Urban Explorerer

BTW, if you’re an interface/interaction designer and you haven’t watched a preschooler using a touchscreen device, you really should. It’s fascinating how quickly they learn some things and just can’t get the hang of other things. It’s a really eye-opening experience.

— Jason Kottke

If you’re an interface/interaction designer and you haven’t watched [anyone] using [your designs], you really aren’t an interaction designer.

While the aside from Jason was specifically about the benefits of learning from a toddler, so often I’ve seen “interaction design projects” progress without any actual user input. While a good designer will have ideas on how a user will use their design, they will never truly know until they test.

John C. Abell, referring to the debate over Flash on the iPhone/iPad, notes:

[Flash is] the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

And in one phrase, he has entirely summed up my feelings regarding Flash, both as a technology and as a tool for design.

While good design can be (and occasionally is) done using Flash, all too often something is made all whiz-bang-whirry, fly around the screen and do crazy shit-like just because it can. And this doesn’t make the interface more usable, and most definitely doesn’t make it better designed.

Flash just helps to ensure the design will be noticed¹. And good design shouldn’t be noticed, nor should it get in the way of the user. As Jared Spool remarks:

Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it.

And boy do I notice a lot of Flash out there.

1. I’m sure this point has been made before, but isn’t the name Flash itself so apropos? Technically it’s a contraction of FutureSplash, the company that originally created the technology. But anymore, all I see is the derisive meaning of the word… ↩