[TheSockStealer]

Yea.... No.

If you are presented with 6 choices and you cannot reasonably tell the difference between them without spending 15-30 minutes researching all of the options, you have a bad user experience.

Design is important. People like using things that look good.

UX is vital. If a user can't figure out how to navigate through an app in a reasonable amount of time without a great deal of existing knowledge (which they may not even know where to find), your app sucks. People, even technical ones, will abandon it, even if it is more reliable and has more features than the next guy. Making things that are intuitive is really difficult. That is why people get advanced degrees in it and start consultancies that specialize in it. Usability does not just stop at GUIs on your laptop, but also jet fighter cockpits, vending machines, ATMs etc... Think about this, what good is a jet fighter if nobody can actually fly it?

That is not even to begin talking about how people with low vision can operate things. WCAG exists for a reason.

Bottom line... usability is really important.

[progman]

I didn't say usuability is unimportant. I said it is overrated. What does a good UX experience profit if there is lack of functionality and reliability? A legacy Linux desktop with reliable apps is much more useful to me than a polished Windows/OSX where apps crash all the time.

> If you are presented with 6 choices and you cannot reasonably tell the difference between them without spending 15-30 minutes researching all of the options, you have a bad user experience.

That's the price for freedom of choice. If you are not willing to invest some time to choose than others will force you on their ways to go. This spares you some time but at the end it costs you much more because you have to give up your privacy at FB etc.

[stcredzero]

> If a user can't figure out how to navigate through an app in a reasonable amount of time without a great deal of existing knowledge

Having watched kids, teens, and 20-somethings, I've concluded that "a reasonable amount of time" to them is something on the order of 5 seconds on the outside. On a PC, they might look around and thoughtfully click on things. On a tablet or phone app, they just mash their fingers for about 3 seconds, then if they haven't seen something, move on.

This even extends to 20-somethings and game controllers. I've seen 20-somethings walk up to an 80's emulated arcade game, waggle the sticks on a controller for 2 seconds, not understand why the screen was shaking, then walk away.