I'm catching on Mojave Experiment but from different perspective - talking about preconceptions as a genuine and indispensable part of user experience.
I am reading plenty of blogs these days and everyone seems to be blogging about now infamous Mojave Experiment. I’m catching on Mojave Experiment but from somewhat different perspective – talking about preconceptions as a genuine and almost always indispensable part of user experience.
So, I am not going to talk about Mojave Experiment in details – you can read about it on your own and event check out the website (which looks very cool to be honest). But I think that Mojave experiment has pointed out several interesting facts. Before Mojave Experiment, people were really harsh on Vista. Mojave was praised for its beauty, ease of use, cool new features and stuff like that. And after they have learned that Mojave = Windows Vista, we could see them being shocked…
Similar thing can be noted with still the most popular web browser – Internet Explorer. I’ve installed latest beta (Beta 2) of Internet Explorer 8 yesterday and played around with it and I can say that IE 8 has everything someone can really ask for. OK, I might be biased, but that’s how I feel about IE 8. But, of course, we will be able to hear lot of stories about how IE lacks support for standards, that it is slow, ugly, that its usability is poor…
Of course, I am always passionately on the side of the users – no matter what they choose. So if users think that Firefox or Opera are better than Internet Explorer 8, then so be it. And I am OK with that unless people build their opinions based on wrong fundamentals – namely – on preconceptions.
Sure, Vista is ugly, slow, lacks innovation and brings nothing new. Same goes for Internet Explorer 8 – no support for standards, it’s late on everything… All of that is true, especially if you never get any real chance to see Vista or Internet Explorer 8 for yourself. People are easily influenced. That is a fact. So, if you know how to put some influence on them regarding above-mentioned Vista or Internet Explorer 8, you will succeed in creating whatever image you want about those products. And, surely, if you are Microsoft’s competitor you will do your best to do so. And this holds true for all other industries, for all other vendors, corporations, companies…
Microsoft should try to re-do Mojave Experiment – this time with Internet Explorer 8 and show it to Firefox, Opera or Safari users… I can bet you know what kind of reactions we would get from those users…
So, what is the main message of Mojave Experiment? Main lesson learned? It’s not just simple and shallow try to make users look stupid and without their credibility (tough some argue about that one). It’s not even about poking fun at them for being fanatic or biased towards some other products or companies. Mojave has shown that user experience is much more than just simple user interface and other typical stuff regarding UX as a whole. User experience is also built from preconceptions i earlier beliefs which are being taken for granted and are hardly or never changed.
And that is perfectly normal – it’s part of human behavior and psychology.
So, what is to be done to crash preconceptions? First step is challenging and testing preconceptions. That one is a lesson given to us from Mojave experiment, one that we maybe didn’t even expect to arise. But it is indicative, for sure.
Preconceptions are here, and they are here to stay. So learn how to deal with them.