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Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"?
rtphokie asks: "The story about the TiVo get-together along with some recent trials and tribulations rolling out a knowledge base along with the time I've spent recently helping my 80 year old grandfather with this VCR and TV has gotten me thinking about user interfaces and the elusive "user-friendly" label. When someone who thinks of themselves as 'non computer savvy' works with a gadget like TiVo and compains that it's 'too complicated', how should we react? Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual. The tendency has always been to blame the interface and ultimately the engineers who designed it but isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame?
Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"
The objective is to get a learning curve that isn't too steep, while still allowing complicated tasks to be done.
This usually takes the form of a division into 'simple' and 'advanced' modes of operation. This is probably too niave an approach though.
where are you getting your examples? your 80 yr. old grandfather? that doesnt represent the majority, almost all people age 1-30 now a days can operate more technical devices than their parents.
>Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"
:) EVERY SINGLE ONE IS STUPID. At least the ones that call me are.
You obviously dont work with customers
i have a customer hell bent on moving to windows/office xp so he can use the 'new, must have' features they offer ... for example, being able to do speech-to-powerpoint stuff.
i could blame it on ms, or the 4000 ms-centric mags out there hyping it, not sure. i've tried to tell him the setup he has now works perfectly fine, but, he wants to switch. after all he *needs* this extra fluff.
at least he knows i charge extra for supporting xp.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
I mean people still crash for no obvious reason, right? How user friendly is a refrigerator or a power drill? How user friendly is your girlfriend?
Obviously Macintoshes and Windows are too easy to use , thats why we use *nix.
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
My basic theory of UI is that if it's the person's job to do something, then you can expect them to "RTFM". But if they're doing it for recreation, you should expect them to want to put in the minimal effort possible. As far as the Tivo goes, I can imagine one in the not too distant future that responds easily to voice commands. For a consumer product, that level of simplicity is what we as designers/engineers should strive for.
I feel that a large majority of the time it is mostly the user's fault, and I speek from personal experience. My father often asks me to help him use his computer. He called me down once saying he installed new software and he think it broke his computer because an error showed up he had never seen before after he restarted, I go down and read it... it says something to the effect of "Thank you for installing " with the one button "Ok". He didn't even bother to read it, he instantly assumed things were more complicated than they should be.
You seem quite a bit hotile to the everyday stupid, lazy person! Let me guess, you majored in Human-Computer Interaction?! :-)
Seriously though, I can't say I blame you...we are too lazy to read a manual...or possibly just to prideful. At the same time, I remember a Slashdot article a few weeks ago about manuals in other countries and how users there actually read them...
So while I understand your point, I think a truly good interface needs no manual. At the same time, I also believe that the possibility exists that such a thing isn't possible.
People designing the interface just have to face facts that they can't please everyone...and I think we'd all be better off if people would stop buying devices they have no intention of taking the time to learn...I mean, it's great that we live in a country where you can buy anything you want...just don't bitch when you're too lazy to learn how to use it properly...
Never. The simpler something is to use, the better.
Don't confuse simple to use with basic - just because something is easy to operate it doesn't mean that it's incapable of doing some complicated things.
Many examples spring to mind but the telephone is top of my list. With my phone I can call half way around the world in just a few seconds - heck, even my two year-old nephew can.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No, but there is a such thing as too much User Friendly. How many hours have I wasted reading cartoons that 1% of the population would even understand, much less think amusing....
...is to just "Wizard" every action the user may need to take. By trying to anticipate what the user wants, a wizard can be provided to allow the user to quickly, and easily, complete their task. Of course, then you end up with a wizard so large and complex that it becomes an OS in itself, and one needs to read the help files associated with each option to successfully progress thorough the wizard's heirarchical structure (refer to Windows XP's default settings for the control panel). You have to know what each option does before you can click it. So eventually, when wizards rule the lands, there will be a manual for the wizards! And, as a "computer guy" I can still say "RTFM!"
Checkpoint Firewall 1 ...without getting into the whole "My firewall is better than yours" thing, Checkpoint has some nice features, but THAT GUI has probably done more damage than anything else on the net.
I work in tech support. (pause for groan) It never ceases to amaze me. People shell out $2500+ for these new systems, then promptly toss the manual in the fireplace. I blame the advertising, really - "So easy to use, no wonder it's number one," to cite one particularly aggregious example. Computers are NOT simple, and they will never be simplified past a certain level of complexity. (not, at least, without locking down the "box" completely and not letting anyone mod anything) Common sense alone should dictate that if you spend thousands of dollars on something, you read the manual to learn how to not make it blow up. Yet, the public seems to be lacking even this level of intelligence. No wonder they can't work their computers.
I've had too much user friendly! Now I crave some Penny Arcade! Great tech comic sites. :)
...is the one that reads my mind and does what I want before I know what it is...
It's the matter of choice that I appreciate.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
The user interface should be easy enough to use that it doesn't require the user to consult the manual to get basic functionality out of the product at the very least. There is a tendancy to blame engineers for products not being user friendly because they are notorious for doing increadibly stupid things (the kind of thing that they could improve upon if only they had actually used the product they designed for about 10 minutes). If a product is designed well, the real problem that comes into play is the fact that the same people who are too stupid to work with the product a little bit and feel their way through and figure out how to use it are the people who expect to work right for them without putting forth any effort. The design can always be improved upon, but there will always be people who will have trouble with it.
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
Honestly, if I don't figure it out by meddeling with the interface I just love to get the full-featured manual and read it and follow instructions. For me it has worked with numerous VCR's and other appliances. Unfortunately, *reading* is something even 80 year old grandfathers don't do anymore because technology is supposed to be intuitive. :-(
Call me oldschool...I'm sorry...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I don't care if software is made to be user friendly, but never at the expense of functionality. There are those of us who don't mind doing things the "hard" way, because a lot of the time it's A) a lot faster and B) you have more control over the process.
I refuse to use a piece of software that treats me like a ten year old, just like someone else might refuse to use a piece of software that expects them to actually know something about what they're doing. It would benefit software makers to outfit their applications with multiple interfaces -- one with all the "helpers" and "wizards" etc., and one for the rest of us. I'm aware that they have been doing this for a while, but it seems as though nowadays software makers are slowly but surely dumbing down their interfaces to make their software appeal to Joe Average. I don't really mind, provided they give users the option to turn off "Dumbass Mode".
It needs to fill a demand, so it should be intuitive to use in fulfilling the need.
I need to be able to look where it should be and find the answer. If I haven't read the manual I should still be able to navigate the menus and submenus to find the function that I want.
All good products are intuitively easy to use.
User friendly is not having three shortcuts to do the same thing, but having one really obvious and intuitively placed shortcut. Menu structure, and Icon placement and pictures are key to easy use.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Do you know how your car works? Your fridge? The plane you fly on? Your phone? I program, so I consider my self technically savy, but I definitely have no idea (well I know the rough basics) and truthfully, I don't really care. I just want them to work. If I had to know the intimate details of every tool I used I wouldn't be able to get anything done.
