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I recently broke down and bought an iPod for use at work and during my 45 minute commute. Today on the way home, I was listening to NPR stories of the day and my headphone jack accidentally came unplugged. I was in the middle of a story at them time and I thought I would have to rewind to find the exact location my listening pleasure had been interrupted. I looked down to plug in the headphones and noticed it was paused. I repeated this step a few times to find that the iPod automatically pauses when the headphones are pulled out. Brilliant!

This is what non-usable usability is about. Someone more clever than I needs to come up with a word for this…like usaplicity: simply usable. I didn’t have to think to use this great feature of the iPod. I didn’t have to know how to use the thing either. I performed an action and it reacted. This is much like using automatic sinks in restrooms, or escalators in malls and airports.

Now in all the talk about usability on the web and creating greater user experiences why has someone not gone this far? Sure AJAX has made headway in balancing the user experience between the presentation and applications layers. It’s helped to create a more immediate experience for the user.

Bad examples of attempted usability exist. For instance I ordered something from the online retailer Zappos last week and was prompted with a button to submit a form. It said “Click here to contine: (Don’t Click more than once!)”. What is this? I see too reasons for it: 1)Laziness 2)Attempted usability enhancement. It’s both. They are too lazy to make the button clickable only once. And, since they aren’t fixing it, they will make it more usable by telling the user not to do something…or else.

I want to see something on the web that creates the same experience my iPod did today and that the escalator does every day in my office.

Let us know if you have any ideas? or examples?

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