Let's Kill the Hard Disk Icon

Kellym writes "The desktop metaphor is under attack these days. Usability experts and computer scientists like Don Norman, David Gelernter and George Robertson have declared the metaphor "dead." The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop"

Comments

It really doesn't matter...

[Gogl]

Yes, they are correct in saying that having the hard drive being somehow subservient to the desktop is confusing and well, wrong.

However, in the end it doesn't really matter. Why? Because there are either people who understand why this is wrong and therefore it doesn't matter to them, or there are people whose understanding of a computer is one that it would require more then changing the hard drive icon to make them undestand.

That, and I'm willing to bet that neither of these sorts of people really care one way or the other.

Well, it's just my opinion I suppose, and you have the right to disagree. But I've always thought the recursiveness of the desktop didn't really matter.

Yah right...

[TZA14a]

The vague space of the hard disk should not exist for you.
Call me old fashioned, but I for one am _not_ baffled by the vast regions of "vague space" that my file systems offer me. I don't want hundreds of stacked desktops for everything I do. This might be nice for Joe Random Luser, but if you intend to do _LOTS_ of things with your computer, and interconnect them, having the power of a file system at your disposal helps a lot.

It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse.

Yeah, that's the way it goes - the same "usability experts" who have brought us the "tree control for everything" metaphor that totally sucks in large directory trees now want to oversimplify even more. Perhaps, if the mouse is incapable of filling your needs, you should consider alternatives... such as the keyboard and a sensible autocompletion. Every time I see someone use a keyboard based navigation tool (Windows Commander comes to my mind, or bash completion), they're about ten times faster than click-move-click-move sequences.

Re:Yah right...

[fixion]

Keyboard-based navigation tools -- e.g. a command-line interface -- are ten times faster if

• the user has already learned the interface. (The learning curve for command-line interfaces is steeper than for GUIs, especially if the user has first experience with a GUI. With a blank slate computer user, the learning curve is about the same...but how many blank slates who've never used Windows -- or a video game controller -- do you find?

• the user doesn't have to re-learn the commands.The problem with most command line interfaces is that they are unique to a particular application. The keyboard shortcuts are unique, the modifier codes are unique, etc. That means learning a new interface for each application. Innefficient!

Re:Yah right...

[crawling_chaos]

This is starting to sound like the arguments my car freak friends have about standard versus automatic transmissions. What they don't seem to get is that drivers like me don't care about optimum performance, we just want to get from point A to point B. In fact, I gave up my car and started using public transportation because I hated dealing with car maintenance and I happen to be fortunate enough to live in an area where I can get away without one.

The average computer user wants to do his job, which often has very little to do with the computer. That 10 minutes you refer to is better spent doing something else. You and I may find that ridiculous, but we're in the minority.

These studies are based on how average users (not your average Slashdot reader) use their computer systems. We can rail all we want to about "dumbing down" the interface, but in the end we don't really count. We'll learn the new way far more readily than the average folks will learn our way.

Re:Yah right...

[Orycterope]

Call me old fashioned, but I for one am _not_ baffled by the vast regions of "vague space" that my file systems offer me.

Same thing here. The hard disk is the physical place where my files reside. Simple enough.

Then, when I click File-Open in Word, the little man inside my computer takes the bus on Data Road to go get my report.doc file. I get it, no problem with that.

But before buying tickets, he checks in its drawer, and if a small part of the file happens to be there, he hands it to me before getting on the bus and bringing me back the whole thing. Efficient and fast, I get that.

But, the files aren't always accessible by bus. Sometimes, the little man has to ask his daughter Ether to get on her bike and go fetch my report.doc from the neighborhood. But she's been warned : she can't take the road until there's no more car in sight. If she ever get slammed on her way back, she must drop everything, get back to the little man's house and try again. I know, it's weird, but that's the way it works.

Thanks to my company's 3 hours intensive training, I know the ins and outs of my computer. I don't need no stinkin' abstraction. Let's deal with the real things.

- There, Ether. Take that to Slashdot.

Where's some real work on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

About the time I got to him describing Linux GUIs as "simpler and are easier to use and manage" I was starting to realize that while the author starts off with an appeal to authority "X, Y, Z say I'm right!" the article was mostly just a few ill-explained conjectures interspersed with a bunch of filler.

Where's some real data on desktop usability? Surely if the desktop is considered so wretched, there'd be a score of empirical HCI studies that:

1) Proposed an alternative
2) Actually went out and prototyped the alternative
3) Showed that the alternative was more efficient than the desktop

But I'm not seeing anything coming out that would seem to indicate that the desktop was dead.

Re:Where's some real work on this?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

What you don't seem to realize is that HCI studies are all a complete load of bollocks; HCI is the "social policy" of Computer Science. (Thinking in degree terms).

