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, November 01, 2005

Words + pictures > words alone

The value of pictures as a memory aid to words ...

"How many appliances are visible in your kitchen? Don't read on until you have your answer.

If you're like most people, you took a mental visual walk through your kitchen, "looking for" appliances. "OK, next to the refrigerator on the right side there's the toaster... next to the coffee maker... the microwave is up there..."

We’re visual creatures. According to memory expert Kenneth Higbee, “The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is usually applied to the effectiveness of a picture in understanding what was communicated; it may also apply to the effectiveness of a picture in remembering what was communicated.”

Tech/education publishers--pay attention here--the one thing that could make a huge difference is to switch from captions-under-pictures to captions-within-pictures. Yes, I've heard all the arguments for why this is difficult for production. But the potential gain is HUGE."   continued ...   (Via Creating Passionate Users)

Words Plus Pictures - User Interface Design, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Ergonomics

Words Plus Pictures.

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