If usability engineers designed a nightclub

Posted August 24th, 2009 by David Hamill

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

Joel Spolsky

I agree, usability is not everything. But as Joel knows, if usability engineers designed a nightclub they wouldn’t just take their understanding of website usability and apply it to nightclubs.

Instead they would do field research to find out the various things that people do on an evening out. They would observe people in nightclubs and elsewhere to find their goals, behaviour and attitudes. They would try to understand what motivates people to choose night spots and what keeps them coming back.

When they had finished this research, they’d be able to design a nightclub that was a darn sight better than some cheesy chain of theme bars.

Still, it’s a funny quote nonetheless.

Tags: rants