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So when a website is usable but not useful its unlikely to ever get off the ground. Useful is what generates the interest, serves a need, scratches an itch. Often useful can do quite well without being usable.

ecadamy.com always amazes me. It's very popular but the usability and user experience is not great.

I was wondering if anyone else can offer some good examples of something thats really useful but is missing the usable element

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9 Answers

5

http://www.craigslist.com

To clarify: I actually find their 'browsing' interface quite OK. It's the publishing interfaces that begin to get frustrating as they tend to ignore standard conventions and are even inconsistent from one part of the site to another (I find their forums UI especially odd).

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I find Craigslist easy to use. It just lacks an elaborate design. – Jarrett Jul 28 at 15:10
On the surface, I'd agree...it's a rather simple index. But having to recently post an ad and then dealing with their discussion boards, I found a lot of their UI ignores most conventions. – DA Jul 28 at 15:15
The discussion area is bad and could be an example of high functionality and low usability. I stick to the sales sections. – Jarrett Jul 28 at 15:39
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Basically any generic TORRENT / FREEWARE download site I've ever seen.

There are tons of Torrent or Freeware sites out there that have plenty of resources; but finding the specific link you need amongst dozens of convoluted ones, then going through the 3 or 4 subsequent "ad" pages is ridiculous.

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2

http://www.experts-exchange.com

They always (used to) come up high in programming question searches on Google, and the little summary there looked like they would have just the answer you are looking for. But then you would click on the link without thinking, and be taken to a page where you don't get to see anything except advertising and a bunch of blanked-out answers. You have to pay if you want to see any answers. And you also have to pay if you just want to answer questions, which to me seems incredibly stupid. All I have to say is thank God for StackOverflow and its near domination of programming Q&A on the internet now.

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Yep. I agree. You want to know a funny thing about experts-exchange, though? If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, you'll see the answers... it has something to do with their agreement with google - something along the lines of "you can't use our search engine to point people to questions without accessible answers" – Aevum Design Jul 28 at 17:33
Actually, the answers are there. You just have to scroll all the way to the bottom. But I agree, thankfully StackOverflow now usually is at the top of the search results. – DA Jul 28 at 17:36
That's a change in the last month then, because the answers were hidden completely last time I accidentally ended up on that site. – Charles Boyung Jul 28 at 20:34
i thought so myself at the begining, but it's there, you just have to scroll and the thing is not new, it's there for years now. don't worry i watched a great deal of people searching on Google and saying "darn the only answer appears to be on experts-exchange and it's obfuscated", so you are clearly not alone. – Adrian Jul 29 at 6:09
The answers did used to be hidden, but just clicking the Google Cached version in the search results rather than the main link would give you the full page - answers and all! But yes, it was quite an unpleasant site to use and just seemed to be advers rather than useful text. – Jon W Jul 29 at 16:26
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http://www.onlybatteries.com

Good products, unusable website.

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1

I've always had issues with Flickr as it comes across like an unstructured random mess of a website, where you don't know where you are in the site, what you can do and where else you can navigate to within it.

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http://salesforce.com (The inside, not the website)

Everyone is forced to use it and it provides an intensely valuable service, but it's one of the most unusable apps I have had to deal with.

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The other day we were talking about sources of inspiration when it comes to personas. http://www.exactitudes.com/ is a good example of useful (great resource of inspiration when it comes to personas) but not the most usable experience I've ever seen.

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www.igluski.com They're a great company with good service and products but the website is flippin' awful! It pains me to use it but every year when I go to book a snowboarding holiday I return to it.

Not only do I use it regularly but I recommend it to friends even though its a horrible experience. The outcome is worth the hassle.

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Although we're all aware of many great conventions and rules-of-thumb to aid usability, to some extent, "useful" and "usable" are relative terms. What's usable/useful will vary hugely from person to person.

The best generic example I can think of is command-line vs. GUI. Generally speaking, the command-line is very useful, but not very usable. The GUI, in contrast, is very usable, but not so useful. But, of course, that depends hugely on what you feel comfortable with.

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