Overall the article was a great, thought provoking read. A condensed, bullet pointed list for some of those key design concepts would be great cubicle wall material next to any designer’s monitor!
I was also amused at how “typical” of a user I am! I skim, I want my info in 3 clicks or less, I want the inverted pyramid of information, I scan for the familiar search box, I ignore instructions and plow through a website like a bull in a china shop until I get the information I want. If that is how I surf, why would I demand users do break their habits for one of my designs?
The Smashing Book’s thesis would seem to be that predictability and simplicity are often a designer’s best friends, and I would agree. Truly innovative design often gets us to do entirely new things in a way that feels familiar to us. We aren’t being forced to relearn how to complete a task or obtain information. Instead we are lead along a system in which we interact with a new product through natural or previously learned behaviors. A tried (and tired) yet true example is how the iPhone brought a multitude of nearly techno-illiterate consumers in to the world of smartphones; a world that was previously exclusive to the tech fanatic or business consumer.
Undoubtedly my design process for websites will change drastically as a result of this article. I can look at God knows how many projects where I started with – what I thought was – a great idea. Giving a user access to that idea is a whole other ball of wax. For myself, I already understood the what of my idea, I was the one that came up with it! But how do I get others to understand it? How often do we give that much concerted effort to make that as simple and effective as possible? We simply move forward and present it to the hapless user who didn’t have the benefit of riding along in our mad “genius” creative process. The common result is a confused, lost, and baffled audience. This article certainly offers some great tools to build from the audience side backwards and to help ensure our “brilliant” ideas aren’t buried under a mountain of inaccessibility.
