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Jef Raskin Talks Skins
gwernol writes "Jef Raskin, one of the original Mac design team and a distinguished figure in the world of user interface design has given an interesting
interview over on OS Opinion. He talks about the tradeoff between interface consistency and customizability, and particularly the impact of skinnable applications on usability. Interesting reading, including some harsh words for "guru UI designers" like Steve Jobs..."
Problem statement: If everyone uses a different skin, then you're lost if you use someone else's computer.
Obvious solution: Select your favorite skin on the other computer, do your work, restore to the original skin before you leave. This could be as quick as typing a number in a box "My favorite skin is #372 optionflags 17".
What the article says: Obvious solution not mentioned. It is assumed that you HAVE to deal with someone else's skin choice. Your subconscious chokes. Bad bad bad. UI expert conclusion: no more skins.
*sheesh*
Good article. The conclusion that uniform, scientific UIs will increase productivity seems pretty strong. The time lost in trying to understand a skinned interface cannot be too large, at least not at the mild complexity of computing we face today. Also, the uniqueness of a skin is what may help reduce repetitiveness that leads to inefficiency. I might argue that learning a variety of modified UIs is a good way to improve one's schema of UI design. Do we want to create a uniform environment that makes users unable to quickly adapt to different situations? Our minds can only handle so much information regarding a given schema, yet with practice, our representation of what fits the definition of a proper UI can be expanded. 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. There is really no argument against the author's claims; better coverage of the underlying issue--how much users want to balance breadth and depth of UI knowledge and processing--would have been really neat. Anybody have some good research links to point to?
The man seems rather arrogant to me, insisting that customization will reduce productivity and therefore is a Bad Thing(TM). With this kind of logic we should insist on only right-hand mouse settings since 90% of the people who use the computer are right-handed and would be less productive if they had to change the settings when they sat down at some left-handers computer.
Fact is, people generally customize their computers to make things easier on themselves, and to make the machines more pleasant to work with. Nothing wrong with that. Most machines are used by a single person anyway, and if that person moves on then the next will customize it according to his or her preferences. I can't see how the Ultimate UI will radically improve performance; this 'Ultimate UI' would probably just end up annoying a whole lot of folks who don't like what the 'specialists' think is the key to greater productivity.
Now, if the man was serious about improving productivity in the work place he'd abandon this topic altogether and lobby to ban web browsers from company computers. I'd bet my last dollar that web browsers are the source of more wasted time at work than all UI 'issues' put together.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Steve jobs did NOT invent the macintosh. he was the team leader after a while, and made it into his baby, but it was not his idea, or creation. in fact, jeff raskin deserves more credit for the wizardry of the mac ui than just about anyone else. i may not agree with everything he said about apple and/or jobs, but strictly from his experience, he has a right to voice his opinion, and the smart people will at least take what he says into consideration even if they dont directly follow the 'law of raskin'
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
They say that Jobs, disappointed with the progress on his pet Lisa project, commandeered the Macintosh team and "rode" it to victory. I've read the good, bad, and ugly biographies of Steve Jobs, and it seems to me that Raskin had a few good ideas in his "Macintosh Bible" that would have been pulled down by all his bad ideas if Jobs hadn't gotten involved and imposed his own brand of anal-retentive design fascism.
IIRC, Raskin wanted a pitiful 256x256 resolution, Jobs insisted on higher (512x384), which was one of the features which made the Mac Classic unique. He wanted white on black, Jobs wanted the paper look (black on white). Again, part of the original Mac's charm.
It seems like they both started out somewhat geeky, anal-retentive, and anti-social; however, Jobs has mellowed somewhat since he got booted from Apple for being so mercuric. Raskin still seems to be growing up.
Gee, looks like somebody doesn't want
See, this demonstrates the fundumental problem with "scientists" who view their science as foolproof. The problem with discarding human opinion is that a human will eventually have to use and adjust to whatever you construct. If you have crafted a "perfect" GUI by some magical formula, there is still no way to assure that everyone will a) like it b) fine it "perfect" or c) think it useful at all.
Now, I'm not a big Steve Jobs fan...but let's set that aside for a moment. Sure, it's nice that this guy's a "real UI expert" and Jobs was mearly relying on "guruism"...but, in the end, Jobs liked it as a human, did he not? (At least, that's the way the article put it.) And, given that computers and GUI's are operated by humans, shouldn't that account for something?
Most of the GUI process is dominated by the actual look & feel of the interface. Is there a formula for that? Really? I would be interested to see if his formula included stark and boring design elements, or curved and shiny ones. I would then be interested to watch a wealth of people throw their arms up in disagreement. THAT'S the point. That's why customization is important.
