Interview - Jeff Johnson of GUI Bloopers

SP: Who are the big players in usability and what Websites do you visit regularly on the subject?

On my consulting Website, I list a few handy UI Design books -- the "big players" are mainly the people who wrote those books. In my field, most people consider researchers such as Doug Engelbart (SRI in the 1960s), Stuart Card (Xerox PARC), Jim Foley (Georgia Tech), and Ben Shneiderman (U of Maryland) to be the sources of much of the discipline's wisdom. Of course, there are practitioners who have become famous even outside the UI field, such as Jakob Nielsen, Alan Cooper, and Don Norman.

Sites I visit regularly? Well, there's Jakob Nielsen's site. There's Dey Alexander, a UI consultant in Australia whose site includes a daily Web Blooper. There's the User Interface Hall of Shame, operated by UI consultant Brian Hayes. Also, Keith Instone's wonderful resource of links on Web usability. There's the GUI Bloopers site, run by the publisher of my book, and finally there's Vincent Flanders' site.

SP: Software like Macromedia's Flash has a reputation for creating unusable Websites. Will this be overcome or will it create even bigger problems?

A little animation can be good in a Website, but it is easy to go over the top. Unfortunately, many sites that use Flash do just that. Also, many Flash-based sites don't provide an alternative for visitors who don't have Flash.

Many designers think people will get Flash just to see their wonderful content, but they are dead wrong. Most people don't know how to get Flash, and even if they did know, they assume (probably correctly) that attempting to install it would turn into a time-consuming nightmare, like so many software-installations do. So they don't bother, and miss out on the content. Who loses? Not the users.

SP: Drawing from your extensive expertise, what would you say to anyone who wants to work in the field of usability?

In general, the best way to break into the field is through usability testing. Conducting usability tests is a great way to see what works and what doesn't work. That will give you the experience you need to redesign software, or design it from scratch.

People also come into the field from other related fields:

• graphic design: they get tired of drawing icons and metallic buttons and want to do something about interaction.
• technical writing: they realize that software that is hard to explain is probably badly designed, so they start getting involved in the design.
• programming: they are frustrated with building stuff no one likes, and want to do better.

Give the current job market, I'd suggest not trying to become a consultant -- it's hard even for experienced consultants to find enough work. Instead, look for employment in a company.

SP: Thanks for you advice Jeff. Finally, can you tell us what's next for usability? Can you predict what things will be like two years from now, five years from now? Will the Internet make it harder on usability experts?

Predictions are easy to make but rarely right. The TV show "The Jetsons" was set in 1999. Where are our flying cars, jet-packs, and meals-in-a-tube? With that in mind, here are some predictions:

• Certain common features on the Web will stabilize (e.g., shopping carts) and will be taken over by browsers. Sites will then only have to specify that they have the feature, and the browser will handle it.
• Speech-recognition will get better and become more widely used for interacting with computers. But people won't think of them as computers, just as services.
• Computers will begin to disappear into special purpose information appliances.
• Cell phones will take on more PDA functions.
• The distinction between desktop software and browser-based Web services will disappear, as more apps become Internet-enabled. More and more apps will communicate with databases and other apps via the Internet, invisibly to users.
• Spam will increase without bound to the point where it threatens to bring down the Internet.

SitePoint thanks Jeff for talking to us. Make sure you look out for his next book!