I nearly murdered the lecturers who tried to teach me on the HCI part of my degree course. While it's true that programmers usually design bad GUIs, the same is true of HCI researchers, except the other way round:

While a programmer will implement a bad gui because he just makes it so it can access the functions he wants, and figures that because he knows how to operate it- that's good enough, the HCI researchers will draw little diagrams, write up "task lists" and waffle on about the importance of various colours and auditary cues, being careful to cite some vaguelly relevant psychology papers and spend far too long being politically correct and work out how e.g. dead people will be able to use the menu on the mobile phone.

Finally they will "play test" their proposed user-interface on a random group of people who will swear blind in exchange for money that they have either a) never used a computer before or b) it was a mac. The play test might even consist of a paper-based simulation- leading to hilarious role-playing games:

luser: So next I think I would click on this here
HCI scum: With the left or the right mouse button?
luser: the middle one
HCI scum: ohhhh. interesting. roll a d20. Oh, the orc takes you by surprise.
luser: WTF?
HCI: exactly
luser: I kick the orc!
HCI: with the left or the right leg?
luser: the middle one.

The "play tests" of the gui (ignoring, as you should the above surreality) never yield interesting data because the researchers pay far too much attention to how individual users expected things to behave, even when they had no computer experience. The point is that computers that allow you to do more than a few simple things will always be semi-complicated by nature unless you dumb them down to the level of mobile phone/pvr menus- and then, as we all know it becomes frustrating to use them when you want to do something quickly, and impossible to do something complex or not envisioned by the manufacturer.

I mean, take for example that whole generation of people who refused to learn/couldn't set their vcrs to record one simple program. True- vcrs didn't need to be that complex- we now have electronic on-screen guides to programmes that make recording a doddle, but at that time the complexity was needed to keep the costs of the machine down and also technology was not as advanced.

However, there will always be some piece of kit that requires that same level of expertise that setting a vcr did, perhaps more, especially given that computers tend to be able to be used in a non-linear manner when compared to the simplistic menus of consumer multimedia devices.

People who can't accept the idiosynchrasies of the computer interface and learn to phase it out (exactly such things as a hard drive icon) will never be any good. Such people tend to learn a set way of doing things on the computer, so if you fuck with their desktop and move the icons about for example they end up madly clicking on an empty piece of desktop and sobbing uncontrolably when they realize nothing is happening.

The point is that if the hard drive icon needs to be changed because it's a confusing representation of how things are, then the users for whom this would be a problem have already lost.

I *DO* agree that we could do with another layer of abstraction though. For example, a user might have some mp3s he downloaded in the My Documents folder where IE defaulted to saving them- other mp3s in My Downloads, where X random download manager put them- and yet more in another directory from when he ripped a cd with some other app. It would of course be nice to be able to easilf list all mp3s on the computer, no matter where they are, as in this case, and indeed many others it is not relevant to the user where the files are- only to the programs and the os. (If you would normally create a "bad rips" directory to put certain mp3s in you now instead tag them with the meta data that they are bad rips...) Now, I know you can just use a file search to find all mp3s on the hard drive, but say you want to find all the mp3s longer than 5 minutes, or ones of just hip hop- some meta-data is needed to help you fine-tune your search criteria.

While it is true that some programs now, like Windows Media Player can "catalog" your files for you it is nowhere near as good as having a meta-filesystem built into the os.

The same meta-tags would be in all the files on the whole internet (tm) too- would make finding stuff a lot easier. I think TBL was going on about having more meta-tags for web pages and some clever system for stopping the obvious abuse of the system by vendors of unscrupulous pr0n.

Sorry for rambling on like some insane karma slut, and for the spelling, which is well below my normally fantastic level, but I am sitting here really tired, waiting for FFX to be released...

graspee

Huh?

[johnburton]

That article is just daft. It seeems to be saying that a hard disk directory structure is much better than a desktop because you can have unilimed space and organise it by directories, and then goes on to say it should be abolished and replaced by multiple desktops.

Maybe I missed the point. I hope so, then the article would make sense.

In my opinion the whole desktop metaphore is flawed. The screen should just be a view of the hard disk, but each user should have their own namespace on the disk and not be able to even see others files, or there system files without running special tools.

The problem with windows is that sometimes "My Computer" is a subdirectory of the disk and sometimes the disk is a sub-item of My Computer. It confuses me and I'm supposed to know what I'm doing!

Named desktops

[LegendLength]

The vague space of the hard disk should not exist for you. Ideally, your machine should be a collection of desktops that you have created and named, that are easy to track via a menu or toggle button, and are each understandable because they follow the same rules and offer the same limitations.

Yes, yes...you could even store those named desktops in a tree-like structure. Brilliant.

/complexity/ ??

[Cally]

Pardon me, I don't mean to flame these well-meaning researchers, but... anyone who finds the drool-proof Fisher-price desktop interfaces of "modern" commercial OSes "complex", after 15-20 years for the concepts to sink into the culture, and umpty-zillion dollars in usability testing, HCI factors researchers, Xerox, MIT MediaLab, Apple, XP, blah blah blah... probably shouldn't be left on their own with a box of matches, ya-know-what-i-mean?