Some people love the default look of WinXP. Some people like the "Sliver" color scheme instead of the "Blue" one. Some people hate the skinned look and revert to the "Classic" interface. The list goes on...
Certainly, a little bit of context switching in certain situations is better than having some scientist dictate what the Ultimate GUI (tm) should be? Generally speaking, if the basic layout and whatnot is basically the same, the human brain is pretty quick at readjusting itself. When I switch skins from "Classic" to some crazy skin I grabbed from the web, it doesn't take me THAT long to adjust myself.
I'll take the risk of losing 20 seconds of productivity to staring at an interface I think is absurdly ugly and can't stand to look at for the better part of my waking hours.
-Jayde
What's a sig?
Not only is there not one grand perfect interface for the desktop but different apps will need vastly different interfaces.
Going along with the car analogy there is a great difference in the interfaces of a car and a backhoe, and yet they are both more similar than they are to a 747.
The needs, thought and work patterns of a graphic artist are different than those of novelist, whose needs are a bit different than a short essay writer.
The one grand UI is a chimera, and I hope it stays that way.
KFG
well, yes. i respect mr raskin a lot too, and owe a lot of my happy computing experiences to him. that's why this article is troubling me. i pretty much disagree with most of what he said as well... I think skinning is a good thing, as long as it is based off a workable standard. take for instance kaleidoscope for os9. You could completely changed the way your windows looked, and the colors of everything you wanted, but it still stuck to the functional standards. menus and buttons were all in the same place, although they might look funky. and the best part of kaleidoscope skins is the fact that they are system wide, and work on any properly programmed app. This is an example of a skinning application that did it right.
raskin's attitude in this article does worry me tho. he is a very smart man, but i dont like the 'my way or the highway' attitude he is taking. i think freedom to customize can greatly enhance the computing experience when it is based off of what he would call a functional 'scientific' gui model. I have been reading stuff raskin said for many years about GUIs, and i have agreed with him for the most part. but i can only listen for so long before i have to say 'Put up or shut up.' Mr Raskin, please show us this gui you have in mind for all of us. Please stop talking about it endlessly and just do it. You can rag on Steve Jobs all you want... but to quote Steve, 'Real artists ship.'
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
As the parent post says, he has become quite arrogant... and I daresay a bit jealous of Steve Jobs.
Please understand, I've been what is called a "Mac Fanatic" since I first saw one in 1984. I now make my living on NT, AIX, Linux, etc. but still prefer to use Mac OS X at home.
At least once I day a cuss (under my breath, or, often loudly) NT 4 because it is HORRID interface design. And this is AFTER I moved the task bar to the top so the Start "drop-down" menu doesn't "drop-up" (with "Shutdown" being the first thing you encounter on the Start "drop-up" menu!), created "shortcuts" (that don't work completely or intuitively) to all my drives on the desktop, etc. to mimic the interface Jef created in, what, 1980? 1982? (with improvements since, of course)
But he needs to lighten up now. He is, IMHO, the Father of the GUI. (I'm not trolling and don't want to rehash old Xerox PARC arguments. I'm talking about mainstream markets.) But he's been really hard on OS X's Aqua interface and I like it. There are things in Aqua that I, personally, think are a step backward. But I can modify those THROUGH PREFERENCE SETTINGS (or other easy modifications) to be more like what I'm used to, and overall, I think OS X is the coolest OS in the history of personal computing. ("You got your point-and-click ease in my powerful OS!" "You got your powerful OS in my point-and-click ease!") Two great tastes that taste great together.
My message to Jef is: Rest on your laurels or continue to innovate. Either way I can respect you. But don't become the guy that makes his living by criticizing what others are doing. That's John Dvorak's job.
Raskin makes a good point that it's a pain in the butt when you switch to someone else's computer, and they have skins set up in some weird friggin' way that takes time to adjust to.
Various posters here have made the point that it's human nature to want to customize things. Which is true, but this reply is an inadequate response to Raskin's argument that time is wasted whenever you jump to a computer with a foreign skin.
So here's my humble little proposal, and, to my knowledge an original idea. This problem could largely be solved simply by using the net. Why not have a website or registry somewhere that stores YOUR OWN personalized skin? That way, when I go onto your computer and am horified by your choice of screen colors, button preferences, etc...all's I need to do is visit UIpreferences.com and type "Schlemphfer" and my password. Voila. Now your machine has preferences identical to my personal system.
When I finish using your machine, I'd then hit a button which would restore the machine to the owner's preferences.
