My ears are still ringing from all the announcements of the shipped Silverlight beta, and I’m already seeing funny ideas floating around. The most dangerous one, in my opinion, is that Silverlight will be such a great boon to usability. Really?
In Prioritizing Web Usability Jakob Nielsen defines usability as follows:
“Usability is a quality attribute relating to how easy something is to use. More specifically, it refers to how quickly people can learn to use something, how efficient they are while using it, how memorable it is, how error-prone it is, and how much more users like using it. If people can’t or won’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.”
Mr. Nielsen and his co-author Hoa Loranger classify some of the most significant usability problems on a 1 to 3 skull basis, three skulls being “a high impact usability problem,” and one skull—“a minor issue”.
For all intents and purposes, we can compare Silverlight to Flash, which scores two skulls in the book (a medium-usability problem).
I don’t know if people who suggest Silverlight-powered login screens, data grids, etc, have forgotten the problem-ridden history of Java applets and Flash. Let’s revisit some of their deficiencies:
- broken browser Back button
- lack of accessibility
- “splash” screens and gratuitous intro animations
- lack of user control over navigation
- need to install the latest plug-in
- non-standard GUI controls (a huge drawback!)
Jakob Nielsen has this to say about oddball scollbars:
“How many scrollbar designs do we need? The world’s best interaction designers worked for years testing numerous design alternatives to come up with the current Macintosh and Windows scrollbars. A new scrollbar designed over the weekend is likely to get many details wrong. And even if the new design is workable, it still reduces a site’s overall usability because users must figure out how it works. They already know how to operate the standard widget.”
The carpenter’s dilemma
When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Flash is a highly specialized tool needed to provide multimedia content and rich interaction only where absolutely
necessary. Ditto for Silverlight. Bells and whistles hardly ever translate into good usability.
Break the rules only if you master them
How often do you hear calls to “break the rules” or “think outside the box” at over-caffeinated gatherings? When it comes to usability, you have a moral right to break the rules only once you master them. Anything short of that is plain arrogance.
Conclusion
As Silverlight, still a young technology, enters the mainstream, resist temptation to subject people to misplaced creativity. As with any technology, it’s never about you—it’s about them. When in doubt, err on the side of ethics.
