Do usability myths need a reality check?

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Signal vs Noise post an interesting comment on Usability Myths. The post comments on a recent article by Will Schroeder from User Interface Engineering (UIE), who has written a feature article on certain usability guidelines which are often overly stated or followed, one comment includes:

You have undoubtedly heard that users give up because pages take too long to download. This is also a myth. Testing shows no correlation between page download time and users giving up. How does this myth continue to defy gravity?
Excerpt: Schroeder, W. (2003) Usability Myths Need Reality Checks [Online] Available: http://uie.com/Articles/usability_myths.htm Cited: 31 March, 2003

There are some interesting comments by users on the article, example of websites where this occurs and usability concerns in general at the Signal vs Noise post.


Here are some other Myth related articles:
Section 508 Accessibility myths by IBM:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/us-tang/?dwzone=usability
Webword’s collection of Myths (which also comments on the UIE article):
http://webword.com/weblog/001661.html#001661