RE: FLASH: FLASH 99% BAD

[Jaguarwoman]

It's hard to take a guy seriously who is criticizing something on a

design/functionality/usability basis . . . who has a website with text that

spreads 17 inches across my screen.


As for the information purist point of view . . . beauty IS information.

The "story of a business", expressed in both verbal and visual rhetoric, IS

information.  For all the personal websites, small businesses, large

businesses, AND lots of information-rich sites (like museums and galleries

and graphics tutorials sites and on and on) how they look IS a big part of

the information that keeps visitors coming and coming back.


Humans are, like all primates and actually all other animals I can think of,

attracted to novel visual stimuli.  The larger proportion of humans DO

respond with interest to changes in color, contrast, movement, texture.  We

are "color hungry" and avid of narrative entertainment.  Businesses who

leave these elements out of their websites risk having their website simply

lost among the hundreds and thousands of websites that all look exactly

alike.  For a business, a website is a form of advertising and nobody wants

their advertising to be indistinguishable from their competitiors.


And there is the assumption that the bandwidth problem will not be solved.

It will, because trying to take away people's eye candy makes them mad.

It's just a consumer thing:  people want to see interesting visual display

WITH their OTHER information.  The differentials in bandwidth speed are an

artifact of a rapidly growing industry with constant new upgrades which push

the envelope for design (and vice versa).


Nope, the Internet is definitely a place where good verbal and visual

rhetoric pays off.  Nielson may be correct about many of his observations on

usability.  But he is still no visionary, and he's resisting some really

profound human preferences that won't go away.  As long as humans have eyes,

there is a long future ahead for visual display.


He's just totally betting on the wrong horse.  And even with the growth

pains and the design flaws and the technological hurdles . . . those who bet

on humans wanting their information imbedded in an engaging or elegant or

arousing visual display . . . will prosper.


Dana




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