Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

136 Performance vs. Preference

Increasing performance does not necessarily increase desirability.

What helps people perform well and what people like is often not the same thing. The Dvorak keyboard is estimated to improve typing efficiency by more than 30% but has failed to rise in popularity because people prefer the more familiar QWERTY keyboard. If you asked people if they would like to be able to type 30% faster with fewer errors, most would answer in the affirmative. Despite this, more than 50 years have passed since the introduction of the Dvorak keyboard, and it is still more of a novelty than a practical alternative.1

This underscores an important lesson for designers: The reasons people prefer one design to another is a combination ...