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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

Oh, you’re counting clicks. That tells me all I need to know about the author’s UX knowledge.

Some things do need friction. Just like with baby clothes. Something too easy to remove will leave you with a perpetually naked baby.

And that’s what the tweet thread is about, she doesn’t like Blackboard’s UX. And that’s fair, it might not suit her particular needs. However, a bespoke solution is going to cost far more than any number of Blackboard licenses. And Blackboard is going to gun for “mostly ok” for “most teachers”.

It’s essentially the Word paradox. Everyone only uses 10% of its features, but everyone uses a different 10%. You can’t optimize for that.

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Have you used Blackboard? Did you feel it was so full of features that you only used 10% but the parts you used were solid? I remember disliking it thoroughly.

I think the other posters have correctly identified the problem as the principal-agent dilemma.

Blackboard could be awful, but not for the reason she states.

That’s the issue here. Her giving UX advice would be like software developers making education software without input from educators.

Minimizing the number of clicks -- work required to accomplish a task -- is actually a valid focus of UX, called information architecture. It even has a pithy rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-click_rule

I’m not trying to take a stance in this disagreement but your own links says,

> The three click rule has been challenged by usability test results, which have shown that the number of clicks needed to access the desired information affects neither user satisfaction, nor success rate.

That's a bad summary and defines common sense, as stated. The situation where more clicks won't lead to dissatisfaction is when results are progressively disclosed. If you can design your UI to achieve the same thing with less work and without overwhelming the user you should.

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/progres...

The guy is a CS prof at Princeton. He worked with Mozilla on Do Not Track in HTTP headers. It's not some random teacher. I think he has a little idea of what UX should at least look like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Narayanan

He might know it is important, but if you look at his CV, it's mostly non-user facing issues.

And that's not to diminish what he's done. I don't expect everyone to be an expert in all fields. I wouldn't get someone who only wrote microcontrollers to redesign my frontend. And I wouldn't get a CS professor to write my microcontroller software.

I wouldn't go to GP for cancer and I wouldn't go to a Oncologist for physical therapy.

Even the blind complain about how terrible the UX of Blackboard is. Their opinion certainly holds more weight than whatever pathetic appeal to authority you're trying to make.

Pointing to some ink on paper isn't some magic spell that compels others to take you seriously. It only convinces people that already appeal to authority.

Accessibility is a whole other can of worms. I suspect blind people have issues with a lot of software.

And I'm not the one appealing to authority. That's the people saying the author is a CS professor so he's obviously right without actually engaging in the claims.

I brought that up because you automatically assumed it was just some random teacher that knows nothing about UX. Maybe if you took a second to realise it wasn't some random teacher, I wouldn't have mentioned it.

Engaging in claims? You immediately dismissed the opinion when you read about clicks. So don't try and say people aren't engaging the claims. You don't even use the software so how can you say he's wrong?

If the user is unhappy, then maybe take a look at the reasons. But you just dismiss someone else's opinion because it doesn't match yours without even seeing what he's talking about. And that's why everyone is bringing up the question of if _you_ used it. Because what the end user experiences is what UX focuses on. If you don't know how the workflow of blackboard, you can't say that 15 clicks isn't a nothing burger and someone who uses the software has an irrelevant opinion.

Describing his work as "its mostly non-user facing" isn't as valid as an argument as you think it is. CS professionals, professors included, tend to follow (not work in) multiple disciplines.

But by using your reasoning, does that mean any past critical comments you made on topics outside of your UX profession is moot? No, I think you mayknow stuff outside of UX. So, I don't understand your reasoning to immediately dismiss OP.

But back to UX, so user interaction and response has no meaning in UX? Isn't the X in UX for experience? How do you judge how useful UX is without feedback?

My understanding of UX as a web developer, is that if the user is unhappy about how long it takes to access something, then the issue should at least be looked at. Maybe it can't be improved, maybe it can. It's not something to dismiss.

Anyhow, have you ever used blackboard? It seems from other comments that you haven't. If not, then maybe your comments are the unnecessary ones? Because how can one say the UX is okay without ever using it? I have used blackboard and canvas for years. Their UX sucks.

I do agree that Blackboard is likely horrible. That's not in debate here. And their UX likely does suck. But knowing something sucks is not the same as knowing why that thing sucks.

And "number of clicks to perform action" is not a useful barometer on the usability of a product.

And I'm not dismissing his opinion because he's not a UX expert. And I'm not dismissing his opinion of the quality of Blackboard. I'm dismissing his opinion on why Blackboard is bad because he's focusing on the wrong thing.

Much like you and the other people trying to argue with me. They're trying to paint me as defending Blackboard. I'm not.

And I'm additionally saying that it's understandable that he doesn't know why it's bad because it's not his focus. There's no fault in that.

Whether or not I've used Blackboard is moot because I'm not discussing the UX of Blackboard, I'm discussing the use of the metric "number of clicks". It's a bad metric. Regardless of Blackboard's usability.

No, number of clicks isnt a _bad_ metric, but it isn't the most important. But when it comes to _UX_, user experience is important. If there are a lot of people complaining that it takes too many clicks, then it's quite possible that the workflow can be reduced somehow. And it's not just this one guy that has issues with Blackboard. There's been numerous end users complaining about usability for a long time. Regardless if how you feel about the number of clicks, it still is something to examine. Do some searches about it. Many, many websites will say clicks aren't the most important thing, but it is something to think about. Immediately dismissing someone because you don't feel it's important (even though other UX designers do) is a fault of yours, not the end user.

As a student who used blackboard in college it was terrible

I used Blackboard for a decade. Trust me, it's awful.

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