Ah, the nostalgia, prompted by the blogger icon for "create link" - the early days of the web when, by some accident of overliteral icon design, the chain became visually identified with the term 'link'.
And it still is, in many graphic design packages where it's - IMHO - vastly more appropriate. Text in linked textboxes *is* linked - reflow is an actual connection between the boxes. However despite the conceptual notion that two web pages are "linked" by a hyperlink, clicking the link does not connect the pages together - it brings the user to the next page. There is no link established, except in the user's history.
Pedantic? Naturally. UI is a science of pedantic details. Irrelevant? I'm not so sure. Boring? Well, you're the one reading a UI/UX blog.
The point I'm trying to make here with regard to Usability is something that gets lost in endless meetings about whether icons or buttons "work". In a world where we've been talking about "traditional" web pages for about 10 years now, conventions are established and broken quicker than fax machines came and went. 10 years ago, the web worked in very subtly conventional ways, and as many of these came from accident as from design.
The point I'm trying to make here with regard to Usability is something that gets lost in endless meetings about whether icons or buttons "work". In a world where we've been talking about "traditional" web pages for about 10 years now, conventions are established and broken quicker than fax machines came and went. 10 years ago, the web worked in very subtly conventional ways, and as many of these came from accident as from design.
I recall one of my first ever web jobs - a fringe festival theatre website - listening to my collaborator speak with the client after we launched. It seemed that the client was deeply disappointed that we'd put no contact information anywhere on the website, and nowhere to get tickets.
This - for obvious reasons - both puzzled and panicked me. Hell, nobody was 100% sure what they were doing in web design in 1996: could it be a browser issue? Maybe PCs worked differently... but then came my collaborators side of the conversation:
"I think we may have a wee bit of a misunderstanding here. Can you see the way a lot of the text is underlined and coloured blue? Yes? Okay. Well do you see the way your mouse cursor turns into a little hand when it's near that text"
I could actually hear the "oh WOW" from 5 feet away from the phone. My coworker then commenced to explain how these "links" worked, and how everyone using a computer would be used to using them. Funnily enough, the site was pretty well designed and resolution independent (not such a tricky task when everyone's surfing a tiny range from 640x480 up to 1024x768) so we never even got to the "I can't see the edges / I can see big huge edges" conversation.
So yes, it's entirely possible that the literal representation of "links" was very necessary. Every now and again, I think of how steep the global learning curve has been, and how much of my notions of "best practise" are in fact deeply postmodern, and based on "everyone knows that" ideas which didn't even exist 20 years ago.
It seemed like such a short time before users needed to be given extra information, such as "this link opens a new window". Moore's law created an environment so quickly where people could keep a handful of browser windows open simultaneously - but even quicker than processor speed, users got impatient.
I can wax lyrical about this bizarre dance that makes up UI/UX: assumptions building upon assumptions, and visual language recreating itself. I can remember the earliest signs of it - like receiving icon edits around 1998 which said that American kids would no longer recognise a classic victorian "key" shape, that a yale key was to be substituted. The idea that, as a UI designer, you're playing with this colossal collective unconscious, and trying to spot the paths of least resistance through their learning patterns and how they interact with a computer screen.
Read your potted internet histories, and you'll see many applications and services which failed in this at exactly the same time as other apps and services succeeded - and no doubt, you will find that successful UI was a significant part of it: but when it comes to UX - the entire picture - you'll find as many accidents as you will planned successes.
After all, what you should hire a UI/UX person to help you with: well, it didn't exist 25 years ago. It was lying around as various parts of retail design and industrial / product design. The convergence of skillsets is - IMHO - incredibly interesting.
This - for obvious reasons - both puzzled and panicked me. Hell, nobody was 100% sure what they were doing in web design in 1996: could it be a browser issue? Maybe PCs worked differently... but then came my collaborators side of the conversation:
"I think we may have a wee bit of a misunderstanding here. Can you see the way a lot of the text is underlined and coloured blue? Yes? Okay. Well do you see the way your mouse cursor turns into a little hand when it's near that text"
I could actually hear the "oh WOW" from 5 feet away from the phone. My coworker then commenced to explain how these "links" worked, and how everyone using a computer would be used to using them. Funnily enough, the site was pretty well designed and resolution independent (not such a tricky task when everyone's surfing a tiny range from 640x480 up to 1024x768) so we never even got to the "I can't see the edges / I can see big huge edges" conversation.
So yes, it's entirely possible that the literal representation of "links" was very necessary. Every now and again, I think of how steep the global learning curve has been, and how much of my notions of "best practise" are in fact deeply postmodern, and based on "everyone knows that" ideas which didn't even exist 20 years ago.
It seemed like such a short time before users needed to be given extra information, such as "this link opens a new window". Moore's law created an environment so quickly where people could keep a handful of browser windows open simultaneously - but even quicker than processor speed, users got impatient.
I can wax lyrical about this bizarre dance that makes up UI/UX: assumptions building upon assumptions, and visual language recreating itself. I can remember the earliest signs of it - like receiving icon edits around 1998 which said that American kids would no longer recognise a classic victorian "key" shape, that a yale key was to be substituted. The idea that, as a UI designer, you're playing with this colossal collective unconscious, and trying to spot the paths of least resistance through their learning patterns and how they interact with a computer screen.
Read your potted internet histories, and you'll see many applications and services which failed in this at exactly the same time as other apps and services succeeded - and no doubt, you will find that successful UI was a significant part of it: but when it comes to UX - the entire picture - you'll find as many accidents as you will planned successes.
After all, what you should hire a UI/UX person to help you with: well, it didn't exist 25 years ago. It was lying around as various parts of retail design and industrial / product design. The convergence of skillsets is - IMHO - incredibly interesting.
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