This reminds me of certain responses from OSS programmers when told that grandpa can't use linux, 'He should learn how to use it' they say. Well he can build a house, live in the woods for years on his own. It's not like he's stupid. He just shouldn't be expected recompile his kernel or anything. Computers should be intuitive and operating systems transparent.
just my two cents.
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Bruce Ediger, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
As a web page developer for the past 5 years, I have gotten a little tired of catering to the ADD attitude that so many web surfers have. It is frustrating to have to dumb down an application just becuase more than 4 sentances cannot be written on it's usage.
God save the CLI and other clunky, complicated interfaces that force people to think about what they are doing before they do it. I would like to see the "monkey wanna bannana" user attitude fall to the wayside in another 10 years or so.
Maybe this will happen as technology advaces and becomes more necessary to live our daily lives. I think it will. Just think about how much more talented your average 15 yearold H4X0R than you when you were 15.
User friendliness is a bit too subjective a term - it varies so much between users. One of the problems with a lot of modern technology is that people want so many features that extra buttons have to be added in, and extra steps - a large percentage of people never use these. I only use 4 buttons of around 30 on my DVD remote. If we took these off then we'd only have "Play", "Pause", "Stop", "scan" and "FW/ Rewind" (although I had to use "subtitle" for Crouching Tiger...), and then the techies would complain. A lot of it's about having something for everyone, and showing off all their "cool" features, but for the less tech-savvy this extra level of complexity just makes things unusable.
This coupled with the fact that a lot of the manuals are in poorly translated Korean (No joke) can make things intimidating for people - but most users are now more tech savvy. Home computers, VCRs (DVDs) et al have only been around for the last 20-30 years or so - is it any surprise that those outside the generation that grew up with them find them a little daunting?
The user-friendliness will change with the same controls / appliances over the next 50 years as the 'older generation' changes to the relatively 'tech-savvy'
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
"Make something that even fools can use and only fools will want to use it." "It's impossible to make something fool proof because fools are utterly ingenious."
"Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual."
Pardon me? I don't know about other fields, but here in the computer field, more so admin and support areas, we aren't inclined to admit we know what 'Forgive' means. I mean, if the above is true, does this mean I work in the last dept on earth that signs the occasional support reply w/ "RTFM" or "Ticket # ID10T" ????
Say it ain't so!
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
with all respect to your G'father, he has probably not operated enough electronic items to learn the "language" of electronic gadgets. The more he operates, the more likely he would intuitively understand how to use something.
;)
This idea is discussed in Donald Norman's Design of Everyday Things, which is a great book for UI people.
Also, I have never seen the Tivo's UI, so it could be poorly designed...
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Yeah, I just love that sort of thing too.
The only thing worse are the "graphic artists" that come into a shop and are re-labeled "experts" at GUI design. Just because you know how to draw a button doesn't mean you know where it goes.
I've lived through that twice on two different projects, and I'll tell ya, but of those people's designs just sucked.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The word is MOOT you fucking idiot. MOOT MOOT MOOT MOOT
A "mute topic" is a topic that doesn't speak.
I had a partner that used to say that ALL THE FUCKING TIME "well, that's a mute point". I would especially cringe when he would say it to a customer.
Sheesh, are people that fucking ignorant and retarded???
It seems that there is always a trade off between user friendly and user choice. The more options you give your users the harder time novice users will have making a decision.
.conf files which makes them more difficult to remotely administer.
I find that some of the Linux distros have nice gui configuration tools but have unusually complicated
This is probably why so many serious linux people are moving back to simple systems like slackware or gentoo.
"a point where users have got to share some of the blame"
:)
:P
Insert your religious word of affirmation here.
God created manuals to train the faithful. One cannot go against the word of God. -- The Coder Muad'dib, upon defeating the Padishah Emperor Gates.
Do you read the rules of the road before driving? Do you read the instructions on your medicine? Read through the booklet that came with your power tools?
If not, good for you. You're doing the world a favor by eliminating your genetic strain.
If so, why not for other things, such as computers, VCRs, et cetera? What, is reading 'so hard' and painful? Oh, I know what it is - you must have such a busy life that you can't read through the simplest of install documentation, yet you can spend six hours fragging people in Quake 3?
I refuse to talk to anyone who bugs me to 'fix this' or 'fix that' if they haven't at least made an attempt to research the problem for themselves. Sure, I'm losing some spare change and/or a free beer or two, but I'd rather see people I know *learn* something.
Why do does seem that even educated people stop thinking when they sit infront of a computer? I have seen doctors, engineers, teachers, and lawyers sit infront of a computer and just stop thinking completely. As soon as the computer is on they belive say 'I dont know how todo this, do it for me.' Here we need tough love. We need to educate people instead of dumbing it down for them. If we keep dumbing down everything soon we will live in a world of no sharp corners and then how are we going to cut our meat? While a bad UI sucks.. its even worse when we reinvet the UI for each user.. becuse unless they can just 'know' how to use it they will never learn it. Its time we start looking at technology as something that people need to learn how to work with.. and not insticvtly understand. This means better documentation, cleaner UI's, and never dumbing something down to the lowest commone demonotator. But rather we should understand.. some people are stupid.. and we dont need to work with them until they make themselfs Un-stupid.
Credited to one of my coworkers (who designs UIs), after pressing the wrong button on a shoddy UI:
"ARRGH, do what I'm THINKING, not what I'm telling you!!!"
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
I understand them perfectly, and they are just lame. I can only assume that it's people who don't understand them that think they are amusing.
Now go build your system so that someone can use it without knowing anything. Also, make it so that an advanced user can get to the functions she wants without going through some idiotic "wizard."
UI tests with actual users? What a interesting thought!!! Maybe someone should try that, too!
Yeah, right.
I know quite a few people who can't program their VCRs, and seem proud of their ignorance. These are not (all) stupid people, but it seems that anything even slightly technical is beyond the interest of most of the population. (I'm laughing here thinking of the episode of the Osbornes where Ozzy is trying to use his state-of-the-art entertainment centre: "Why is it you need f*ckin' compuer skills to turn on the f*ckin' telly!?")
When something as simple as setting a start and end time plus a channel is beyond a large proportion of the population, it's going to be impossible to design an interface for TIVO that *anyone* can use. At some point you have to give up...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
From a marketing point of view you're dead wrong. If you want to survive in a competitive marketplace you can't be telling your customers to RTFM. It just doesn't work that way. Bash Microsoft and AOL all you want, but part of their success is definately due to ease of use.
There is no such thing as "too user-friendly". If someone buys a surround sound stereo system it's because they want good sound while they watch movies. They really shouldn't be asked to learn the intracacies of stereo system design.
In the end, it should just work. If you don't make a product that's easy to use, somebody else will.
The culprit is the sheer number of new inventions that people have to learn. Do you really have time to read every manual?
Microsoft Bob
There is a cool video that discusses these issues and many more. Details over at good old imdb.