Re:/complexity/ ??

[Twylite]

...and despite all this time, effort and money, most people still find computers complex to use.

My SO can pick up a remote control, figure it our without the manual, and operate the TV, VCR, and Hi-Fi. So can my parents. They are happy to set the message on their answering machine, program numbers into their phones, do combo-cooking with the microwave and generally use your average household technology without instruction ... but not a computer.

First you have to know about the idea of clicking with the mouse. The whole left-click / right-click thing which we take for granted and do 20000 times a day is NOT easy to catch onto for a new user. Once they have the idea, they still do know what to do.

"Start button? But its already started, why do I want to start it again?". How about the little icons on the taskbar? Any idea what they mean if you haven't been told? There's a deskpad with a notebook and pencil on it [looks like a writing application, but its the desktop]. Then a big blue "e" [here is South Africa we have a TV channel called "e" with a very similar logo]. Then a clock inside a square [that would be outlook].

When there IS a window open, there's three funny looking icons at the top right. Ask a new user if they can guess what they mean.

With the exception of international standard symbols (like the power symbol), most people can't guess the meaning of icons. Your average Word user goes on a 3 day course to learn the basics of clicking on the correct toolbar icon, when they could select a perfectly meaningful English word from the menu system.

The whole idea that GUIs are easy to use is a myth, as is the idea that icons are somehow more meaningful to users. These ideas have been forced down our throats by marketing droids and the odd technical writer who things (s)he knows his/her stuff.

Re:/complexity/ ??

[gfxguy]

My SO can pick up a remote control, figure it our without the manual, and operate the TV, VCR, and Hi-Fi. So can my parents. They are happy to set the message on their answering machine, program numbers into their phones, do combo-cooking with the microwave and generally use your average household technology without instruction ... but not a computer.

Aahh...but my parents had a horrible time when we got our first VCR (I was about 15 back then). Of course, I could read the manual and figure it out, but it was all too complicated for them.

20 years later, where the "interface" for VCRs really hasn't changed, my parents to just fine, and can pretty much use any VCR.

The problem with computer GUI's is they haven't settled for 20 years - and people like these guys who come along and keep wanting to "create a new paradigm" (mark that off on your buzz-word bingo) are screwing things up - if it doesn't stay consistent for any length of time, no one will get accustomed to it.

I agree about the pictures on the buttons, though. We had an application from some developers that had a horrible interface. When we were asked for suggestions, I suggested they improve the interface, and suggested they looked at that particular OS's interface guide. Not only did they not look at the guide, but we ended up with a real pretty GUI where the pictures had virtually nothing to do with the functions - unless you were the programmer. We might have lived with it if they had tool-tips, but if you need to rely on tool-tips, maybe the icon isn't so good - why don't you just label the button with the tool tip?

You must understand the technology to use it

[SomethingOrOther]

My motorbike has an oil light on it.
It comes on when the bike is running out of oil so I know when to put more in. To run a motorbike I mush know how to do this and (basicly) how the engine works. (Unless I want to be totaly reliant on a mechanic)

A computer is exactly the same.
To use it, you must know basicly how it works.....such as what a hard disk is! You cant oversimplify!

Why not....

[Mister Transistor]

Since were killing off all the "evil icons" these days, i.e. Joe Camel, Barney, Usama Bin Laden, etc, go ahead - whack the evil hard disk icon too. Next on the chopping block - Ronald McDonald and that annoying whiny PrimeCo pink alien guy!

Re:"The" hard disk icon?

[MisterBlister]

Having more than one hard-drive doesn't stop you from getting rid of the harddrive icon. As an example, considering UNIX style filesystem mounting... Imagine if the desktop displayed everything under '/'... These directories could be spread across multiple harddrives, but under one virtual desktop/root directory.

However, the real problem I see with the article is they don't suggest how users would deal with partitioning their space if one got rid of the harddrive icon. What I mean is, suppose I create a new directory under my root desktop, how do I specify which harddisk it should be on to better divide the free space I have on each disk? Surely they wouldn't propose that Mac end users should play around with auto mount lists as is done in the UNIX world?

I suppose one solution would be to use logical volumes to treat all harddrives on a system as one single volume, but if so that's a much bigger change than just eliminating the hard-disk icon, and the implications of it should be better explored (if that's the sort of solution they were going for).

Personally, I dont think anyone is particularly confused by hard-disk icons, and think the article is just blowing smoke...The article never really tries to back up its arguments or give real-world alternatives except at a very superficial level.

I'd love greater abstraction

[Mike Connell]

I'm all for the sentiment behind "The vague space of the hard disk should not exist for you.", but that's just a bad bad bad idea until computers are rock solid. No I don't mean Windows 2000 solid, or even debian Potato solid, I mean solid like my old 286 machine that hasn't had a software update for eons.

