion comes about.
Why use such a plainly incorrect title for an article? It seems to be nothing to do with advancing the cause of design and more to do with causing enough of a stir to get people talking about the article.
Posted on November 14, 2004 01:22 AM | #
14. Kev said:
Said much better than I was labouring to :)
Posted on November 14, 2004 01:25 AM | #
15. Andrew Hume said:
But Kev,
No one is saying you can have either a usable website or a ‘designed’ web site.
These comments have gone the same way as the ones on Dirk’s article. He’s not advocating one over the other - he’s talking about redressing the balance back towards creative design.
I think the comment that ‘good design embraces usability by default’ perhaps sums up best what designers should gleam from the article.
As Keith said, you have to read between the lines a little. And think.
Posted on November 14, 2004 04:06 AM | #
16. Kev said:
Sorry, I disagree. If you’re writing an article you should be as specific as possible. Content’s no good if its vague.
But unfortunately quite a lot of designers don’t gleam (I assume you mean ‘glean’ by the way?) that from this article. Is that their fault or the authors? If an author of a technical piece can’t successfuly convey their ideas then who’s responsibility is the ensuing lack of comprehension? Assuming there is one.
I got in hot water once for writing what many saw as an overly contentious article about accessibility. I was right to be taken to task as it was overly contentious. As such it was unintentionally misunderstood and the whole thing became counter-productive. I had also assumed at the time that people would read between the lines.
If someone seriously wants to promote the idea of holistic design then surely entitling an article ‘the end of usability’ is naive at best.
Posted on November 14, 2004 04:27 AM | #
17. Ray said:
I didn’t read anything in Dirk’s article about abandoning usability or standards. I did read about building on what we’ve learned so far and taking our craft to a new level.
Also…
The article title got my attention (mission 1 accomplished). The examples were well thought out (mission 2 accomplished), and the content was articulate and to the point (mission 3 accomplished). All in all the article was a great success. People read it, became passionate about it and will probably remember it.
As the old saying goes…”I bet you can’t run around the building without thinking about a fox” ; )
Posted on November 14, 2004 08:12 AM | #
18. Andrew Hume said:
I understand what you are saying Kev. The title that Dirk has used does convey a rather one sided stance to the topic, which is probably inappropriate to his true feelings on the matter.
Which is why I believe you have to read between the lines a little. He doesn’t want to scrub out all the usability work developers have pioneered over the last 10 years. Of course he doesn’t - he just wants a shift in the balance. Perhaps some people are playing ‘devils advocate’, including Dirk himself to a certain degree, by announcing that ‘Dirk wants us to forget about usability’, when I doubt very much that is what he wants.
People that are writing pieces of this nature will often weight them more heavily on the controversial side - as you yourself did with your accessibility article.
It is the nature of any developing industry, such as ours, that two opposing views will pull in opposite directions. It is up to us each individually to take the two extremes and filter out what we need from both to give us a happy medium - or what ever works for us.
In terms of usablilty vs design I don’t personally believe there is too much weight towards the usability side. Design comes in trends, and if everyone is doing the same kind of things at the same moment, it may well look like we have all given up trying to do anything new.
But you’ve got to have peole rocking the boat with their ideas - or we won’t move anywhere.
Posted on November 14, 2004 08:17 AM | #
19. Kev said:
Andrew, I agree rocking the boat is a good thing and if I take your and Keith’s views as how the author emant to write his article then I’m in total agreement with both of you and the author.
However, its clear that for a lot of people, myself included, the article as written was insufficiently clear about its intent. If one writes an article entitled ‘the end of usability culture’ and includes statements such as:
Now, three statements does not a whole article make but contrasted with the rest of the article which advocates a holistic approach, the side of the article which these three statements represent becomes jarring and unwieldy. By actually entitling the whole piece ‘the end of usability’ the author gives (unintended or otherwise) weight to the idea that this piece is about abandoning usability.
Ray (above) says he ‘didn’t read anything in Dirk’s article about abandoning usability or standards.’ which is good. I’m not saying I didn’t misunderstand the point of the article as clearly I did but what concerns me is that a sizeable percentage of readers also came away with that misunderstanding.
For those of us who lived through the boom/bust cycle in the web from the late 90’s until a year or so ago, which I assume is most everyone reading this, surely its important that we need to read/write articles which can confront, generate discussion and educate and yet do it in a responsible manner without overly emotive or alarmist language. When one sees articles about the ‘end of..’ this that or the other its hard not to take the words within literally. In other words, if someone wants to write an article about a holistic approach to design, maybe thats what one should actually do.
Posted on November 14, 2004 02:49 PM | #
20. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
Actually, the article is called “The End of Usability Culture” not usability in and of itself. And it’s implied once reading the article that Dirk intended the title as a reference of the culture of letting usabiltiy drive design.
In that regard, I whole heartedly agree.
Designers drive design, not usability folk. (Hence, the title of “designer.”) That usability has a strangle hold on design in the culture of web and high-tech product development is just the wrong way to design products. And that was the point of the article.
Posted on November 15, 2004 01:51 AM | #
21. Sara White said:
I think there are far too many many people who believe that usability and design can’t work together. What I really liked about the article was how it was advocating the end of usability driven design – not the end of usability itself, but a shift back towards creativity and innovation in design. Usability and design are a lot more closely connected then most people think. Focusing too much on one without the other can actually have a negative effect on usability, since a site where design has been neglected at the expense of usability can actually be more difficult to use than a well designed site (just look at Jakob’s site for an example of this).
Posted on November 15, 2004 12:45 PM | #
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