If you haven’t really noticed, I like Jakob Nielsen’s Top-10 anything-he-wants-to-talk-about articles. They all hit some key facts that are important to know in order to follow standards, make a great web site, and in the case of this Alertbox article, understand probability and reality. I also thought it was funny and entertaining to read.

In this article, Nielsen explains where Hollywood goes wrong with usability interfaces. Just a side note; Hollywood gets everything wrong! But they do know how to entertain.

So in order to lighten things up a bit here are Jakob Nielsen’s Top-10 Bloopers from movies that associate with usability:

  1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI: There is no way possible, and it Nielsen’s single most unrealistic aspect of how computers really are and how even experienced users really are; they even have problems figuring how certain designs and applications work.
  2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs: People from the future couldn’t figure out our systems any better than people from the past. You can apply this to the fact that in technology you have to educate yourself constantly in order to adapt to your current surroundings.
  3. The 3D UI: 3D is for demos, 2D is for work. Basically, for any user 2D is the practical way to get things done; although for movies and presentations, 3D is a visualizing delight.
  4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates: Oh how we wish that all technology can flow in and out of each other and that connection can go at the blink of an eye. We see the reality here at our University that the physics of integration is one of the many struggles we have with connecting to servers and being completely compatible without any bugs. We learn valuable lessons about technology and how dependent we are on them at times.
  5. Access Denied / Access Granted: I just laughed at this one. Going back to previous usability tips of getting the users to where they want to go. Impeding them further with the extra pop of "Your password really did work, Congratulations!" will only frustrate the user. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
  6. Big Fonts: Movies go too far and sometimes in real life we suffer because of too less. I think we are given expectations through the influence of media that we miss the mark. When we try it on our own we sometimes overdo it.
  7. Star Trek's Talking Computer: Here the main thing is the fantasy of building an audience interface instead of a user interface. On a more serious note, this way of think can take the experience and service away from the consumer and give them no agency other that the agency of leaving you site altogether.
  8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls): This point explains why devices are the way they are and why they probably will never change. Nielsen said,
    "In practice, there's a reason we use steering wheels to drive cars instead of joysticks, touchpads, or push-buttons. The steering wheel is an excellent input device for fast and accurate specification of directionality."
  9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News: Nothing ever goes wrong with email. You never get junk mail or ever fill your inbox to maximum so full capacity like here at BYU-I and it is very, VERY unrealistic.
  10. "This is Unix, It's Easy": It takes considerable amount of learning time figure out how to operate applications. Unix especially has a very inconsistent interface to adapt to. Just because it is familiar doesn’t mean it will be a snap. I have always been a little computer savvy but I never even knew what Unix was until this year.

Now as Nielsen said during the end of the article, none of this stuff really matters in the end because Hollywood is here to entertain us and most intelligent people know that it is make believe but the point of this whole lesson is not just about how far fetch usability is made to be in the media but also the influence that media has on us and how we now expect usability to be. After a while we start believing some of the farfetched ideas that have been played upon so long that we waste or time and focus. Also, we know expect anyone, even ourselves, to find a computer and know all the 0s and 1s without even hesitating and we judge others on their inability to make a computer function.

"We need people to start demanding easier design and blaming the technology when it's too hard to use. Movies make this change in attitudes more difficult."

I think many a valuable lesson can be learned from this fun article and I would start by making my web site geared toward usability instead of entertaining an audience. Also by have real expectations of how technology actually works will help resolve unneeded issues and give me realistic results.