--onby
1) Lack of basic knowledge or incentive to acquire it. I sell computers in your basic retailer setting, and consumers really are the dumbest, laziest people out there (in general, there are always exceptions). Nine times out of ten, a customer would rather complain that something is too difficult than take the extra five minutes to simply read a short section from a manual. I have people call and ask me how to connect, say, the line level plug to their speakers on the computer they just bought. Anyone who has opened a retail computer in the last two years knows that there is a big, glossy fold out "poster-size" page with a color illustreation of the three steps necessary to plug in basic cables. Square peg in square hole, blue trapezoid in blue trapezoid-al hole. Things 4-year-olds have already mastered. It also never ceases to entertain me when customers will readily spend an extra $200 to get a machine with four features they don't need just so they can have more RAM. "But," I'll say, "You can walk right over there and get an additional X MB and pop it in. Do you really want to spend another $200?".
Problem 2: Easy-to-use is obviously subjective. I prefer a heavily hierarchical organization in everything. On windows machines, I'll typically have only 4 categories under "programs", each with sub-categories and sometimes sub-sub-categories, ie. Entertainment->Games->FPS->Q3. It makes sense to me and allows me to launch programs more quickly. It frustrates the hell out of my girlfriend, who prefers the "Giant alphabetical order list" of programs. Of course, her method is far more suitable on my iBook.
So, to summarize: Ease of use still requires a little bit of education/effort in learning. What's easy to use for you or the interface designer may not be easy to use for Grandpa or my girlfriend or me. Allow a good degree of customization and configuring, but make those options obvious and easy to locate.
From the engineering side, products could/should have much better interfaces. The interface should just be more than a way to access every feature. It should present some sort of logical pattern. Part of that is trying to figure out how the product is going to be used (as opposed to should be used), and try to identify how your consumers are going to look at it.
As an example of this, consider the VCR. The basic functions for tape manipulation (play, stop, rewind, fast-forward) are generally on larger buttons and prominently labeled. Good design there -- of course, then they make the buttons needed to program the thing small and badly labled (dark blue text on black background!?!). The engineers failed to recognize that those buttons would be important to me.
On the marketing side, consumers are misled. The easiest way to get someone to identify a task as difficult is to convince them that it should be trivially easy and then make it just slightly more difficult than that. No matter how easy it is to do, if you've got people's expectations set to expect easier, the task seems impossible.
As an example of what I mean by this, consider the PVR marketing which tends to claim that the unit (regardless of who makes it) is just as easy to use as a VCR. That's a nice thing to say... and as someone who has owned multiple VCRs for more than 10 years, I expect something that is downright trivial to operate. Well, they aren't. Luckily I'm used to menus, 'selecting' items, and navigation keys from my experience with other devices... but my expectation (from the marketing) was set to 'extremely easy', and it wasn't.
In summary:
Matt
Everyone writes one interface for every skill level. There ought to be different interfaces according to your choice, or according to what level of interface the system thinks you can handle.
That last part's a bit broad, so I'll clear things up. With a normal PC, you've got CPU cycles to spare, and the computer has time to tell if you move deliberately for a menu choice, or if you're hunting for it, or if you keep choosing something, and cancelling out of the choice.
For a VCR, the default interface should be as simple as the buttons on the front. If you read the manual a bit, it will tell you how to turn on the intermediate features. If you read a lot, you can turn on the advanced features. If you read waaay too much, you get to turn on the command-line interface that uses reverse-Polish notation, in Aramaic, but displayed approximately by using Turkish for vowels, and Cantonese for consonants.
Everyone's not as comfortable with it as folks like us are, and because computers can do sooo bloody much, we should stop boring them, and give the computers more to do, such as providing different interfaces for different skill levels. We use short command interfaces with our kids and our pets ("Sit! Quiet!"), and much longer command interfaces with our peers ("Dude, nice frag!"). It's a very natural thing to do, and we ought to start allowing computers to do the same.
> but isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame?
Your product should be user friendly to your entire user base target. If it's a TV for the general public it better have an ON/OFF button Channel up and down, and Volume... If it's a TiVo targetted for the technically savvy then if grandma doesn't know how to use it off the bat then it's okay when the intended target for the TiVo are those who are technically savvy.
If TiVo is for everyone and everyone is not able to use it right off the bat then it is not user friendly enough.
Granted that most companies do not target every one but limit it to consumers with a Grade 6 reading level and have some common sense.
Everyone that doesn't satisfy those categories need to....
Sometimes there are really simple things that, when worked with, can have a great effect.
Take computers, for example. You "run" programs... (okay, some also say execute, etc, but the standard term is "run") That wouldn't make much sense to a beginning user. Notice they are even called "users." Wouldn't it make more sense for a user to use a program, rather than run it? You could logically say, "Well, I was using my email client when...," but saying, "Well, I was running my email client" could confuse a complete newbie.
There are other things, too. Various terms for actions are either misleading or hard for a beginner to figure out. "Minimize, maximize, shade" - all terms we understand, but new users have to learn. Wouldn't it be advantageous to find new terms?
This is something I'm waiting for a desktop environment to do. Change the jargon. Use words that people use in every day life. Wouldn't that make sense?
Think about a VCR. The standard operations are all simple. Play. Stop. Rewind is iffy. Fast-forward makes sense... go forward quickly. I think fast play would be better, but it sounds stupid.
Sometimes a little bit of thought mixed with the opinions of some beginners is all you need. I would, however, venture to say that the average company runs tests of it's products before they ship.
Just my $.02...
Shouldnt it be "From the RTFM Department? Sheesh, if we are going to have to start being all nice to end users, I am gonna start worrying!
> but isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame?
;-)
Wouldn't that be ALL of the time? Delete their files, erase their account, and lock them in the tape safe.
"Bastard Operator from Hell" articles here... Enjoy.
What we need is Minority Report style controlling, or something that listens to ambient conversation (sort of pseudo-AI, or even better real AI) and decides to play the damn movie when the people in the room agree to, talking amongst themselves, without directing anything at the DVD/TiVo/whatever itself.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"
Because M$ and AOL have been pounding that into people's heads for years through advertising and billions of bisks arriving in the mail saying so.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
... and I think we're seeing signs of how user friendly is too user friendly with the reviews of Gnome 2.
In that case the developers have gone so far in removing options and disabling features that they've started to alienate the target audience that most wants the product, for the sake of attracting the lowest common denominator.
I think part of the problem is that only the people who don't understand a system, any system, say anything about it. For every user that says "I don't get it" there isn't one that says "Made sense to me".
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
As developers, we have ultimate control over how easy a particular application should be to use. Making an application easy to use widens the user base therefore becoming a cymbiotic relationship between users (who want easy to use applications) and developers (who want a large user base).
As a mission goal developers should strive to make sure applications they develop are as easy to use as possible.
This is certainly a goal in the Windows world, unfortunately not yet so widespread in the Linux world.