At the moment my other half knows what a floppy disk is (it looks like a floppy disk, and you can put files on it). She knows that the "hard disk" is a "big floppy disk inside the computer", and that she should copy from the later to the former whenever she needs to keep a safe copy. This is a good thing, because she knows where her stuff is, and so do I (as sys admin). As soon as you start blurring the lines, it makes it harder for people to control their own files.

I think it's right to be pushing the state of the art in the interface. However, I have this conservative feeling that the current status quo matches well to the actual reality of buggy software and hw/sw failures. Once we cross over into "you dont need to know that" space, we better be sure that we actually don't need to know it, otherwise we'll be SOL.

Mac was the first?

[ImaLamer]

The first time I saw an Apple machine other than an IIe I was very confused by the fact that the actual drive wasn't the 'root' of the system. Even though this is only in idea - it killed me, I was confused. Even Windows (3.1) used C:\!

Now KDE, Windows 9x, and many other use the 'Desktop' as the 'root' of the system. You'll notice that this trick is only performed by the 'userland' and not the actual system. This is because it's common sense. Your computer doesn't want to look for things starting from a folder/directory/area that is actually buried deep within the system!

I say, banish the 'Desktop'! It confuses users. Teach the file tree! Standardize the file tree!

No more systems where programs store themselves anywhere! No more systems that show the drive under the Desktop! No more systems that show other things on the same level as the drive!

Why confuse users? Teach them;
"This is /, it is the root of the system."
"This is /etc where your configuration data is stored!"
"This is /usr - you'll find the actual programs and more there!"
"But this is your Home/My Documents/Desktop. There are others similar to yours, but this one is yours."
"However, it doesn't sit on top of the rest of the system!"

Maybe I don't get it. I thought it would be easier to teach new users things they already understand.
"This is the desktop, it's the top level, well kinda, it's actually in /home/username/.kde/desktop [or c:\windows\desktop or even c:\windows\profiles\username\desktop\ ], but it's the top of your system. Under that is your hard drive... that is where the desktop is kept."

good for some, bad for most

[Cynikal]

Part of my job is to teach computer basics and gui navigation skills to newbies. with that said, imagine knowing nothing about a computer, and trying to navigate through it without having a point of refrence. Its like being in a new country, but having no "home" or place to stay where you start from every morning.

I reccomend to new users to save files they dont want to lose on their desktop just because its so much easier to remember where it is. eventually it WILL get cluttered, but its a good temp solution until they're more at ease with the hard drive, and finding their way through it. I can just imagine how lost some people would feel without their desktop and most used files staring back at them when they turn on their computers.

I can accept that there are some people who feel the desktop and hard drive icon metaphor are out dated, but i fail to see how their preference should override other peoples prefs.. instead of "killing" something you don't aggree with, how about encouraging an implamentation to have it or not, depending on your settings?

i dunno, to me its like saying "oh i can ride a bike now, so training wheels should be abolished, they only get in the way now".
its short sighted and biased, and only makes things harder for those who are just starting out.

a desktop is a flat directory

[metis]

In many GUI systems ( KDE , OS/2) a desktop is a directory. The article argues basically for representing the information in the computer as a flat list of directories with depth = 1. It is the same as having a disk in which all directories are top level. Another way to think about it is that everything the user accesses is addressed by two idnexes exactly ( item[ desktop, name ] )

Once you see it that way you realize immediately that this is very limited. Directory depth is there for a reason. Searching is easier, both for the computer and for human mind, once a certain number of elements is exceeded ( for the human mind that number is about five to eight)

If all the information the user needs can be stored in six to eight directories in a logical way, eliminating death may help useability. For users with more complex needs, this is a very bad idea.

This Article Misses the Point

[fixion]

The author is against the heirarchical tree structure of directories for organizing content but mistakenly identifies this with the "hard disk icon" (which is, in fact, just a doorway into the heirarchical structure).

In it's place he would do away with the hierarchical directories and replace it with multiple "desktops" (e.g. flat, non-heirarchical, visually-managed workspaces).

The glaring problem with this is that most professional computer users (ie. discounting grandma who sends email three times a month and opened Word once) have so many files/applications on their computers that they would need dozens (or hundreds!) of these desktop workspaces to manage all of the files & applications.

True, some Linux desktop environments have multiple desktops, but check and see how many users have more than six or eight desktops configured. Very few. There's a usablility threshold where if setting up more "categories" (in this case more desktops) actually decreases usability, whereas setting up "sub-categories" within the top-level categories will increase usability. Hence: heirarchy.

The entire field of taxonomy is dedicated to this principle.

As a previous poster said: This article is daft. (And poorly written.)

Then there's the monitor size issue !

[Katchina'404]

Great...

Next time some random user needs "more room to store my stuff in the computer" he/she goes out and gets him/herself a larger monitor rather than a larger hard disk !!!

