Parallel Universes
Karen Mahoney
Mahoney Associates,
3 Bleeding Heart Yard,
Greville Street
London EC1N 8SJ
mailbox@mohoneyassociates.com
As more products, services and communications migrate to the Web the need for good human-computer interface design has never been greater. This, then, should be a boom time for human factors HCI specialists, but the reality seems to be very different. From observation, it appears that people from an academic HCI background are seldomemployed in the design of commercial web sites. The majority of large- scale work is being done by people working in teams combining visual design and software backgrounds - many of whom are either unaware of academic HCI theory, or find it largely irrelevant.
Anyone who has encountered a web site where they have been unable to find the information that should there or who has been defeated in their attempt to purchase something on the web will recognise that usability remains a key issue with important commercial implications. The question then becomes why it is that HCI expertise is not employed more in commercial web design?
The answer may partly lie in the past. In the early days of interactive multimedia design it was not uncommon to find that many human factors specialists were unable to make the conceptual jump from the issues that were important in designing computer applications to the new issues that arose from design which was focused on communicating content. Even today, there are instances of HCI specialists proposing ideas, or approaches, which to anyone from a media or marketing background seem either naive or ill-informed.
Not surprisingly as interactive multimedia developed as a commercial industry many of its designers were drawn from media and communications backgrounds because they did understand that the important issues are about effective communication, tone of voice, mood, narrative, sequence, visual appearance and the ability to provide compelling experiences. Nor was usability entirely neglected. In more traditional media forms, such as print, film and television, there are usability issues, but these have been generally subsumed into to the repertoire of knowledge that any competent professional will bring to bear in their work.
Nevertheless the Web is a computer based medium and HCI specialists, should be able to contribute to making it a more attractive and useful medium for its users. However, for this to happen, the definition of usability will have to be broadened to encompass communications issues, such as the ability to evoke emotion, to engage, to intrigue, to entertain and to inform. If the HCI discipline is to play a role in web design it must begin to recognise the communication and marketing issues that practising design agencies deal with or resign itself to simply being an academic discipline primarily concerned with developing a critique of design practice. Now that the interactive medium is playing a central role in both customer and corporate communications, good design means not just good usability, and appropriate functionality, but also engaging content, professional production values and well thought out relationship and loyalty programmes. All of these aims are essential elements in effective strategic brand positioning.