1) Because users (i.e. all of us, including UI designers) have way too many things to do nowadays, too many tasks and events to deal with. Thus, they should not have to spend any time learning how to operate a widget, unless this widget is one of their professional tools (doctors surely do not complain too much about the complexity of certain medical equipment, pilots do not complain too much about the complexity of plane instruments, and last but not least, programmers surely complain when programming environments are too easy to use). 2) Because it is good for you, the UI designer. If people complain, you will push the envelope, you will devise better ways, you will simplify to the extreme, and ultimately that will be a good thing (except maybe for professional tools, once again, where features are often more important than ease of use). What I would agree with, however, is that users do not necessarily know what they want, or how to solve UI problems, thus the goal of UI should be to listen and to solve problems. In the case of a box like TiVO (I have not used it so I am just suggesting here... maybe what they have is much better), a way to simplify could be to have a big HELP button on the remote. Click it and a FAQ appears on the screen, with the most common procedures. Pick the one you want to do (e.g. "I want to record a show"), and the box guides you on-screen, step by step, while you are performing the procedure live (like a Wizard).
the audience of the UI. Non-computer savvy people will have a different level of training with common computer interface idioms, and require a lower-level of interface complexity. Lower complexity sometimes lowers the maximum possible UI productivity due to increased steps or elimination of full functional generality.
Computer-human interaction takes place on the basis
of a language- text, graphics, gestures. Since computers do not have the capability to understand or detect human intent or feedback at a high level, it is the interface is designed to present the functionality and language features at a relatively low-level of complexity. As most programmers will tell you, a text-language based interface is the most flexible and functional, but not the easiest to master. UIs are intended to bring the computer-human interaction less learning on the part of the human. Graphical symbols and gestures attempt facilitate communication rapidly and intuitively (pic==1^3 words, etc).
If an interface is used a lot, humans are
trained on the language and rapidly (sometimes)
acquire proficiency with the available functionality. At this point, the UI is often
a barrier if it is too simple. At least I find
GUIs are a barrier (I'm a programmer).
Anyway, it is possible for a UI to be too simple
if it lacks additional capabilities for proficient
users to quickly get their task done, esp. if the intent of the product with the UI is to be used frequently.
You asked: "Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?".
That's the wrong question: they don't expect that.
What they expect is that they will be able to fire up their new toy" and have it be usable. That's a *lot* different then expecting to "have a complete understanding of how to use it".
And the answer to the real question is "because they paid good money for the thing, it should do what it says it does without me having to wave a dead chicken over it".
-- Terry
Funny, we were just talking about this as it related to another post I just made. The thing is, there is no such thing as user friendly, at least the conventional meaning of the phrase. It all boils down to two factors:
The phrase "user friendly" comes about by confusing the two: somehow assuming that by being easy to sit down and learn with no work, something is easier to use. Then it's "user friendly."
Unfortunately, this isn't how it works in the real world, at least usually. A tool can be built that is easy to use---powerful, flexible, suited toward the job; or it can be easy to learn---no training required. Usually the tradeoff for the latter is that functionality is limited, so the user isn't overwhelmed. A balance of sorts must be achieved. Most of the best tools lean toward easy to use, and rightly so: you're only a newbie for a very short time. You may be using the tool for the rest of your life.
However, these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, either. It is possible, in theory, to build an interface that is both easy to use and easy to learn, as long as one does not equate the two, or think that one somehow implies the other. Doing this is rather tricky though. A good example of such interfaces are those for simple tools which can be applied to a wide variety of uses (a hammer, /bin/ls, etc.). Another example is that some games tend to use: the dynamic interface, which starts with a few key options, and gradually adds more.
Thus, "user friendly" doesn't really exist in the conventional sense, which equates this sense of immediate ease of learning with continued ease of use. Rather, ease-of-learning and ease-of-use must be balanced, and attaining something truly user friendly requires a lot more than having icons and a mouse, or fewer menu entries.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual.
Well, if someone paid me to design and build a tivo, they can blame me when it doesn't work the way they want it to. I don't know why everyone assumes that tech stuff has to be so obscure that people need to read the manual for everything. When was the last time you had to check the manual to use a cd player, or a pencil sharpener? When people can't figure out how to compile something everyone says "RTFM", when you can't figure out the pencil sharpener they assume you're a moron, or from a exclusive pen using country or something. The problem is clearly not the users, but these developers that don't understand their audience, and what it means to be user friendly.
Cars are probably the most user friendly device on the market. Just think about the potential reduction in deaths due to drunk drivers if cars were LESS user friendly.
Now, let's go to the computer side of things. Grade school children are able to find images online and print them out because of the current state of user friendlyness. I've heard of "computer class" where this is taught and encouraged, while at the same time, children who use paper, scisors and glue instead are somewhat shunned. (I think Clifford Stoll makes reference to this in "High-Tech Heretic".)
To a very high degree, user friendlyness removes control from the user and uses "logic" to try to make assumptions about what the user really wants. Just look at MS-Word and "auto-correct" which changes "Teh" to "The". (I had a classmate in university with the last name "Teh"... in the end I used vi.)
Am I big on user friendlyness? No. I use console Slackware. I use vi. I drive a stick. Perhaps I like to know that I control the output, and nothing will happen except what I tell it to do.
Is there anyone else out there that feels the same way?
Beware TPB
It's been my experience that:
1. 90+% of users are incapable and/or unwilling to think. Regardless of how obvious the UI is, they need to be sat down and trained like monkeys to repeat a series of steps to accomplish whatever they're trying to do. They cannot, or will not, stop, look at the screen, and make an intelligent choice on how to proceed. No matter how plain and simple the UI is, it's like they had a part of their brain removed.
2. About 5% of users can make decisions based on the UI to accomplish their goals.
3. The remaining few percent, which we would call Power Users, have a decent understanding of how computers work, how files work, where they're located, how to find them. They know that if they're trying to open a file, they can usually do this by clicking File, and maneuvering down the menu. They can figure out that if their X: drive isn't opening, it's probably because they aren't logged in to the network. They can take a tip, and make a logical conclusion, like "Oh yeah, okay, then I can do this and this. Thanks." These users are very few and far between.
Windows is great for the few who understand that there are common elements of (most) every application. Still though, it's that 90+% that will suck the life out of you every time.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I love people who are anal about spelling and grammar. heaven forbid people discuss the topic on the board
It's just that what's user-friendly (comfortable to use) for me, is not necessary that for you, or, what's worse, for the "average user".
I used to work supporting small businesses with their computers. I can't you the number of times that I got a call because their computer won't "work", and when I went on site, the computer was either unplugged, or the strip it was plugged into was turned off, or something stupid like that.
What this says is that computers aren't simple and error free but they are easy enough for most people to use and get work done on, and things are getting better as of late. Cars, unfortunately are getting increasingly complex and increasingly difficult to deal with when they don't work. I think we are quickly approaching the threshold where only idiots will not be able to manage their computer (granted sufficient exposure to them).
This doesn't mean that designers are faced with a black hole until after they build a product. It just means that design principles should be induced from what previous experience tells you usually works with users, rather than dictated by what designers think people should be able to deal with.
Manuals themselves are bad user design. Why should anyone ever have to go to read one, when the product itself should be able to explain how to do the task at hand, preferably by walking the user through it?
It looks like you're writing a letter... it looks like you're writing a letter... it looks like you're writing a letter... it looks like you're writing a letter...