New Xerox Palo Alto for 3D usage metaphors?

[Warvi]

The desktop and window interface as we know it was developed in Xerox Palo Alto laboratories.

Why we still 20-30 yrs later have no good new metaphors is because there is no fundamental development dedicated to that effort.

The machines today come, thanks to ID and other game companies, equipped with graphics chips more than able to create an immersive 3D environment. This capability is totally unused in daily usage.

Trash the disk metaphor like it has been trashed in UNIX file hierarchy: you can still know everything about your disks, but they have become irrelevant in the directory structure.

A good 3D environment should trash the desktops as well and use spaces instead. Yes you can have your 2D windows for text terminals and whatever current applications, but you can as well do your 3D CAD/CGI design/rendering in space provided by a 3D GUI. Imagine being able to "turn around" with mouse or similar (headmounted?) device in order to look around; to be able to "zoom" into and past separate windows and work areas (workspaces) with mouse wheel or cursor keys.

Imagine being able to link to each other related files/items in a 3D-space instead of 2D. What would that do to your DB schemes. Or to zoom into a software package's source icon to see its design, zoom into a class to see its components, and zoom into a method to see its source.

Etc.

This would require trial-and-error, examining, playing around. Where is the team that is being paid for this development?

Any hints would be greatly appreciated. I could even be interested in such work myself.

Oh please $deity, no...

[erlando]

If what the author of this article suggests is implemented, my life would be turning into a living hell. Multiple stacked desktops for file-navigation..? Desktops for file-navigation?

At this time of writing I have a grand total of 4(four) icons on my desktop. Only one of these is a shortcut. I have 12 more shortcuts on my taskbar (so, I use Windows. Sue me. ;o) ). One of the more used icons on my desktop is the one opening the dazzling labyrinth that is my file-system.

I've never really caught on to the desktop-concept. Maybe it's just me.. The desktop is the background for the windows opened by the applications I run. The harddisk on the other hand is the storage for my files (filing-cabinet anyone..?).

The desktop is a metaphor for a physical thing. And a bad one at that. As a lot of UI-design books will tell you one should be very careful when trying to use metaphors. Have a look at Interface Hall of Shame for some examples.

Why do the author of the above article seem to think that multiplying an already bad interface will make it better? And even if the metaphor was a good one I've yet to see office-workers with e.g. a desk per client..

The problem with finding the next great interface is that the fundamentals in a computer-system is not about to change. We will have (and need) a lot of files (information split into little logical parts) for a long time to come. There is no way around this. Abstracting the storage-space and placing the files on seperate desktops instead of having them in folders accessible from anywhere does not change this fact.

Re:Oh please $deity, no...

[Bazzargh]

Personally I use 0 (zero) icons on my desktop.

They are BEHIND these damn window things - WTF use are they there?????

All my shortcuts go on the menu. Where I can get them, without hiding the current app.

Desktops are useful, in real life, when they are large enough to sit *around* your work. You can reach out and grab pens and such. Desktops, on PCs, have never yet been big enough for me to feel comfortable with more than a couple of (non-overlapping) windows up at a time. (Don't get me started on overlapping windows... grrr...)

And I NEVER store files on the desktop. Why? Because, sonny, this is Win2K with a roaming profile. Everything you write there is synched with the server (which, half the time, is in a different city from me). T r y l o g g i n g o n t o d a.... oh feck it can I log on as you today?

- Cantankerous Old Git

He's wrong

[scott1853]

The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop.

If the desktop metaphor is perfect, yet the "hard drive" icon is part of the metaphor, the how can he claim that the metaphor is perfect and it's the implementation that's wrong?

Ignoring the fact that they contradict themselves in the first paragraph, there's plenty of other glaring holes in the argument.

"The extension of the "rules of the desktop" to cover the entire capacity of the hard disk is the main reason why systems that support multiple desktops seem simpler and are easier to use and manage."

Who says it's simpler? You still need to initially setup that desktop, which involved setting up shortcuts to locations in the file system. Try doing that without delving into the hard drive while still maintaining a super simplistic environment (i.e. no command line either). Besides, maybe I have a lot of data and need 20 desktops to organize it correctly. So instead of setting the default "open" path in the application of my choice, I would have to switch desktops to open a file. What if I want several things of different types open at once?

"It is possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate via the mouse. The feeling of such spiral filing systems is of endless depth, requiring great effort to retrieve a piece of information. It is difficult to create the same spiral feeling on the desktop."

So sub-folders are a bad thing I guess. Yes, it's terribly confusing to have a tree like "documents/company/forms/standard contracts". That would be too confusing to navigate. But if you had someway of setting a "view" on the desktop that would be simpler. And this "view" menu would be incredibly simplistic to use and would be able to differentiate between Forms and Letters in a DOC or PDF file? Gee, that sounds like more work when I create the document too.

