There’s been an interesting thread going on at the IxDA discussion boards that gets down to a critical issue in the interaction design field: is investing in design really worth the investment by product manufactures?

The post, entitled “Why Do Crappy Interfaces Sell?“, raises some important issues. Do end users really care about great design? Is amazing user experience really worth the investment required by product developers and manufacturers?

I think the answer is a resounding “no”. Outside of our small community of designers there are very few people who would consider paying a premium for an above-average user interface.

Take for example probably the most purchased consumer product: the mobile phone. The vast majority of phones have hideous UIs—many are close to unusable. Still, the vast majority of users barely take the user interface into consideration when buying a phone. I wonder if the normal buyer would pay a premium for a better UI…

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Experience Design, Usability, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.