Case in point. ;-)
if you're a design/interface coder trying to exculpate yourself. Why worry about making the UI better? It's the @$#% users' faults, they never read the manual!
Video games do pretty well considering no one ever reads their manuals. Maybe you should try ripping off the UI from some popular console games or something!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Please explain: petroleum, Romania, Carpenteria.
As a couple posters suggested earlier, the 'wizards' seem to be the epitomy of ease-of-use for most people, taking people through the setup process one step at a time. However, like (I'd imagine) most regular computer users, I don't use wizards because I've learned how to do things much more quickly and efficiently without the hand-holding.
It seems (to me) that the best option would be to have devices built with the 'wizard attitude' in mind, that the people using the device have never even imagined reading a manual. In the Tivo case, make sure the remote has a big "exit menu" button readily available that goes straight back to (familiar) normal TV, and have a list of wizards available for the user to choose if they'd like. Then include an areas where advanced users can choose to disable wizards and use the (theoretically) more efficient ways that come when you get to skip hand-holding.
People who don't RTFM are happy, people who do RTFM are happy, and the people selling them like hotcakes are happy : ).
-A
On the contrary; I think it's a powerful and much under-rated approach. The biggest hurdle for most people learning a new tool is (arguably) coming to understand the fundamental way it works. After that, the rest is often just details.
For example, if I'm using a new word processor, maybe I learn that its formatting is broken down according to characters, paragraphs, etc. and where to find the dialog for each. Then it's not a big jump to work out how to make something italic (a simple task) or to set up the kerning (a more advanced one). In this case, it would be useful to have a simple UI with common options (open and save files, change the font, run the spelling checker, etc) and a full UI with the whole lot (revision marks, change the number of columns, configure the grammar checker, perform a mail merge).
Personally, I used to like systems that worked that way. You could start simple and learn the big picture, and once you'd got the hang of it, switch everything on and see all the details. Then you knew everything was there and you could see where you stood. These days, everything seems to come with seventeen different ways to do the simple things and an options dialog with 100 different settings, most of which show or hide some feature if the menus aren't already adjusting under your feet before you start anyway (but luckily there are seven different ways to get help). Is this really easier to learn and more user-friendly, or just making a simple tool like a word processor seem far more complicated than it is? (There's an obvious commercial/upgrade angle here, but it's not really relevant to the issue at hand, so I'll gloss over it.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
- Congrats! You may enjoy this movie. Check it out!
Thanks, that's quite an interesting film. Like the nasty car crash at the side of the road, I just can't stop looking at it.I set up my new DVD player yesterday, and I wanted it to work perfectly out of the box. I'm tired of having to read manuals for every component (and all other kinds of hardware) I buy just to get it set up. At least with a RedHat install, it asks for my configuration the first time I use it. How hard would it be for a DVD player to behave the same way?
One theory I've heard (and empathized with, especially yesterday) is version fatigue... people just get tired of things being a bit different each time they set something up.
And hey, I'm inherently lazy. I found the instructions to fix the DVD in three pages... but I don't want to have to look. Prompt me for basic config, you underdesigning JVC engineers!
UserAdvocate: The voice of the user
No one else really advertises their products as being supposedly as simple as a computer. Let's take Dell for example:
What is their tagline? Something like "easy to own, Easy to use, Easy as Dell", with some other stuff thrown in. What makes a Dell running XP any simpler than an HP running XP or a whitebox running XP? Dell's cases are certainly easy and convenient to work in, but anyone who's heavily interested in the "easy to use/own" aspect probably isn't poking around inside.
Maybe they're referring to the buying process. Again, a lot of novice users (the ones who create the biggest tech support issues) are probably intimidated by the online/phone buying process. Hell, I run into people all the time who think that the local Best Buy or CompUSA must be the place to start looking for Dell.
If I were my mother (computer knowledge-wise), I wouldn't know what the hell to make of Dell's site. Desktop-wise, I have three tiers of systems, each of which is configurable. What benefit does this RDRAM have over that DDR-SDRAM? Do I need a 64MB video card? Why is this 7200RPM drive better, and what is the standard speed? I heard those Celerons were "bad"... and so forth.
Computers really need to be advertised less as electronic hubs or personal empowwerment devices and more as tools. I can't call craftsman when I'm having trouble building my deck, so why should Dell concern themselves with my solitaire playing issues. Don't scream "price" because if I'm talking about a quality set of power tools that I'd need to build a deck, I can dump just as much as I could on a mid-range home PC.
It makes me shudder when I see computers advertised as e-mailing home vides. How many home users have enough mastery to understand that they'll need to import DV, edit it down, then compress it to a size halfway workable enough for e-mail, when in reality the file SHOULD be uploaded to a website/FTP server and a link e-mailed?
In the industry's push to portray PCs as "must-have", heavily important "educational", "information devices" they have created a legion of consumers that seem to expect highly-trained "support specialists" to assist them when they can't get their picture to print out in the insane manner they seem to think it should. On the flipside, Craftsman has created a legion of users who have faith in the fact that this 150-year-old company can make a solid power-tool, and if you have questions about how to begin cutting the 2x4s, you should've hired a contractor. In reality, the two pieces of equipment are very, very similar, it's merely the perception that makes a customer feel one way about one and another about the other.
This is what I've been saying about WinXP since it's release. I could never use it. It's almost as if it's condescending and insults my intelligence by being too lay-person (read: user) friendly.
/. have had to enter a text command into unix, linux, even dos at one time or another. Also, most people on /. know more about computers than the average user. However, these new OS and other software are being designed with the average user in mind unfortunately. This is fine, but I want software with functionality, not some cute asthetic animation every time you use one of those functions.
Perhaps this is the argument in itself. 99.99% of people reading
Fuctional software (heh: oxymoron?) will become a rarity in the future and will be replaced by something even the simplest of uses can understand. I believe only specialized software will continue to hold its complexity and required specific understanding to use.
Really... That's the problem. We understand stuff, we read /. we can fix/modify cars, computers, electronics, and many other types of high-tech devices.
:)
Most consumers can't.
Most consumers are content to sit in front of a TV with a green picture because they don't want to adjust the tint in the setup menu.
Just remember when designing hardware or software:
1. Take the dumbest user you can think of.
2. Assume they are 1/2 as intelligent as you just give them credit for being.
3. Assume they have no troubleshooting or problem-solving skills (this assumption will be proven correct).
4. Assume they have the attention span of a hamster when reading manuals (this will also be correct).
5. When programming error handling routines, design the software to handle evey conceivable WRONG choice first before a correct choice. I mean, things happen that way in the field.
6. Give product to consumer. Take phone off hook & make self very, very unavailable for a few months. I suggest a long vacation in foreign lands. Do not take a cell phone.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Programmers have a tendency to always blame the user of being clueless, not making enough efforts, etc.
I personnally think that the user is ALWAYS right. If a user has problems with an operation, the problem is with the program. The program/computer should serve the human, not the other way around.
The problem is that a program that is easy to use is very hard to create. You can easily double or triple your creation time if you want to make your program intuitive to use.