"To reap the benefits of the desktop metaphor, we have to design computer systems that leave the user clearly anchored in the desktop metaphor at all times. But in the multiple desktop, you are always on a desktop and can't ever get lost inside the computer."

Ok, but you could get lost in all the desktops you'd need to setup.

The desktop was designed to give users quick access to common programs. You don't need every file you ever need to use, sitting on your desktop, or even some virtual desktop somewhere. Because if you only use it once every six months, you're going to forget what desktop it's on anyways. Intelligent directory trees and default "file-open" locations are the way to do it. The methods outlined in this article would require a lot of extra setup the user would have to do, and doesn't address new files being added by another user on a network.

I guess I was really bored this morning, I didn't intend to comment that much on an opinion piece on some other site. Which makes me wonder, why are we linking to use opinions on other sites? Maybe the author is somebody I know, but isn't this like linking to a slashdot users comments?

Desktop means Desktop

[ZigMonty]

I think the main problem with this article is that the authors have forgotten what the desktop metaphor represents. It represents a desktop (surprise!). On a real desktop, if you run out of space you start filling stuff away into folders. You DON'T buy a second desk and constantly switch between them. You certainly don't end up with dozens of desks. I have over 150,000 files. How many desktops would I need?

Directories may not make sense to some. That's why Apple and others called them folders, as in a manila folder. You take a document off your desktop and file it away in a folder. Simple.

Remember, the original Macs used floppy disks. You frequently had more than one inserted. They looked the same on screen as they did on your other desktop. You put stuff you didn't want anymore in the trash can. Very simple for office workers to learn.

Getting back to the article, of course the desktop took up the whole screen. What do you want around it, the floor?! Walls?

How does one get rid of the disk icon? I have two main internal hard drives (20GB and 30GB). How else do I tell them apart? What if I insert a zip or a CD? How do I tell them apart? Or an external FireWire or USB drive? This doesn't sound very well thought out! You *could* integrate permanent drives into one structure using mount points but how is that easier for the new comer? "Oh your second disk is mounted so that it is part of your first disk". "What?"

Having said all this, I don't have a desktop. I use MacOSX. The only thing below the windows is a desktop picture. My hard drives are in the computer window. So, in a sense, Apple has partly phased out the desktop metaphor. It still has folders, but you can choose not to display a desktop. The new representation is a Computer with icons representing all your storage devices (similar to My Computer in Windows). This is closer to what the new, computer literate generation, mine, interprets it to be.

In short, we don't need a metaphor anymore. You only need a metaphor when explaining to new people. Using the office as an analogy made sense when computers were new. How is an office analogy going to help a young child learn about computers?

I'd like to see us go to a database-like idea with the ability to attach arbitrary attributes to files and replace folders with categories. A file could belong to more than one category. Related categories could have links between them. Instead of a tree you'd get more of a web. Don't know if it'd be any simpler though. For the time being the current idea works.

Yup

[KarmaBlackballed]

if the mouse is incapable of filling your needs, you should consider alternatives

Exactly. Everything you ever needed to know you did not learn in kindergarten, but for some reason some people don't beleive that. Sometimes, as is the case with general purpose computers, the interface will require some training because there are new concepts.

An apt analogy is language. There are too many words in English. We should simplify it. Perhaps we only need 500 words. ... Of course, if we "simplify" we reduce the efficiency and power of it for those that have mastered it.

Teach people about disks, don't take the icon away.

The Good Ol' Days

[robbway]

The article is simply nostalgia wrapped in a thesis. I think the argument for killing the hard drive icon is very valid, but the rest of the paper devolves into the meanderings about desktops.

Multiple desktops are simply windows. Call them whatever you want, but the authors want a windowing motif without a base window to throw junk onto.

The other problem is the incredible naivetee of this statement from the article: Add unlimited files without fear of clutter. (You can change views in a directory.) The first time you used a Disk Operating System, you had a tendancy to throw all of your files into one directory. That's my definition of clutter, and it is no different than the desktop paradigm where junk files reside.

I think the authors are forgetting history and the reasons why we don't use bare-bones DOS to operate our applications. They're also forgetting that with a computer monitor, if you remove all of your desktops, what's left? there has to be some basic background, even if it has no functionality.

Ever teach somebody how to drive a stickshift?

[CausticPuppy]

Some devices are easy to figure out because they have very limited purpose. Computers are harder because they do a nearly infinite number of tasks (if you don't mind "nearly infinite" as a concept).

So people have to learn how to use computers in the same way they have to learn how to drive a car.

Have you ever thought about how intuitive an automobile is?

