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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..."
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.
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*
"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
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.
In our group, I strongly encourage everyone to keep their fscking mitts off of my machine. That way nobody gets hurt.
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.)
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?
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?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".
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!
Jakob Nielsen would say the spelling hurts the usability of Jef's name because it goes against our conditioning. Everywhere he goes, he must bear the burden of correcting people who misspell his name.
I'd say Jef is either quite angry with his parents' creative streak or there's something inconsistent about his behavior.