Linux is a good example of this, no one beside computer savvy people and programmers are able/willing to make it work. Just today, I spent two hours figuring how to make debian recognise my NIC. Windows has a better interface, but has still lots of problems when it comes to ease of use. IMHO, MacOS is the most user friendly computer. I rarely need to read the manual when using a Mac program, everything is intuitive.
I know that some people will flame me saying that Mac are for weenies because they are easy to use and Unix rules since less than 0.01% of the population is able to make it work. I'll only answer that for me, being hard to use is a problem, and being easy to use is a quality. Better yet, being easy to use and versatile is the best you can have. But these things are hard to program...
GFK's
I'm always wary of doing things with a click of a button. How much fundamental complexity was weeded out, in order to bring such a simple system? Usually it is this sort of system that has less options instead of more. This brings out easier to learn, harder to use. The fact that there is such market demand for these design principles is disappointing. Goods do not often live up to their true potential.
Years ago, I was a sysprog on an insurance company's mainframe and I coded a lot of utilities (mostly in REXX, but still). Some were used by computer operators, some by application programmers, some by my fellow sysprogs, and some by insurance people. I found that it was significantly easier to code interfaces for fellow sysprogs and operators (I'd been an operator before moving to sysprog), then for the application programmers, and far hardest for the less technical insurance crowd. While they were (for the most part) intelligent people, they didn't think like I did. And even though I put a lot of effort into simplifying their interface (setting defaults, remembering preferences, structuring the inputs into logical groups), I never felt like I was really getting things where the user was comfortable with the result. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that there was only so much I could do; these people were by no means stupid, but they did look at things differently and all my interface design assumptions were based on the way that I perceived the problem.
Maybe the problem with user friendliness is that the people creating the interfaces are necessarily more technical. And even a manual is a sort of user interface and often are written by the people responsible for the interface that prompted the need for a manual. If a user doesn't have any grasp on the underlying assumptions that are built in to an interface, it doesn't mean that he/she is stupid...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Are cars user friendly? If user-friendly means that you can drive it off the lot without being familar with the car then the answer is no, cars are NOT user friendly. The problem is not the placement of the speedometer, the steering column, or the stereo knobs. You see, before you can drive that car off the lot, you have to know how to drive. It takes several weeks of practice to learn how to drive a car and be comfortable. It could be longer or shorter based on the car itself (manual or auto) and the talent of the person learning to drive. Once someone is familiar driving a car, they could drive just about any car they chose right off the lot.
I feel that consumer electronics fall into the same category. To be able to use consumer electronics "out of the box", you have have some familiarity with consumer electronics. It doesn't take years of use. It takes just enough use for the customer to grasp the basic concepts. Then off they go with TVs, stereos, DVDs, and consoles. Just as soon as they RTFM!
Let's consider a "simple" device: inline skates. The startup part of its "interface" is mind-numbingly simple: put it on like a shoe. The rest of its use is complex and non-obvious, a skill that must be learned. To aid this, there are the usual resources: instructors, books, videos, websites, etc.
As we put more function into our everyday tools, the ability to get at that function may be simple (putting on a skate) or it may be complex (proper inline racing form) depending on the task. Some of this is a function of the interface, but some of it is a function of the task itself. E.g. I expect most people to be able to handle a tape recorder just fine, but to still have a nasty learning curve on a professional multi-track audio recording suite. Why? While both are recording audio, the problems these tools were designed to solve are quite different. If you don't understand the problem, you won't understand the tool.
To some extent, this same situation applies to a tool such as TiVO, because it presents features that present a new model and more functionality than older but similar tools.
[Disclaimer: I'm not a TiVO user, so I don't pretend this to be a commentary yay or nay on its UI... just a perspective on UI complexity vs. tool problem domain complexity.]
...as a linux n00b, tell ya whut. I would have paid CASH MONEY for an interactive or just well designed slap full CD with all sortsa "howtos" for linux, and NO, I DON'T mean the man pages. It should be designed for the raw rookie, never touched a command line before. Obviously it would most likely have to be distro and desktop-centric, or so dang close it don't matter. It should be the first cd you put in after finishing an install. It doesn't have to BE on the install disk, or to LIVE on the hard drive, just be another cd with 700 megs of pictures (video is much better), screenshots, examples whatever for every program on the menu installed, plus a lot of basic command line stuff. Audio in the background describing what's going on.* If it's mostly pictures then a line of text showing/describing what's happening, that is sufficient, so this thing could probably be made reasonably fast, ie, a zillion screenshots, indexed mostly. some text, some man pages, but "different". NEW user friendly, not just "user friendly". If it's indexed correctly it would work, but it has to be better than the docs I've seen so far, which are at best, sorta dismal for a newbie.
*this is goofy, but to me, the SLICKEST thing when I first installed linux was getting the sound to work with soundconfig and hearing linus speak. this same idea, carried out in spades would be the biggest boon to linux-dom getting it past geeks only into mainstream, my opinion.
first big distro org does that will r001, dominate linux
But aren't you supposed to be an American? Which means understanding how to read/write and speak English? Geesh. Since when has /. switched to a mutated form of ebonics...damned geeks. :)
User Friendlyness is in direct inverse porportion to Efficiency.
Using zsh and urpmi I can tell my computer to download and fetch a program in second. Using kde and rpmdrake, it will take at least ten minutes. Using MSIE and download.com, I am looking at twenty minutes or more.
Using my own tools I can fix my car. But if I take it to the mechanic, and pay him to fix it, it will take much longer. I have to wait for him to get around to it. He is getting paid by the hour, so he is in little to no rush to get it done. (Yes, I am aware that the majority of mechanics give the good ones a bad name.)
Key combos are often faster, and much more efficient than a mouse. I am running 6 local consoles, and 4 X servers on my system. Doesn't that say something?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Maybe part of the problem is that computers and other electronic devices are genuinely very complicated things, and we are still learning how to make them easier to use. However, the marketing department sells them as "Your Plastic Pal who's fun to be with!" People have expectations which they wouldn't have if they had bought a fighter jet, MRI scanner, or orbiting space telescope.
I'm very much in favour of making things easy to use, but you've really got to make the user-friendly wizardly do its job and work robustly. It's no use having lots of wizards they can't automate the task adequately, or if you get cryptic "An error occurred." messages.
Some people prefer a manual transmission car to an automatic, or vice-versa. Automatics do a reasonable job, even though a manual gives you more control. But if computer companies made them, the slogan would say "With our new IntelliShift gearbox you'll never need to use the clutch again!" - and then your car would suddenly downshift to first when you're doing 70mph.
This post is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.
I love people who are anal about spelling and grammar.
Sorry, but this is not a question of "spelling and grammar". You didn't make spelling error, and you didn't make a grammatical error. Basically, what you said was "I'm going to go eat a moon" when you meant "I'm going to go eat a potato".
This is a question of not knowing what words mean.
Prolly cuz the keyboreds are two complixated.
The price for convenience is comprehension, and that's hardly a price, more like a prize...
F*CK!
-By attempting the impossible we can achieve the absurd..