Let's see... there are 3 pedals, but I only have two feet. I'm confused! I have to push the left one in while turning the key at the same time to start it. But then when it's running, in order to make it go, I have to push the right pedal down while slowly letting up on the left pedal? WTF?? Yet to stop again, I have to push the center pedal in this time, while at the same time pushing the left one back down again. Oh yeah and I have to move the little knob thingy back into the "1" position if I come to a complete stop, but only the "2" position if I'm at a rolling stop. But it makes a horrible grinding noise every time I move it.... oh wait, I have to push the left pedal down every time I move the knob thingy?? Who the hell designed this kludgy interface anyway? I just want to go to the friggin' grocery store, why do I have to do this crazy dancing shit with the 3 goofy foot pedals! And what's with the idiotic round wheel up near my chest? And the thing that says "Hi-Lo-Intermittent..." WTF is that supposed to mean. Set, coast, accel, resume.... Screw this, I'm hiring the neighbor's kid to drive me everywhere! He knows all this crap better than me.

So you see, we can't demand an "intuitive" interface for everything. There are some things in life that people should just be expected to learn how to do, like operate cars and computers (regardless of the computer's OS). That also requires learning traffic laws, and similar "laws of the net."
If we had a Fisher-Price any-idiot-can-drive interface in cars, imagine how dangerous the roads would be! Even more so than they already are, considering that most idiots already know how to drive today, despite the "complex" interface in automobiles (even with automatic transmissions!) Yet they can't copy files around on their own computer.

This author has lost his mind!!!

[Uttles]

The vague space of the hard disk should not exist for you. Ideally, your machine should be a collection of desktops that you have created and named, that are easy to track via a menu or toggle button, and are each understandable because they follow the same rules and offer the same limitations.

The hard disk icon was an error that should disappear from mainstream computer systems. Multiple desktops should be implemented across the board to simplify the life of casual users everywhere.

What? I don't think this person has ever done anything useful with a computer. I have so much I want to say to rip this apart but I just can't organize it all in my head. I'll just say a few quick things:

He's right about one thing: Most OS's don't implement the desktop idea correctly. What he's wrong about is his idea of a desktop. The whole concept, started by Mac OS, was that you have a desk, and the desk has drawers. You go into the folders within the drawers (directories within the hard drives) to get the files you want to use, and then you take them out and they are on your desktop. Macintosh still is the best at this. Their entire OS is extremely easy to grasp, even in OSX, only now it's much more powerful to the advanced user. Windows is just a cheap immitation. Linux is... well it's great, but it's desktop idea was meant for functionality and power, not casual use (at least in early distros.)

Now we come to the suggested desktop idea. This is ridiculous. Having multiple desktops that you toggle to, having no directory structure at all? Do you all realize how ridiculously point and click that would be? No longer could you go in a directory tree browsing program and efficiently move things, you would have to slect them with the mouse on one desktop, do the copy command, tab over to the desktop you want, then do the paste command. That's right, no more "cp" for you linux people, it's all point and click... That's just not going to fly. It's not powerful enough. The other thing is, think about this metaphorically. Multiple layered desktops... what in the hell can you compare that to? Having like 10 desks in a circle and you spin around to see which one you'll use? Stacking 10 desks on top of each other? I just don't see how that's easier.

Granted, I like the multiple desktops in Linux. I use them to have multiple full screen applications running at the same time. They have many other uses. On the other hand, I use the file tree browser, or the command line, to do all of my file management. It simply is the most convenient and powerful way, and if a user can't learn to browse a file tree... well... they need to pick up a new hobby/occupation.

Re:That's right

[edunbar93]

Alan Cooper wrote a whole book [amazon.com] about how letting computer nerds design computer programs is wrong and stupid.

That is until you realize that, like designing a house, if you don't know what you're doing the whole thing is going to fall apart the instant you look at it funny.

The really interesting thing is that computer programs are quite often designed by People Who Aren't Computer nerds. They're called "customers." Often, these "customers" come by to meddle with the design during its building phase. If this were done during the construction of a house, you would have spaghetti for plumbing, electrical wiring that wouldn't pass inspection, and it would probably float in the air by magic. And this is often exactly what happens to software when you go through a few "design changes" as you make attempts to show the customer what you're spending his hard-earned (or maybe not-so-hard-earned in the case of some companies) cash on during the coding phase of the software. And what they believe to be "minor interface adjustments" typically turn out to be major overhauls that require an almost total rewrite because of how it was originally programmed. The problem is that it needs to be finished in a week, because that was "the last of the changes." If you've ever wondered why programmers don't sleep in that last week of development, that's why.

Don't fool yourself. You wouldn't let a bridge be designed by Joe Average, now would you? Coding's at least as complex.

Re:That's right

[dangermouse]

This is going to ramble a bit, because I'm already going to be late for work...

You know, nobody who actually develops software thinks like this. The problem is simply that people who develop software tend to be very comfortable with a lot of interface ideas, and therefore tend to pick whichever one works the best for a given piece of their application, without so much realizing that in the overall scheme of things they might be better off simplifying it a bit.

Believe me, we want to make it easy for the user. The easier the software is to use, the happier people will be with it, the better it will sell, the less you'll have to go back and rework interface elements.

