Read the original post at Unlocking the door to usability.
At the Lace Market Hotel, Nottingham.
This is the sign on the inside of my hotel room door. I love the fact that a traditional door — you know, of the lock-and-key rather than magnetic card variety — now requires documentation.
It’s a great reminder that usability is entirely contextual. It’s not just about what a user has previously experienced, but what he or she might anticipate. And what people anticipate can change very quickly.
25 years ago — or was it 2.5 years ago? — hotel rooms always locked with a key. Fast forward, and this may be the first time a traveller has every received one of those delightful hotel keys with a fat leather tag. Or the traveller might be someone like me: old enough to remember keys, and old enough to have forgotten them.
What assumptions do you make about how visitors will know to unlock the front door of your site? And what assumptions do you make about how they’ll lock the door behind their data, their content or their identities?
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