amazon, usability & porn.

[keryx]

Jakob Nielsen's Amazon.com usability article is timely. Well, it's timely for me and for peregrin8, who were talking about the tendency for all porn sites to follow the "gallery" user interface model.

Nielsen's argument, in a nutshell, is that things that work for Amazon won't work for your e-commerce site, and you shouldn't do them. He wants independent business to think about what actually serves their customers and earns money.

I'd argue that, if you're creating an independent website that attempts to challenge mainstream views of anything, you need to start with the user interface. If you offer your independent thought in a package that looks like something else, it can only be but so independent.

For instance. Almost every independent porn site talks like it's challenging ideas of sexuality and beauty, and its models own their own sexiness. But the way the user views images of the models (who are usually women) is within a very consistent formula, with the image presented for consumption in a certain order, in this "photo gallery" format. The model doesn't really control all that much.

That's fine if you're, say - Suicide Girls, and what you really want is to make money by providing your alternaporn in an accessible way. But if you really want to change thinking, you could do some interesting things. Like, what if each model could present their information in any format or narrative structure? Some might be abstract, some might put all photos on the page, some might write accompanying smut.

The experience of both the model and the viewer would be of participating in a unique experience of what turns them both on. Might that not dramatically shift the way people thought about porn?

Discuss?

Comments

[holeinthe-sky.livejournal.com]

When do I get the address of the people I need to send cds to and when should I send them out?