Silicon Valley Web Guild Interview

by June 1, 2007

The Silicon Valley Web Guild recently asked me to follow up some of my comments from their Usability 2.0 event in an inline interview for their site. A few snippets:

"... fixating on feature-level discoverability is a recipe for complexity. In many cases, requiring people to exert some effort to access a feature they need is preferable to exposing it to lots of people who don’t need it. The key is to not let individual features overwhelm the larger system. Companies that divide the management of their products by features run the risk of losing sight of the big picture that holds all their features together. "

"...most Web companies spend the minimum amount of effort required for language localization and almost no effort on local contextualization when launching global products."

"I’ve always been of the mind that quantitative data may be a more meaningful metric for visual design than qualitative analysis. Judging the effectiveness of visual designs based on what participants accomplish (and how they accomplish it) could potentially allow us to evaluate the subconscious processing of visual information that shapes user behavior."

You can check out the full interview on the Silicon Valley Web Guild site. Many thanks to Reshma for the great questions and chance to respond.