O’Reilly has published a very good essay by Meg Hourihan on the problem of clients usurping the design process in the building of websites.
Too often, stakeholders on the client side of a web development effort attempt to force a design decision by edict. The problem is that these folks rarely undertand the underlying issues that drive the design decision(s) in question. Because we all use the web throughout the day, more people than ever before are familiar with interface elements. Too many of us think we understand how these elements work and how they should be used.
Hourihan’s point is that usability inevitably suffers when designers allow this to happen and part of our job is preventing it. A primary solution is to use interface elements only in standard ways; radio buttons serve very different functions than checkboxes, for example. If adhering to the standard usage is unworkable, deviation should be permitted only after appropriate analysis and usability testing.
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