Usability In The News

Usability Quote of the Day

May 23, 2012

There's something very odd going on here. If designers made completely unrealistic assumptions about the physical world when designing technology, then we would blame them (and likely sue them) for technical incompetence. Yet when they make grossly unrealistic assumptions about human nature... we don't blame the designers, we blame the unfortunate people who are just trying to do what the design requires. -- Kim Vicente, The Human Factor, p. 45. (via interaction-design.org)

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Google's War on Hierarchy, and the Death of Hierarchical Folders

A very detailed analysis of the most popular sites ...

"Hierarchical Folders have dominated info organization since they first appeared over 40 years ago. But in industry after industry, a strange thing is happening: hierarchy is under severe attack, and even dying out.

Just take a look at some of the most successful info-based businesses of all time:

Yahoo's Web Directory
Microsoft Outlook's email folders
Microsoft Window's file system

All three businesses have achieved enormous success using hierarchical nested folders. And yet, one of these businesses has already abandoned Hierarchies, and the other two Hierarchies are under attack.

The company behind all three of these attacks? Google, the web's leading search engine." continued ... (Via Microcontent News)

File Folders - User Interface Design, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Ergonomics