Will you go by the below mentioned usability principle?
“Perfection is not when there is more to add, but when no more to take away”
- Antoine de Saint-Exuper
Is this a good principle to follow while designing a product?
Essentially what it says is to cut the noise and focus on the core, the minimalistic core!
Will it go well with transactional portal? Maybe, yes.
What about content portals? Aren’t they supposed to ‘show all’ content, in order to get more pageviews?
Do you agree to this minimalistic usability principle?
What’s your opinion?
By the way, Rajesh has an interesting discussion topic , i.e. “What are the top User friendly websites in India?“
Content portals have to be smart enough to show stuff based on past behavior.
Look at the job sites. They have my resume and know everything about me. Still they show categories of jobs that aren’t even remotely related.
Are they retarded or is it too difficult.
And let me tell ye that usability consultants fuck usability – infact most of UED and UER guys tend to screw up usability and do the ‘best practices’ thing only.
Can a usablity professional think of a google like UI?
NO
That is a mouthful Shouvik. You seem to have had very bad experiences with UED/UER guys. Your analogy sounds like “surgeons **** surgery and do best practices only”, Anyways, on a more serious note, NOT all UED/UER guys tend to focus only on the best-practice(s).
There are Usability Pro’s who can NOT just think, BUT also conceptualize – create – validate and deploy UI’s that withstand the tests of time.
One of the biggest convoluted statements is “Google-like UI”; can you define that for all the ignorant UED/UER guys? Why not refer to apple and ask a question like “Can “they” think of an Apple-like UI?”
UI is a result of FUNCTION + FORM, what is the FUNCTION of Google (I am assuming that you are referring to Google Search)? and one should not compare that to all things online.
To be or not to be minimalistic is a choice that can be made on the basis of various factors (I agree with Nitin), I always stick to one fundamental aspect – Involve real users and test, it is highly probable that you will not get anything right the first time, however by following thoroughly grounded principles and utilizing skilled human capital you can mitigate most of the common problems that seem to have become the norm today.
I definitely agree to the minimalistic approach, but then it depends on the website or the goal of the business. A large portal with lots of content cannot be as minimalistic as say cleartrip. In India, most of the sites are very dull. Only a few understand web standards and the rest of them don’t really know the web too well.
My picks would inlude cleartrip for minimalism, burrp for usability, blogadda for web2 & user-friendly.
Read the recent posts on usability and was tempted to comment.
“The greater the design, the less noticeable the designer. This is “the designer’s dilemma”–the better you do your job as a designer, the less noticeable you make yourself.”
It’s a tough line to walk…
http://blog.cleartrip.com/journal/2007/2/6/the-designers-dilemma.html
The biggest problem is copying what other bigger brands are doing…They are not the best for everything
I find ixigo.com as the best travel portal
To solve our own usability problems, we rely more on our users feedback/suggestions and feedback from various events.
No one can get the usability right the first time…you need to have a good starting base and then evolve over a period of time (not too long)
Guys, I think making a design complex is a sign of insecurity. The best websites guide their users to the place they want the user to be…it is not like if I make my design complex only then will they like it.
We have just launched sutrablog.com (this is not an act of shameless self promotion) … and have worked on the blog theme ourselves. I would really appreciate it if you guys can comment on the design – its still in beta – so show some mercy