Jef Raskin Talks Skins

An incorrect assumption? by thesupraman · 2002-03-01 19:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

Jef Raskin is making one VERY big assumption.

He assumes that 'experts' can come up with one 'grand-unified-ui' which works the best for everyone, ignoring the fact that peoples minds interpret things in many different ways.

He should try working with mentally disabled children for a while, it is a BIG eye-opener as to how different people minds can be in their interpretation and reaction to a given stimulus, and is a little undersood area.

These 'UI' experts who apparently know us well enough to design the 'one true' interface are chasing an impossible dream, IMHO. You only need to look at how many people love/hate XPs default look, or apples aqua, for examples. I personally cannot develop efficiently without multiple desktops to support my many open windows, yet I know other excellent developers who will NOT run more than one app at a time and run it fullscreen.

This is the equivalent of trying to design the perfectly efficient kitchen, it will never happen.

I suspect a lot of the problem is that the 'common' desktop ui's out there don't really skin very well, the underlying system is too limited. X windows is the exception to this, as it only exists as seperable layers, allowing a much fnier control of it's functionality (via KDE and Gnome, for example)

The most consistent UI I've ever used was under OS/2, and IBM did a LOT of development on that, I wish windows would catch up, but it was far from perfect for me, and I bet the majority.

Customisation is required for ANYTHING we interact with in a major and complex way, computers are probably the biggest example of this yet, thankfully their customisability is growing.

Re:An incorrect assumption? by ccoakley · 2002-03-01 19:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Customisation is required for ANYTHING we interact with in a major and complex way, computers are probably the biggest example of this yet, thankfully their customisability is growing.

I agree. Something to think about: A car is the most time critical interface that most people deal with. Take your eyes off the road for 8 seconds to change the radio station while a child crosses the street. And yet, most people manage NOT to kill someone with their car. These are the same people that bitch and moan about computers being hard to use. Anyway, everyone has a certain ammount of customization to their car. They use their favorite radio station. They adjust the seat. They roll down the windows. They adjust the mirrors. Should these things be standardized? Absolutely not. Sure, I found it a pain to have to adjust the seat after my girlfriend drove me home, but it was definitely better than her driving without reaching the pedals.

Computer interfaces are analogous; "I like it" IS a good reason to change your interface. Comfort with a tool improves productivity.

Besides, it would be difficult to have anyone find a comprehensive set of widgets without overwhelming even the best user. There is a big difference between multi-line and single line text boxes (press the enter key when there is a default button on the screen). Or tri-state vs. binary check boxes. Or the hundreds of ways a calendar could be used. If the functionality of something is different, should the look be different? What about the grids in Access vs. the grids in excel?

I agree that skins that move the window resizing controls around might have a learning curve for a guest at a machine. But is it bad? A slight loss of productivity for a guest for a comfort increase for the main user is probably worth the tradeoff. I know that I like changing my window background to 20% grey. It provides enough contrast without blasting my eyes with bright white light. Just because a text box functionally mimics paper and ink doesn't mean that it needs the same colors. And think about editors with syntax highlighting. I may browse code looking mostly at braces. I damn well want my braces to stand out. You might browse code by comments, whereas I find them distracting, so you choose a high contrast comment color and I choose a low contrast color. Because we are different, we have difficulties at each other's machines, but it's a lot better than each of us being less productive most of the time.

Of course, I may just be full of dung.

--
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Re:An incorrect assumption? by Stary · 2002-03-01 22:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

The car analogy is a poor one.
For an entirely different reason, I find the car analogy great. The article keeps going on and on about how horrible it is to switch environments when there are different skins. Then just look at how different cars are.
Yes the steering wheel is still there, and so on, but the "skin" on the dashboard is different and the buttons are often placed in different places. Some cars have digital speedometers, some have analogue ones. Ignition is in different places, geer shifts have different configurations.
All of these take some getting used to when getting into a new car, but it's part of the "charm". It's also one of the big factors when someone is buying a new car. Different people are comfortable with different things.
Of course, maybe it's more efficient to standardize everything: Let every computer, car, coffee machine, whatever else have the same "skin". And forbid background pictures for computers (and btw, show me one bozo who deliberately uses a picture of 10 overlapping windows as a background...) I would be bored outta my head.
Maybe we should just geneticly engineer everyone into one "male" or "female" character. That would be more efficient since noone would have a problem finding a partner when half of the population would be a "perfect partner", and noone has to be jealous of anyone whatsoever. The world would suck though. One people, one skin (ring any bells?)
Simply said: This interview rings the warning bells of what I value the most with free software: freedom of choice.

--
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest

Jef Raskin: the Interface Nazi? by steveha · 2002-03-01 19:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

"No customizations for you!"

In this interview, Jef Raskin comes off as rather arrogant. He seems absolutely convinced that there is an objective, scientific, Best Way for everything about interfaces.

I'm not convinced. One person might actually work better with white text on a deep blue background, or whatever. I can think of other examples.

With Mr. Raskin it is all-or-nothing: if you work for him, you don't get to customize anything, unless you convince him that you really have a better idea (in which case he switches too, and everyone else who works for him has to switch too.

