VERY nice post on usability over on icefox’s blog. It’s always good to keep these things at the forefront of our collective geeky brains, since as is stated yonder, “users will suffer until good design comes along.” This is precisely the point that so many people miss–good design is not an option or an afterthought. It is a must and it must come early in the process.

Most of the time, this (intelligent, well-thought-out design) is overlooked until it’s painfully obvious that it’s broken–and this is also (not conincidentally) the most inopportune time to be thinking about it, since in most cases what is required to fix the problem is deeper than cosmetic changes, going down into deep architectural problems and costly redesign issues.

A close cousin to this problem is that which presumes that everybody that you need to care about runs Windows, Internet Explorer, a < 2-year-old computer, is ignorant about standards, and likes paying money through the nose to use his/her equipment. Blah. I just got myself into a foul mood again. /me looks around at the Asylum again and feels just a little more hope having been eroded away. =:/