[Air-l] Re: severe misreading of usability discourse

[craig stroupe]

Dear Danny:  Thank you for the prompt and thoughtful response to the 
CFP.  Since you replied to the AIR list, I hope you won't mind if I respond 
in the same forum.

My intent is not to denounce usability, as I hope other portions of my CFP 
make clear, but to advance the very dialogue between the traditions of 
humanities-based writing/design and the science of usability which your own 
experiences seems to embody.  I hope you'll consider contributing an 
abstract to the collection.  In compiling it, I certainly don't intend to 
favor of one side or the other since the point is ultimately to move forward.

If I didn't find usability so useful , I wouldn't feel compelled to try to 
reconcile it--or at least to try dialogically to engage it with--the 
creative/expressive assumptions of my own experiences in the humanities 
(rhetoric/comp, creative writing, computer-assisted composition, literary 
studies, publishing, online education, etc.).  I'm more interested in the 
energy of the dialogue than in any final resting place "beyond."

You're right that I _am_ very familiar with Jacob Nielsen, whose work I 
assign in my classes.  Each semester, my students and I learn much from his 
work while having a lively debate with him.  I can tell you he holds his 
own.  I acknowledge that parts of my CFP may have borrowed from the style 
of his broad brush, which seems fair and even necessary.

Best wishes, - Craig

At 02:35 PM 8/21/02 +1200, you wrote:
>In my view, this CFP is a severe misreading of usability discourse. I wonder
>whether the author of this CFP has read anything other than Nielsen (whose
>autocratic approach is well known) in the field of usability? A brief look
>at scholarly work in the HCI field, or the broader area of web design
>(Shredoff, Veen) would show the lie of the "common wisdom" straw man of
>usability hegemony this CFP constructs.
>
>Most contemporary usability discourse *relies* on a profound recognition of
>content/ form preferences of different audiences, backed by specific
>ethnographic fieldwork. It *encourages* diverse ways of engaging with
>material - from full-screen shockwave presentations to methods that provide
>a satisfying experience for a sight-impaired person using a reader over a
>slow modem. Usability discourse in the ethnographic mode is often ignored by
>companies and individuals *precisely* because it requests a facility in the
>design for different modes of expression - which most people put in the too
>hard basket. Whole languages like XML/XSLT are constructed to encourage
>diversity in presentation.
>
>"Beyond Usability" is the same kind of title as "Beyond politics" - it fails
>to do the basic background reading on the various uses of usability in Human
>Computer Interaction, instead writing off the discipline as it promotes its
>own *particular* approach to HCI as some kind of intellectually superior
>framework.
>
>Sorry to sound so cross, but I work primarily in the humanities, and come
>from a design background. I put a lot of work into trying to emphasise the
>relevance of humanities disciplines to design students. The
>self-congratulatory tendency of humanities theoreticians to speak with
>authority on stuff they know nothing about is depressingly obvious in this
>CFP, and the reiteration of the art/science divide ignores all the great
>work people are doing in this area.
>
>Danny
>
>craig stroupe wrote on 21/8/02 7:31 AM:
>
> > More than a common-sense focus on writing or designing for an intended 
> user,
> > usability is founded on a narrowly instrumentalist view of language and
> > design.  That is, the form of a site, from a usability perspective, is 
> merely
> > a neutral container for the content, which always carries the same meaning
> > regardless of the presentation, expression or performance.  In usability
> > terms, writing or design that calls attention to itself is bad 
> writing/design
> > because it fails to convey the message transparently.
>
> > CONTEXT:
> >
> > Since usability guru Jacob Nielsen declared the "end of web design" in 
> a July
> > 2000 column--see <http://www. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html>
> > useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html 
> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html>
>common wisdom has held that the age of experimentation and exploration in Web
>design is over, and that the practices of digital communication now require a
>very high degree of standardization, conventionalization, and predictability
> > >-
>
>
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