There is such a thing as too stupid a question.
it's good to knwo that more than just myself have been thinking that it's time for the users to raise their level of participation rather than manufactures lowering the level of theri product. Praise be! now maybe the tech world can get a move on and creat all those moving sidwalks, flying cars, tansports and phasers that we have been promised.
You know, some things are complex and new. It's that simple. Somehow you have to tell this stupid machine that you want to record some World Cup game on some channel at some time using whatever silly buttons the manufacturer could afford. Can it be done better? Sure. Make it less complex by stripping away options (wizards, shortcuts, etc.) or make it less new by using metaphors (icons, desktops, etc).
But until the machine is smart enough to understand you, you will have to be smart enough to understand the machine.
But on to the point of my post. Difficulty of use of any piece of equipment is related to two design qualities. First, how many options is a user supplied with? Compare the Macintosh keyboard with the PC keyboard, a mechanical microwave timer with an electronic microwave timer, or a modern PBX station with a Bell System twelve-button POTS phone from the 1970s. A device that offers lots of possibilities right there on the front panel intimidates the inexperienced user and can disorient even the most seasoned. It is possible to offer functionality without disturbing the perception of simplicity by hiding it beneath a trapdoor, as some televisions and VCR's (and TiVo) do.
Many Americans being functionally illiterate, the second quality governing the perceived complexity of the user experience is the amount of reading a user must do to operate the device. Products with thick manuals firmly between the user and the functionality they want are an obvious target, but a more subtle yet influential problem is that some prompts, menu items, dialog boxes, etc. are too hard to (quickly) read. Products that talk too much tend to be perceived as complicated by the uninitiated and annoying by the initiated. Menu items should ideally be no more than one short, ideally monosyllabic, easily recognized word or phrase. Good examples are "Empty Trash", "Clean up", "Quit", "Back". Bad examples are "Empty Recycle Bin" (not so easily recognized, polysyllabic), "Open Web location..." (long, unclear, not so easily recognized: compare to "Go to..."). Menus should place more frequently used options in shallower places. RPN-style "Noun->Verb->Adverb" structures are good, as usually the user knows what they want to manipulate before they know how they want to manipulate it, but consistency is more important than the particular structure.
I am not a trained user experience professional, so take this advice with a salt shaker or two and all your wits.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
...is not one of user friendly but rather one of user understanding
.doc file?
.... and of course an excuse to blame.
fundamental concepts and being able to apply them in the learning feedback
loop so to enable second nature integration of the users mindset.
But as things are done in teh computer industry and competition and
anti-competition, it's hard for a user to make second nature anything
because the industry keeps changing things.
I.E. should a user have to learn how to use a word processor that they
would otherwise not, due to using something else, so to be able to read
a
But the problem is even worse than that as the whole nature of a computers
and programming is simply the act of automating complexity that is made up
of simple things. A process of automation that consist of some very basic
and small set of actions/functionality. And this level of simplicity of
applying concepts or actions/functionality is being kept from users in
general.
And it even gets worse, as the DRM is going to make it difficult to learn
how to do it the difficult way, should the user so chose to do outside or
four years of full time colledge and certification and license buying
etc...
So I guess what it all amounts to is the effort to not allow the user to
actually do things for themselves enough to actually learn something that
would help the user to make their use of computer more second nature.
You cannot make something user friendly and not allow user to use it. And
apparently blaming the users for the failure of the industry to what they
need to is the best excuse the industry can come up with. Hell they seem
to get everything else from the users, from ides to feedback to money to
I suspect this will be modded down but then that is apparently to be
expected.
I'd guess that most people reading this, including me, know more about info tech than 99% of the population. It's easy for us to say that anyone who doesn't figure computers out is just not making an effort and respond with a 'RTFM'.
... Wash DC? ... local judges? ...)
But why don't we look at some fields that perhaps are not part of our aptitude. How much time and effort have you spent learning about,
- a recipe?
- fashion and clothing?
- fine art?
- your elected representatives (quick, name the ones in the State capital
- giving your girl/boyfriend a mind-blowing orgasm?
Now, you may say, 'but these things aren't important to me; I don't have time for them.' And then you'll understand why all the 'lusers' don't RTFM.
There are too many stupid people on earth.
We need to make things harder to use, and eventually as a result the stupid portion of the world population will be culled out of the gene pool.
Of course, for this to work we'll need to graft lethal devices onto simple household appliances, but i'm sure there are enough bitter sociopathic techies out there to make this a nightmarish reality.
Without spelling and grammar, how are we supposed to understand each other?
It never occurred to me that by "mute" he meant "moot" so in this case it is affecting his ability to communicate in a very real way.
--I work for these very wealthy folks, live onsite. I do almost all the stuff around here from groundskeeping to repairs, unless it's a major appliance of course, then they call the company/contractor it was purchased from.
Coupla weeks ago, the boss tells me the downstairs AC is shot, hot as heck, got the knob cranked all the way down, blowing hot air out the vents. Well, we had another one go and it had to be replaced, so methinks it's a similar deal, equal age machines. Bosslady calls the installer, they are 2 hours away in the "bigcity". AC-guy drives all the way up, looks over unit outside, it seems fine. He goes into the house, flicks the thermostat to "cool"- it comes on. 80$ service call.
In my defense, I never went into the house to look, I ass-umed someone who could become a multizillionaire and who has a house fulla latest top of the line gadgets like lotsa boxen and wireless this and dvd that and satellite this and food transmorgifier that could operate a thermostat switch that says "cool-off-heat".
People simply have unrealistic expectations, you should see some of the complicated crappy mobile phone interfaces young people put up with and want still more features, where as old fogeys like me are left trying to figure out how to just pick up the receiver and answer a call, or punch in a number and have it make the call and dont want a phone to do anything more than just make calls.
:), blame the marketing.
It is the marketing that builds their unrealistic expectations that it is easy. For to many years companies were trying to convince people that using a computer was really easier than handwriting a letter or that a slideshow was better than an intelligent focused well prepared spoken presentation.
Blame Canada, uh i mean blame Microsoft
(and in this case probably Apple too
The ideal of an interface is that it is so intuitive that it makes sense instantly and requires no training. Of course the reality is very different.
We typically build up to new interfaces by copying older paradigms and extending them, but as we do we actually can make it more difficult to use instead of less. The desktop metaphor is of course the best example. Anyone's desktop look like a Windows machine?
That is why voice interfaces, gestures and other ideas keep percolating through the minds of interface designers as speaking is generally more intuitive than clicking on menus and buttons. However, the real problem is making everything feel natural. The best technology does what you want it to do and does it unobtrusively.
Yeah. If the common controls were arranged sensibly on the remote in a cursor arrangement, you could have something like: up=play, left=rewind, right=forward[*], center=select, down=pause, menu. Then any "extra" functionality could be provided through on-screen menus.
Of course, there are always going to be people who want extra features, like a shuttle control, but there aren't many controls that need instant access rather than a menu. There's always the option of providing a choice of controllers on purchase.
[*] Out of interest: notice how right=forward, left=rewind shows the L-R reading bias we have... Is this accepted in UIs worldwide, or are these swapped for R-L locales?
