Don’t Break Noses

He nearly broke my nose yesterday. We were both walking at the typical New York City pace (fast), when I rounded the corner and almost ploughed right into him. If we hadn’t stopped ourselves in time, we would have had a broken nose or two.

What happened?  We were walking in opposite directions in tunnels that connected two separate subway lines.   The problem was caused by the architect and builders of those tunnels who clearly didn’t spend even one nanosecond thinking about traffic patterns. If they had, they wouldn’t have created a path that put this man and me on a  collision course.  Since we both were essentially blind going around that corner, we had to rely on the foresight and thoughtfulness of the architect and builders.  Unfortunately, their design let us down.

Now think about the paths you create in your various knowledge management systems.  Have you designed them thoughtfully, taking care to make things simple and intuitive for your users?  Or, have you set your users up for frustration and, possibly, a broken nose?

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Here are some additional resources if you’re interested in reading about usability and design:

• 9 Usability Mistakes Even the Big Boys Make
• Top 10 UX Myths
• Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
• User Experience Design (Wikipedia)

[Photo Credit:  rytc]