It amazes me that some of the most popular, most successful Web sites
and applications out there are hard to use, poorly designed and
generally over complicated.
D. Keith Robinson geht hart mit einigen der größten Webanwendungen ins Gericht. Expedia, MySpace oder Overstock.com, aber auch so gut wie alle Fotodienste, die nicht gerade flickr heißen, sind für ihn Beispiele für Websites mit massiven Problemen, die auf geheimnisvolle Weise trotzdem funktionieren. Werden sie von sich aus den Weg in Richtung Web 2.0 antreten? Vielleicht, aber warum sollten sie?
Was Robinson vorschlägt, hat sehr viel mit der Logik nutzerzentrierter Anwendungsentwicklung zu tun:
I think those of us who write about, speak on and advocate for a
more usable, standard, collaborative and generally better Web might
need to bring some old topics back up. Back to basics, if you will.We need to not only solve people’s problems and make more usable
sites and software, we need to make sure people know about it. I know
that it goes against the new wave of entrepreneurial “rules” but to
make a significant change we’ll need marketing and PR and most
importantly to extend beyond the circles we run in. It goes back to
reaching a wider audience, something Web standards and best practice
folks have been dealing with for a long time.It’s hard to see the forest for the trees and I know I spend enough
time with people who think just like me and who know how much better
the Web can be than the Overstock.coms of the Web. We need to spread
the word to the non-geeks. Talk about Flickr and other “Web 2.0”
successes. Find out what people’s core problems are and solve them as
well. Focus less on design and technology as it relates to our “design and development” problems and more as it relates to the problems of our customers and clients.You think most people care if you use Ajax? Only if it makes their
tasks easier. What Ajax means to me is more ways to solve people’s
problems. Nothing more. But first we’ve got to understand the problems,
right? We have to know what people want.