[OT] How long before..

[Ken Corey]

On 01/08/2012 08:40, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> Its not a problem that is confined to Apple - though Apple maybe sets the
> tone.  You can see it in Linux too.  Both Gnome 3 and KDE 4 have gone
> through a phase of total user interface redesign.  In both cases the result
> was pretty unusable - though it doubtless conformed perfectly to HIG
> correctness.  Then if you download and install Windows 8, as Chipp hints,
> the UI replaces something ugly but usable with something that makes ordinary
> work flows far more time consuming and difficult, with no apparent gain.

Though I agree with most of this, I feel the need to play devil's 
advocate here. I'm not trolling (really, I'm not), just curious.

If the HIG are not scientifically provable "usability", but simply 
subjective statements, then how can we measure "usability"?

You could argue that financial success is the greatest judge of 
"usability".  After all, 312 million iOS purchasers can't be wrong, can 
they?  (march 2012, 
http://statspotting.com/2012/03/in-total-how-many-ios-devices-are-out-there/)

If not financials, and not the number of users, then by what metric does 
one measure usability (note the lack of quotes here...I mean real 
usability)?

-Ken