What’s the world coming too?
Posted by Peter Cavallo on October 10, 2006
I’m just reading through the Google News Alerts I get that cover Usability and User Experience news. Most of the news is updates from major businesses telling the world that they’ve redesigned their web sites for maximum “User-Friendliness” !!? WTF! USER FRIENDLINESS! What’s the go with that?!
Well I ventured onto a couple of user friendly sites and found them very friendly but unfortunately not very usable. Which leads me to my discussion today. Who are we designing for – mouse users or keyboard users. Since the mouse was introduced by Douglas Engelbart there has been a rift between designing for both or leaving one out namely keyboard navigation. To my surprise corporate web sites are still not catering for keyboard users, but yet will stake their claim for a “User Friendly” site. What if my motor skills were not up to moving the mouse around? Or, God forbid my mouse stopped working (as does my wireless when I’ve run out of battery juice) and let’s NOT forget the disabled. I am then confined to my trusty keyboard, ahh yes it will never let me down. But Oh! WTF! I can’t navigate this site to find the information I need, oh well I’ll just go to some one else’s site that will cater for my needs. So much for user friendliness it wasn’t friendly to my needs. Basically if I was in this scenario I don’t want the site to be friendly but usable. Simply yeh? Apparently not though.
Come on people! Get with the program! The mouse is good yes, but hey let’s not forget that we live in a diverse world with mouse people and keyboard people and we all have to search your site at some stage of our lives. So, please be as friendly as you want just don’t freakin make it unusable as well.
I will now climb down off my soapbox and cover my superman suit and return to mild mannered Peter (aka Clark Kent).
