Here's an interesting video about usability. Well, "Usability 2.0" (what ever happened to 1.1?). It's a panel discussion with participants from Netflix, Google, and Yahoo.

There were many good points made, as you might expect, but there was one comment in response to an audience question that opened my eyes a bit. One of the panelists said, and I paraphrase, if you have to evangelize passion, you have a different problem. That is, if your product doesn't stir enough interest that you need to convince your users to be passionate about it, there's something wrong with your product.

From a web site perspective, if you've successfully marketed your site, you'll be getting new unique visitors that will arrive on your doorstep with a certain amount of passion. Be it curiosity or honest to god faith that what you have is worth their time and effort to invest in, you're basically battling the atrophy of the fantasy. People are more likely to think about the end result of dealing with your product than the required interaction time/effort to realize that dream. So they come in at A wanting C, and your job is to tell them they have to go through B to get it. Hmm. Passion dwindles. How fast it dwindles is up to you.

That's where the difference between a walkup UI and an awkward UI stands out. The better your UI is at managing your users psychologically along their path to C, the more likely they are to stay there for the ride, and if your lucky, remember how easy it was to get there. And if you're really lucky, tell their friends.

Same goal, different perspective

There are a lot of people out there that don't understand the value of design and usability, and a lot of them are at the top of the corporate food chain. Those of us that actually care about good design and intuitive user experience aren't out there to create an ok design. So here's another way to look at it:

A new user comes in with passion level at, say, 100. With each design decision or compromise, think what the cost will be? By the time they reach C, how much is left? When they return to the site to do it again (should you be so lucky), they won't likely start at 100. Will they come in at 50, 70, 90, or 10?

When I was a kid, I remember someone saying 50% is an F. Fortunately, they were talking about work ethic, not about my grades :) Point being, ok is a failure when you know you can create excellent.