Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for June 8 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/guesses-data.html
	
Summary:
Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly
improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions.
	
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CALL FOR ENTRIES: Intranet Design Annual

Think you have a good intranet? Submit it for the award:

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/2010

Deadline: July 11

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PRODUCT REVIEWS EMPHASIZE USABILITY

Two interesting discussions of usability issues in The New York Times'
review of the new Palm Pre touchphone:

  > http://tr.im/PreReview

"[certain operations] can be very slow [...] and there's no progress bar
or hourglass to let you know that it's still working."

and

"the Pre is not quite as simple as the iPhone. All those extra features,
by definition, mean that there's more to learn."


Three observations:

a) Usability has definitely become a key part of many product reviews
these days, in major newspapers (as here) and in the trade press. This, of
course, means that simpler UI sells more products because it means better
reviews.

b) I am particularly pleased by the recognition of my long-standing point
that more features can be bad. In the old days, the press reviewed tech
products purely on a feature checklist basis, which meant that the product
with the most features scored highest. Now, excess features can hurt your
review, which is how it should be.

c) It's interesting to see a big family newspaper discuss design details
like progress bars, which used to be the domain solely of usability geeks.
I wrote about them in 1993:
  > http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

We're going mainstream, people...