On your first point – yes definitely agree on the revenue piece (I allude to it in the post as well). And as a UX guy I of course always want to practice user-centered design. But I also think we as UX designers have a responsibility to think *with* the business on the best way to meet revenue goals without hurting usability. I’m worried that we sometimes stop at “no, you can’t do that, it’s bad for the user,” without going the extra mile to help figure out the best way to meet those business goals.

And I totally agree on your second point. Since good design is usually so *simple* (the ubiquitous iPod example fits here, as usual…), it is sometimes mistaken for *simplistic*. A rigorous approach is so important.

Jay – thanks for the retweet!

Nice post, and very interesting. The limited real estate on mobile applications appears to make good design practices even more imperative; sloppy usability on a mobile ap is immediately apparent.

I like your reasons for poor site usability (i.e., lack of unified design team and/or the loudest voice gets their design implemented) but I wanted to add the two reasons that I find are often the root cause of poor usability. They are:

1) The company is revenue focused rather than customer focused. Companies that produce very usable products are usually laser beam focused on the customer, and thus the customer experience. These companies are typically the exception, not the rule.

2) The product and dev teams simply don’t realize that good usability is the result or a rigorous, disciplined, and highly iterative approach to testing and design. Good designs don’t happen by accident, but are instead the results of a concerted and focused process. To often, the user experience part of the equation is an afterthought compared to code architecture and marketing.

Keep up the interesting posts!

grant-