Sometimes, if the target audience has a bit more experience or you're working on a technically specialized application, you tend to make things easier for your target users by using interface ideas that would make it harder for someone who just walked in off the street and decided to play with your software. That's generally as it should be... if I'm working on a handy little Unix utility, I generally shouldn't bother to slap a GUI around it and design a nice icon; what my users are going to want is a solid set of (long and short) commandline options, a useful configuration file, and the ability to pass in data on stdin.

At any rate, accusing your post's parent of elitism seems entirely uncalled-for... he's right: The concept of a big empty desktop behind your windows never confused anybody. The big expanding tree structure does suck hard when you apply it to a large directory structure. People who learn the keyboard shortcuts for their apps do generally have far better performance.

And someone else brought up an interesting point, which is that most people spend most of their time in a few applications... only so much time and effort should be spent trying to unify the interfaces of all applications, and it really shouldn't be done at the expense of optimizing for each application.

The flipside is that advanced users tend to recommend applications that have very powerful interfaces, which newer users tend to have trouble with because they're so highly optimized: vim, emacs, Excel, Photoshop, ksh... And they're right, if you learn to use those programs, you will discover that they're very powerful. If you can't be bothered to learn their interfaces, well, you'll just be relegated to using less powerful generically-interfaced software. This is not elitism, it's just a matter of optimization.

Re:That's right

[rho]

If this were done during the construction of a house, you would have spaghetti for plumbing, electrical wiring that wouldn't pass inspection, and it would probably float in the air by magic

Don't compare programming to construction. They are so similar, yet implemented so differently it's a shame. There are long lists of rules and codes by which construction has to do things. Are some of these things the "best" way? Probably not, but it is the accepted way and is therefore ubiquitous. Due to this, advances in construction techniques happen slowly, and usually come about through improved tools rather than new rules or codes.

However, in the programming world, nothing is standardized. There are approximately 8 bajillion ways to encode the alphabet. There are a dozen different libraries to display a bitmap image. There are 18 different widget sets in X to accomplish the same thing, and two major toolkits for writing software for Unix.

Advances happen often and create whole new directions to take programming, but these advances happen in the basic rules and codes while the programmer use the same old vi,gcc,gdb from the 19th century.

Computer nerds are poor designers, because they have a skewed outlook of what a computer can and should do. A nerd looks at a computer and sees a box filled with limitations. A nerd sees a computer as a natural extension of his hands and head. A user is 180 out of phase: they see a computer as a magick box with an obtuse and difficult operating mechanism.

Don't fool yourself. You wouldn't let a bridge be designed by Joe Average, now would you? Coding's at least as complex

I wouldn't let a programmer build a bridge either: they'd invent a new method of smelting ore and an entirely new branch of mathematics to build it, it would cost 3 times as much as was estimated, and would be 10 years late in construction. And, after it was built, it would fall into the river and the programmers would blame Microsoft.

I know how complex programming is. I also know that "but it's so haaaard!" is a pretty lame excuse for not doing it right. Programmers, by and large, do not do it right when it comes to design. They are great implementers, but poor designers, because they end up solving the wrong problems.

Perhaps I'm unclear when I say "design"--I don't mean how the inner workings of a computer program passes bits around. That's not design. Designing comes long before fingers touch keyboards. It's where real designers decide what problem the program should solve and how the user will interact with the program. After this has been designed, then the programmers implement this set of specifications. I'm not talking about those designers who put a pretty picture on a CD-player program: I'm talking about real designers that work just as hard as programmers do to design, test, lather, repeat as neccessary to create a good, usable program.

man and info

[hawk]

>Well, the biggest grip I have with Linux is that
>the GNU people (it was the GNU, people
>right?)

Yes.

>that decided that 'man' wasn't good enough and
>they wanted to reinvent it;

It's not that they wanted to reinvent itthat's a probelem; that would have been survivable. It's that info is just plain an abomination. It seems to be an "emacs everywhere" notion. It's a pain to navigate, counter-intuitive, and the type of thing that could only have come out of the emacs or redmond mentalities.

hawk

That's where hybrid interfaces come to play

[cduffy]

Played with GTK's open widget? I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Why? It incorporates the best of the mouse-based paradigm that users are used to and additionally adds the keyboard-based commands that power users crave.

Have some (well-written) GTK apps installed? (Some apps written by less-clued folks try to implement their own open boxes... ugh!). Open such an application and go to file/open (alt+f o). Now, type part of a filename and press . If possible, the filename will be completed for you; if several options are available, the windowed listing will be reduced to them. If the only option is a directory, you'll instantly see the contents of that directory (and if it has only one subdirectory, you'll be instantly inside that too). There are lots of other goodies it's capable of as well (some globbing capabilities, &c).

The point of this is that it's possible to write an interface which is intuitive for first-time users but also insanely powerful for power users. It also demonstrates how a good set of underlying libraries can provide applications with really nifty functionality without the programmer even having to be aware that it's available.