Why Do Chairs Have Four Legs? The Cornerstones of Usable Websites
If you work or are even remotely related to usability and a website you should read this great article by Patrick Cox:
Without going into great detail about the structural design or integrity of a simple chair, they have four legs because if they didn’t we would fall over. We trust in this fact everyday and when we use a chair we trust that it will not fail us, but we take this fact for granted everyday. We never think about how a chair does its job or why it has four legs, but we continue to trust in their support.
Why not three legs or even five legs? Why shouldn’t someone re-invent the chair? Its an old outdated design, isn’t it, why not modernize it? Four legs have been proven over hundreds of years to be sturdy, usable and successful; that is why designers don’t monkey around with it. So then why do we – the web designers – monkey around with what has been proven to work on the web?
A huge, gigantic, humongously important part of web design and development is usability – the ability for your users to actually use your web site. Just as chairs need four legs that make them sturdy, usable and successful, web sites also need four legs to make them sturdy, usable and successful:
posted: 11 September 21
under: Read this