John writes about a usability discussion that is going on at the CHI-WEB mailinglist. Involving, amongst others – Donald A. Norman of Nielsen Norman Group and Chris MacGregor of Flazoom.com.
Check out the postings so far
Donald A. Norman (from Nielsen Norman Group):
That is precisely backwards. The U-Turn, if there was one, was at Macromedia. The Nielsen Norman group has not changed its stance about what makes a good design. We should be applauding companies that listen to criticism and work to remedy the problems.
Chris MacGregor (from Flazoom.com):
I believe that U-turn is certainly an appropriate term to describe Jakob
Nielsen’s change of heart about Flash. In 2000 Nielsen commented that Flash was
99% bad, and suggested that in most cases the web would be better off without
Flash. Now that Macromeida has hired your firm, Nielsen’s tune has changed. The
change seems so dramatic that Nielsen seems to disregard his stance about what
makes good web design.
And while we are on the subject of usability, the web-archive of the CHI-WEB might even have been usable if it was possible to link directly to threads. If you want to keep updated on this discussion, you will have to go here and look for “The Flash turn-around”. In fact, you might even have to go there and choose week 3 (when it appears) to continue to follow the discussion – if it extends into next week.
[Via JD on MX via John Rhodes]