Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
On 9/5/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
Design, in the "ooh! it looks nice" sense, is utterly irrelevant to usability.
This is the traditional geek-response, and for geeks this is generally true, but for regular folks it's just silly. People like using a good looking system! Even if a system is really usable, if it is also really well-designed it is much more pleasant to use, and you can do it for a longer time. These kinds of responses ("Design is so gay! I like CLIs!") are really unhelpful and completely untrue.
This seems to be a backwards argument. As I see it "regular folks" like things to be stable and predictable while geeks are the ones who are always pushing for "improvements". It's not the regular folks who are going to be talking about "CLIs"; most would not know what you are talking about with that abbreviation. I've never understood why some sites put so much effort into having a wide choice of skins.
But, fine! If the WMF wants headlines of WIKIPEDIA SPENDS $500,000 ON NEW DESIGN, it can have them.
Honestly, it baffles me how people can think that the public face of wikipedia is unimportant. We spend War and Peace sized novels discussing the tiniest bit of minutiae in policy, but when it comes to things normal people (non-wikipedians) *actually* care about, we're flippant saying "Who cares?"
This stuff is important to wikipedia, whether or not it's important to you! Sticking our heads in the sand does not help.
You have a vivid imagination if you believe that "normal people" really care about these superficial trappings of fashion. People come to wikipedia because they are looking for information about a subject that may concern them at the moment. They don't come because we have a prettier skin. Sticking one's head in the clouds is no improvement in comparison to those whom you say stick their heads in the sand.
Ec