Comments on: There Are No Standards http://www.allaboutbalance.com/there-are-no-standards/ Usability Advice and Critiques by Rob Slifka Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:14:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Svend Tofte http://www.allaboutbalance.com/there-are-no-standards/#comment-167 Svend Tofte Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:31:27 +0000 http://www.allaboutbalance.com/index.php/there-are-no-standards/#comment-167 I think alot of these issues stems from the training programmers go through. We (*cough*) tend to focus on the main case. We make sure outlier cases do not crash the applications, but should such cases appear, we don't really bother to "nice" it up. Probably the most trivial example if some search result listing, since the "results" is a fixed string. "1 results" (note the plural) "1 result(s)" (looks even worse to me) "2 result" (again pretty bad) Instead of spending 10 minutes covering the different cases, a programmer is just going to think "most searches are not going to be 1 result searches, so using the string 'results' will work well" Same reasoning and sloppy Q&A allows blemishes such as the ones you list to slip through. It's easy to imagine the sort dropdown as being a constant on pages. It "looks" handy, but it can only sort on properties ALL products share (such as "brand", etc), and thus becomes useless when you wish to sort on something even a tiny bit more specific, because binding the sort dialog to these specific sub-category properties is obviously going to be more complex. Usually a good combination of programmer inattention, and budget ensures that usability people will never run out of things to write about :) I think alot of these issues stems from the training programmers go through. We (*cough*) tend to focus on the main case. We make sure outlier cases do not crash the applications, but should such cases appear, we don’t really bother to “nice” it up.

Probably the most trivial example if some search result listing, since the “results” is a fixed string.

“1 results” (note the plural)
“1 result(s)” (looks even worse to me)
“2 result” (again pretty bad)

Instead of spending 10 minutes covering the different cases, a programmer is just going to think “most searches are not going to be 1 result searches, so using the string ‘results’ will work well”

Same reasoning and sloppy Q&A allows blemishes such as the ones you list to slip through. It’s easy to imagine the sort dropdown as being a constant on pages. It “looks” handy, but it can only sort on properties ALL products share (such as “brand”, etc), and thus becomes useless when you wish to sort on something even a tiny bit more specific, because binding the sort dialog to these specific sub-category properties is obviously going to be more complex.

Usually a good combination of programmer inattention, and budget ensures that usability people will never run out of things to write about :)

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