Does User Testing Take The Fun Out Of Design?

[tuxus]

It works now, must have been an issue when I copied it. Oddly enough our setups are similar as the dev box I put this on is a frankenstein P3 700mhz with Debian (although I'm using a mix of lenny and squeeze).

None the less the result is rather surprising once you play with the arrays for a bit.

[kenbrower]

All I know is that the ugliest sites on the internet - amazon, google, ebay, yahoo - are also the most popular. From that perspective it seems that usability always wins out in a corporate setting.

[xandrani]

All I know is that the ugliest sites on the internet - amazon, google, ebay, yahoo - are also the most popular. From that perspective it seems that usability always wins out in a corporate setting.

1) google can hardly be designed badly!!! The user interface for a search engine is the easiest user interface in the world to design!
2) Amazon is a really awful user interface.

Ebay is good though.

Just because people get used to a crap user interface doesn't mean it is a great user interface.

The sites you mention are popular because of who they are:

i.e. google = world's best ever search engine
ebay = the world's best auction site
amazon = one of the first and still probably the best book site in the world.

User interface isn't why they are popular!

If a teleportation device was invented with a crap user interface, and it was the only one available on the market then it would be popular!

[suganindia]

User testing to me is , if i make a wap site i would wish the users to be highly comfortable to browse through mobile...Instead if i force the site with tons of gif images and heavy logo i will loose traffic for the cause...

[kenbrower]

If a teleportation device was invented with a crap user interface, and it was the only one available on the market then it would be popular!

However, if bad ui was holding these sites back, one would assume that the next entrant to the market would slowly, but eventually grab market share once they improved on that UI. that simply hasn't happened in ecommerce, or search engines. any competitor who tried to unveil a more advanced ui has gone by the wayside. people enjoy the plain and simple (ie, ugly) ui's that these companies provide.

[Stomme poes]

Why other companies don't test like Google

: )

[AJKock]

For people that prioritize cheap as their main value in life, a good UI has no value to them (from the perspective of a designer who has a tight design budget).

Cheap people put no value in anything that they buy, as long as it is cheap. Therefore good UI or bad ui has no value, as long as their cost is cheap.

Amazon never used to look like it does now. In the beginning it had a "comparatively good" UI. The reason why people are still with them after all these changes is that people got used to the changes they slowly applied over the years.