Why good usability should be guaranteed
Everything is getting more complicated and the solution is not in sight yet. Philips has recently created a 'simplicity department' and put it in the centre of it's business and marketing strategy. Smart move, but remains to be seen if it's going to work.
We are surrounded by a swarm of unusable devices, mostly because companies have various political and financial reasons not to do a proper usability research. And any amount of good marketing won't help here.
And the things are getting worse: the multimedia world has brought new devices, with new oprational and usability standards and conventions and they are often quite different. There is no a single usability standard yet.
Maybe it is time for us to create it, in the same way that we have standards in designing and producing cars: length, height, wheel diameters etc. Maybe a set of standards on search result pages, how interactive menus work or a set of internationally recognised icons for the most frequently used functionalities? I don't know.
I just know that I'm fed up with reading more manuals.
