The User? What's That?
I just overheard an interesting exchange in a conference call with a client. The designer spent 3-5 minutes describing to the client why the client-suggested navigation would not work out best from a usability standpoint. The client kind of kept quiet until the word ‘user’ was mentioned (as in ‘it would be more confusing for the user’), at which point the client said ‘Right…’ in such a way that made 2 things painfully obvious: 1) He had never even thought about anyone using his ridiculous idea, and 2) really didn’t care what we thought.
THIS is why bad websites happen (or at least the majority of them), in my humble opinion. It all boils down to clients trusting experts to do the job they hired them for.