Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Online Training and Web Design: Creativity vs. Usability

Today, on a Designers/Usability forum I follow, a graphic designer asked what skills she needs to develop to boost her Interaction design skills, and in answer, several interesting links were posted.

The most interesting answer was that a usability expert tries to design for lower than optimum user expriences where a graphic designer shows how a site can shine when everything goes perfectly. I like that explaination. I've been known, when creating online content for an organization, for requesting (not as my main computer, but as a testing machine) the oldest, slowest computer being used by employees at a given time. If I am creating online content they need to use, I need to understand what their experience actually is.