Seems to me that prior to the net, when we all used non-networked computers, the case for Raskin's "adhere to One True Way" argument was far stronger.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Yes. But there is a big difference: Your girlfriend did not move the position of any of the controls (i.e. she didn't exchange the pedals or something). She just made the car fit her in a physical way. Also note that in a car, it's quite easy to adjust things, while on computers you often have to dig deeply into obscure menu structures. Raskin's "red on red" is a good example of what's wrong with the kind of UI customization that is offered by current systems.
I used to think that too. Try a better monitor, and do not set it to maximum contrast. (I'm serious about this. Black on white is much more readable.)
This is a good example, but this doesn't mean customization as offered by current systems is done well. I would (like, probably, you) not want to read code on someone's computer if he's set up high contrast comments, slightly lower contrast code. Still, that person shouldn't be forced to read code the way I like it. But that's not the problem -- the problem is that you can't change the setting with a simple mouse click, like you can arrange the seat in your car with something as simple as pulling a lever and then simply moving the seat to where you'd like it to be.
But I think there is also a lot of truth in what Raskin says. Most of the skinning and customization options available on current system just increase the coolness factor, not the usability. You can't tell me that a semi-transparent menu is more usable than a non-transparent one. Regarding your example of source code, you cannot customize the way code looks when reading a book. Still, you probably do read example code in books, don't you? And you probably don't have too much difficulty doing so.
But while "no customization" does solve the problem of "bad customization", this doesn't automatically mean that "good customization" is impossible and shouldn't be available in a good GUI.
I've read Raskin's book, and this interview is really way below the quality of the book. Raskin ought to apply the scientific methods he talks about to the reasoning in his interviews, just like he applied them to the reasoning in his book.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
The car analogy actualy presents us with an answer.
Power seats that remember driver position. These come in some of the higher end cars now.
Why not do this for preferences?? It is rather trivial to do with the MAC. I would like to speak of it in other terms....
Using a keychain microdrive (USB?) with about 16-32 MB of storage, you could not only provide a secure login method, but also store preference data. Any application that was "(Insert Marketing Term) aware" would store it's preferences in a registry type repository, and would be synched with the microdrive.
Moving to a new computer would be a matter of plugging in your "key", which would read your user data, log you in and apply your preferences to the "registry". A 32MB Mircodrive should have no trouble storing your Photoshop Prefs, Background images, Winamp skins, etc... Power users will want larger Microdrives.
As time evolves, The Gimp will learn to read Photoshop Prefs, etc..., But at the very least, like applications will work in like ways on different machines.
Even in standardized interfaces, there will still be "preference related items" like bookmarks, recently used files, etc. I personally would just like to have my bookmarks and preferences stored and merged between home and work. Standardized interfaces are difficult to achieve even in the corporate environment where a given OS may only have 10-20 different uses.
Raskin is full of empty criticism. For all of his chirping, he has not created this perfect interface. Perhaps it's too hard for him to get in the industry?? He has no buisness commenting on Eazel when he has nothing better to show.
Finally, he made a crack about the default "Aqua" colored background, whether the Redmond or Cupertino version is unclear. If he is talkling about that horrible off-blue that was the default for Win95, that was chosen for another reason.
Blue waves travel slower, and hence a monitor displying a blue field will have less noticable scan lines from refresh than a red field would.
Complex problems require overlooking simple solutions.
~Steve Jobs
Jason
When the Mac came out in 1984-ish, a big part of the computer industry (including the press) talked about ideal user interfaces. That was the whole point of the GUI pioneered by PARC.
A lot of the interfaces done up until that time were unique; 1-2-3 had a unique interface, Wordperfect had a unique interface.
What apple did that was revolutionary wasn't the GUI, it was they defined an environment for all programs to use which enforced a common user interface. The net result was groudbreaking because a lot of the basics were the same in each application. Remember, WYSIWYG was the hot buzz word (words?) back then, so the entire frame of reference was different.
So, the evolution so far was:
No interface -> Application Specific Interface -> Common User Interface
What's wrong with this picture? Well back in the day when the CUI was the hot ticket, the idea of desktop "metaphors" was in vogue. The trash can was there because you understood that deleting a document was like throwing away a piece of paper on your desk. So in fact, the interface of the Mac was supposed to be a metaphor for a user's desktop (in fact, its still called a desktop).
But a desktop isn't a good metaphor for recording music, or taking pictures, or doing an unlimited number of tasks.
Why shouldn't the garden hose have the same interface as the typewriter? Because each interface exploits the unique features and attributes of that type of device.
