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Usability

Posted May 28, 2005 in Design

Daring Fireball directed me to an interesting discussion on Apple’s Mail 2.0 interface design, specifically the new toolbar button icons. What struck me, and what moved me to comment on that post, was the almost total indifference to whether the new design was actually demonstrably better from a usability perspective, rather than an aesthetic one.

I’m a bit of an Apple fan. But many of their interface design decisions seem to be made on the basis of taste rather than research.

In any case, one of the commenters pointed out to me a good weblog on usability, called Apples to Oranges.

1 comments so far

Comment by heretic at 29 May, 06:03 am

i think both macos and windows suffers from ‘it’s a new version, so we have to make it look really different’. i guess the assumption (probably correct) is that most users can’t tell the difference in terms of functionality, they only really get the visual changes. so they want the visual changes to reflect the very latest in interface chic.

now, if we can just stop people making website buttons look like glossy mac interface buttons…

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