Petra, I think you are spot on. Some people naturally emphasize with the needs of others. I think this is a key quality and explains how some people can design quality systems without doing as much UCD research, etc.
Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identifies 7 types of intelligence - one of them describes "Interpersonal" skills. >From http://professorlamp.com/ed/TAG/7_Intelligences.html "Interpersonal" "Children who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence." Donna Fritzsche Information Architect, Ontologist > I guess it's like we all have emotions and yet some of us (well, not > me) are much better at empathising with other people's emotions. As > we all do, I "use" a lot and I find so much of bad user design seems > to be just mind-boggling thoughtlessness. To give a couple of examples: > > Where I work, a scrollable text box that was known to often contain > a lot of text and was constantly scrolled by the users was reduced > to three lines "because of space constraints" - in fact it would've > been very easy to rearrange things on the interface to maintain the > original size of the text box. That text box deeply offended me and > I often thought about it. I just scratched my head and thought "How > could you possibly do that? It's a total pain." People say that > users aren't considered - sometimes I wonder if some people just > like to torture them. > > I have just spent two weeks at the Sydney Film Festival. On the > website they said that in response to feedback they had made it > possible this year for attenders to redeem tickets for voucher > packages online. In past years, you could buy single tickets online > but for voucher packages you had to submit each voucher at the venue > in exchange for a ticket. Well, d'uh. They surely didn't need > feedback to know that a significant customer body will, of course, > want to be able to redeem vouchers online rather than wait in long > queues and panic about missing the beginning of their film. I bought > a 50 voucher package and was delighted with this news - until I went > to redeem my first voucher. You seriously would not believe how many > buttons I had to press to get a single ticket (at least 15) and > repeat exactly the same process for the following 49. I even had to > put in my name, address and phone number for every single ticket. > They said something on the website about the process not being as > "seamless" as they'd hoped. It was RSI-inducing but I plowed on > because once I'd started on the online path it was actually a much > slower process to redeem vouchers at the venue. I did thoroughly > enjoy the festival but I would've enjoyed that little bit more > without all the button pressing. > > Regards, > Petra Liverani > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