So in 2001, computers are several orders of magnitude more powerful than 1984 and we really have the ability to create much closer metaphors.
In fact, you could say this argues against a common user interface. It says the interface should be the best to do the job at that time.
I fall somewhere in the middle. There is clearly a value of having the idea of a desktop metaphor. There is value in having experience framework for doing computer related tasks. But ideally there is a balance between consistency and the best interface for the task at hand.
So I find Jef's interview interesting, but I think he's still stuck in a 1988 period of UI design. No offense to him, he's a smart guy and I don't discount what he says, but based on the comment's he's made, I think the computer world has passed him by.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
So as I understand the article, consistency is desirable for increased productivity because it allows the user to work at different computers without getting confused.
Did an article have to be written to state that? It is just common sense. Consistency is obviously the ideal in multi-computer work environments such as computer labs, POS terminals, etc.
However, it is preposterous to assume that everyone works like that. Many, like I, work on one computer consistently. Let us for the moment forget the "Gee golly, I'm expressing myself" customization arguments. I use my computer at least 90% of the time I use computers. And this is the truth: My customizations are all geared to make me more productive. And this is another truth: They do make me more productive.
For us unicomputartians, eliminating customizations is ridiculous. Should I have to sacrifice my productivity 90% of the time I am working on my computer so that I may be more productive the other 10% of the time I'm working on other computers?
Jef does make a good point:
"Of course, there are no really well-designed interfaces out there good enough to prove the point that you don't need preferences."
Maybe that is why customization is essential to my productivity. Maybe a utopian UI will eliminate the need for customization. I doubt it. Not when you put humans into the UI equation.
This should be obvious. Don't we as people interact differently with different people? Do you interact exactly the same with your mom as you do with your friends? Do you tell your mom dirty jokes while kissing your friends and telling them you love them? Well, you might, but it is still a sure bet that you adapt your interaction to the person you are interacting with. In essence, you CUSTOMIZE your interface for the benefit of yourself and the individuals your are interacting with. Why do you do this? Because each person you interact with is different and your relationship with them is different.
This can be made analogous to our interaction with computers. Each person's aptitudes and behaviors are unique. Also, our relationships with our computers vary: In other words, people do different things with their computers.
Can one UI be developed that can most effectively deal with ALL the differences in people and ALL the different work situations? Without the benefit of customization?
Heck no.
Maybe in some utopian parallel universe, it could be done. I highly doubt it. And it certainly will not be done in the present software development environment of feature bloat and "we'll fix the bugs after release."
Despite Jef's insightfulness, he does make some silly arguments:
"But what if you say to me, "So what, I like it better my way even if it doesn't work as well." Then, if I give you preferences, I am abdicating my role as a responsible designer."
Yes, I've seen people customize their interface in a way that makes them less efficient. But these people are determined to be less efficient no matter what UI you put in front of them. It is well recognized that there are organized, efficient people, and those that are not.
And if a person is stupid enough to change their colors to red on red, then that person is going to have a hard enough time dressing himself, let alone use a computer.
So it remains true: consistency for the group, customization for the individual.
You can't have Yin without your Yang.
Ihuj
ihuj_at_yahoo_dot_com
Skins are nice in theory, but in practice, all the skinning implementations I've seen suck. I can't stand them.
For example, take Windows Media Player 6 versus Windows Media Player 7.
WMP7 is skinnable, but WMP6 is not. WMP7 has a "WMP6" skin to make it look like WMP6. No problem, right? Wrong.
WMP6 was not skinnable, but it gave me a pretty good degree of control over what widgets got displayed. You want a minimalist interface with only the video window and the buttons? Fine, toggle a few checkboxes and half of the clutter is gone.
Unfortunately, in WMP7, the "WMP6" skin mimics the default look of WMP6 and nothing more. It includes all of the widgets and all of the clutter. There are no checkboxes to hide or show certain widgets.
Well, if you don't like it, just edit the skin, right?
You have got to be kidding if you expect a normal user to modify skins or to make his/her own.
Maybe WMP isn't the best example of a skinning implementation. I'm sure that there are some really good implementations out there with easily editable skins. In general, however, most of the skinnable programs I've seen aren't much better, nor are their skins so easy to edit that my mom could do it. What's worse is that a lot of these applications seem to use skins as an excuse to ignore usability in their default skins. Hey, if the community doesn't like it, they can't make their own skin, right?
You want customizability? Fine. How about giving the user a choice between skins or not? Me, I'd rather have no skins, with a faster, well-designed interface that's consistent with the OS.
Skins may have their uses, but they aren't some magic panacea.