His supporting arguments didn't impress me much either. A "Preferences" dialog makes an app consume more resources? Not enough to matter, I'd say. That's like saying that putting foam cushions on a car seat makes the car heavier.

The absolute gem of a quote, though, was this one:

Of course, there are no really well-designed interfaces out there good enough to prove the point that you don't need preferences. Any programmers who want to help build one with me, drop me an e-mail.

Maybe he can actually create an interface so amazing, so perfect, so right that no one would ever be able to improve upon it. I won't hold my breath, though.

steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely

Re:Efficiency, Boredom, and Schemas by wadetemp · 2002-03-01 20:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

For me, I would prefer to stretch my "subconscious" processing of alternative, skinned UIs so that I can respond to a greater number of computing/information presentation. I may not be able to autonomically process a given interface as quickly as somebody who is familiar with the standardized UI, but I will be able to adapt to other UIs.

I would say that's a resonable opinion for someone who wants to get a diverse computer use experience, but then again most computer users (of which slashdoters are a small small minority) just want to get in, get things done, and get out.

Have you ever used the trial version of WinZip? The trial dialog that pops up before you can use the product swaps the OK and Cancel buttons intentionally every time it starts up. Even if you use WinZip 10 times a day every day your concious mind comes into play every time you use this application. What's the task at hand? Accepting a dialog. Why should you have to think about this?

The same mental lag happens for novice users working between UIs (or skins)... bringing the concious mind into the picture is not helpful to people who need/want thier entire concious mind available for the task at hand, not accepting a dialog. :)

Question for Jef by IvyMike · 2002-03-01 20:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Hey, Jef: I use Solaris (and even SunOS 4(!) for some of the legacy systems) at work. I also use Windows NT at work. I have Windows 98 at home for games. I have a Linux box at home for networking. I have an iBook on which I run MacOSX and Yellow Dog Linux.

So, Mr Jef "Allowing users to customize their desktops creates a hodgepodge of interfaces" Raskin, I have a question: Have you considered that my life is already a hodgepodge of crazy and different intefaces, and that skins and themes actually let me make it MORE regular?

(Yeah, I know he's not really reading this. But I needed to vent somehow. If Sun, Apple, MS, and Red Hat will suddenly all agree on a common UI, I'll drop my need for customization.)

Arrogance by Ender_the_Xenocide · 2002-03-01 20:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

OSO: The benefits of a consistent interface are only fully realized when the interface is well designed to start with. What would you say to those individuals who have a bad default desktop? Is it more ideal for them to skin their OS, or are they better off moving to another platform that has a well-designed default interface?
Jef: I remember one client of mine who boasted about his customizable desktop and how he never had to reboot his software. I set the system font to red and the background to red. You couldn't see a thing. He spent a few minutes trying to find and open the now-invisible menus that would let him change one of the colors.
He had to reboot. His system was good in that it automatically saved the user preferences, so it came up red on red. He had not only to reboot, but to reload the software, losing all his demo data.

So, because you were an asshole, his design was bad? I don't get it.

I really don't understand the point that Raskin's trying to make here. That a UI shouldn't even allow changing colours? That seems pretty draconian. That people might change your settings behind your back, so there shouldn't be any settings? That seems pretty incoherant. That a system shouldn't automatically save settings without some way to undo the change easily? Good advice, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the question that was asked.

What is the point of this anecdote, and why is it here?

Re:Arrogance by GauteL · 2002-03-01 23:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually. The point is that the system should understand that red fonts on red background is a crash, and not do that.

Customize all you like, but the interface should be smart enough to recognize that certain cases is a "no no".

How Orwellian... by badasscat · 2002-03-01 20:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

The entire concept of "consistency" in interface design is misguided from the start. The issue of "practicality" is an important one but it's certainly no less important than the issue of human individuality. If everything in life were designed for practicality above all else, and if everybody were forced into using all the same products for the sake of consistency, I'm not sure I'd really want to go on living. The issue of interface consistency is no different than the issue of whether or not we should all be forced to drive Nissan Sentras and paint our bedroom walls off-white. Please, somebody kill me if that happens.

This whole argument also completely ignores the fact that the user interface is increasingly moving off the desktop and onto the net - advanced Flash web sites and even html sites can have their own user interfaces that have nothing to do with the OS or programs you're running and that have their own learning curve to deal with. In fact, for my job, I'd say I deal more with web-based interfaces than I do with my OS interface. Is this guy really going to argue that every single web site, no matter what the content, should have the exact same interface for consistency's sake?

I couldn't really care less if somebody has to spend 10 minutes acclimating themselves to my own preferences on my own computer, and I accept that I will probably have to do the same if I use someone else's (how often *do* people use each other's computers, anyway?). I don't personally see what the big freakin' deal is, especially if skinning allows me and everybody else around me to feel just a little bit more expressive, creative, and downright human in what's increasingly becoming a sanitized and overly regulated world - especially at the office. If I want to put a friggin' Final Fantasy X wallpaper on my office computer, it isn't up to this guy to tell me a plain white background would somehow make me more "productive".

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