The Myth of Discoverability

In lieu of a truly good design, often people on the team will accept any design that makes the specific feature they care about (because they like it, because it‘snew, because they work on it, etc.) discoverable, regardless of it‘srelative importance compared to other features (note that this corollary is often applied without knowledge of the base myth). Scott BerkunThe Myth of Discoverability (UI Web)

The message: designers have to prioritize for their users. Of course, they shouldn’t do so arbitrarially: “Many mediocre designs are the result of the avoidance of tough decisions on the part of the designer, rather than an inability to design well.” Via WebWord.

At UWEC, for a while there was a very strange link on the home page… I asked one of the IT people about it, and was told that one of the board of directors had complained that he couldn’t find a particular report, so they added a link to the home page just for him. **Shudder! **

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