A lot of the problems are caused because people expect technology (computers, VCR's etc) to do everything for them.
Would someone get into a car and expect to be able to drive properly without any kind of training or direction?
Of course not, but it's how people see technology - that it should do everything for them without the user having to put any effort in.
"...isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame?" Not for a commercial product. Users don't have to buy something unless they like it, therefor they can't be "blamed" for not liking something except at a very idealogical level. (This doesn't apply to non-comertial software, of course.) On the other hand, I do agree that users could do a little more thinking or RTFMing...
Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it
Haven't you ever watched Star Trek? Whenever the crew is finds itself on the bridge of an alien ship, it usually takes them about 5 seconds to figure out how to download the entire database, transport the stranded crew member and turn off the self destruct sequence. And meanwhile I'm still looking for a powerful IDE with a decent interface :(
I have speech recognition on the car phone. It works OK for that application but the limits are pretty obvious. First you have to explain to passengers not to talk over the commands. I was giving a lift to someone who was in the voice directory and was calling his wife to tell her we would be home soon. So each time I say Roger he says 'what?' which spoiled the recognizer.
I don't think that speech actually helps at all for most applications. In the first place the command set becomes pretty cumbersome. In most applications voice is used it is actually limited to recalling one of a small number of pre-set programs. The ambiguity in human speech is huge and machines often have no context to resolve it in.
Good UI design for me is something that allows me to build up a coherent mental model of how the device is working. That is why a lot of folk like UNIX, the commands may be bizarely arcane but the model is usually exposed (in flat text files). Macs on the other hand are not designed as tools, they are designed as assistants. You have a problem, it tries to help you. If your problem is not the one the designers thought of, well tough luck buddy.
The principal problem with the notorious VCR programming task is frequently user anticipation. Instead of doing something consistently the machine tries to be helpful and fails.
Another problem with VCRs is that the 'easy to use' interface software can have bugs. Before I got my PVR I had a Magnavox VCR. After failing to tape the F1 Grand Prix twice in a row I said "I have a degree in Nuclear Physics, I was elected to be a fellow of the British Computer Society, why do I keep assuming the problem is me?" So the next time I took photos of the settings on the VCR with my coolpix, turns out that if you set the device under certain circumstances the damn thing will set itself to record a year later than programmed.
My pet peeve in user interfaces is that manufacturers try to make devices look simple and uncluttered by making one button do six things. I know that there is also a cost issue, but when I buy a $1,000 digital camera, or even a $300 one I think that I am owed a few extra buttons. The Coolpix would be a heck of a lot easier to use if there was a single slider that controlled the flash, allowing it to be turned off completely, on, on with red eye correction. Instead the mode button that controls it also cycles the autofocus modes, and is context sensitive to boot. But it is the same for the 35mm film world. Come to think of it, the only gadgets I have that I have not managed to fully master every switch on are my N90s and its flash gun...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
If TiVO was voice controlled, all programs would start with a clear voice saying "stop recording" during the program content and "resume recording" whenever there was a commercial break.
It might even get emotional and stop suggesting programs you like (and maybe suggest ones you don't) after you scream "stupid Tivo" enough times after it stopped recording the show right at the punchline of the last skit.
Voice Control isn't my idea of reliable solution. Imagine the Voice Controlled Family Van for reasons why I don't believe in VC.
Over the years, both as an end user and as a coder, I have found that software falls into one out of two catagories.
1) Software that I understand what it is supposed to do
2) Software that I have no clue what it is supposed to do.
For example: I have NO understanding of accounting. None, nil. A mystical and dark art done by pencil pushers.
I don't think it is POSSIBLE to write an accounting package that I will find user friendly because I don't understand the basic premise of what should happen.
Similar things can be said for 3D modeling packages and FPS. I rue the day that Quake came out.
On the other hand, I undertand how Word Processors should work. I know the basic functions that should be there and I can pretty easily switch from one to the other without slowing down keystrokes.
---
That, I think, is the major issue of "User Friendly." In the day and age of Star Trek and the computers of TV, the people just want to say "TiVo, record me a good show on TV tonight" and it will be done.
Users will NEVER master basic software until they understand what the software does. Aunt Tillie will never be good with her word processor until she unlearns her typewriter. (She will never unlearn her typewriter because the text field of her mail program works like a typewriter _sigh_)
You can't tell users not to open an attachment, because they have no clue what an attachment is. The concept, if they have any at all, will bring about an image of a photograph paper clipped to the letter or a small flyer tossed in the envelope. You don't "open" attachments, you just make sure they are there.
Aunt Tillie will never understand clearing out her browsers cache because she has no clue about a cache. She will never understand installing a new video codex because those things are outside her realm of experience.
Computers don't follow physical rules and so all of their worlds knowledge and understanding will fail to prepare them for the world of computers.
User Friendlyness is in direct inverse porportion to Efficiency.
Rubbish. You're confusing "User Friendly" with various user interface issues. And while it is occasionally true that a user-friendly interface can slow down a process, the intention should be the opposite.
User Friendliness, properly executed, increases efficiency by leveraging the user's intuition in order to get a task done. For example: I could certainly copy a file from one folder to another using the command line, but intuition tells me that dragging the visual representation of that file from one (visual representation of a) folder to another will have the same effect. Since I can move a mouse faster than I can type, I think I'll go with the more user-friendly option and get the job done quicker.
Using my own tools I can fix my car. But if I take it to the mechanic, and pay him to fix it, it will take much longer. I have to wait for him to get around to it. He is getting paid by the hour, so he is in little to no rush to get it done.
Not only is this apples-to-oranges, it's just plain wrong. My mechanic can rebuild my transmission in far less time than I'll be able to. But since your point is so glaringly off-topic, I'll leave it alone.
Key combos are often faster, and much more efficient than a mouse
Yes they are, which is why most interface designers will tell you that key-combos can make for a user-friendlier system.
Spelling and grammar IS important, when something such as "moot" is spelled "mute" it's not even a spelling issue. They're using the wrong word. It's like someone calling the entire chassis/everything in the chassis sitting next to their desk "the cpu". They'll say "The CPU is broken". You'll assume that it's blown and needs to be replaced, order a new one, and then discover that it was unplugged. (Well, ok so you'd troubleshoot first, but that's not the point)
;)
Spelling something wrong on occasion is unavoidable, yes. Critique for spelling errors is best reserved to email or other forms of private communcation, yes. But getting pissed off because someone is tired of hearing people misuse a word all the time is just as insane.
Of course, this is a mute point.
-Sara
Perhaps people should consider the written instructions (and training) as part of the interface.
It seems that the art of writing instructions manuals is still not given the attention that it deserves. Maybe lots of these interface problems would be solved if the manuals were more carefully designed and if the labeling on the appliances were better.
I can think of more than once when I have consulted the troubleshooting part of a manual only to find my trouble isn't mentioned, or it's worded poorly.
I use the timer on my VCR some. It works, and I figured it out. It would have made sense if the instructions had a nice walk-through example of setting the timer...which it didn't.
Writing can be a powerful interface tool.
I know people neglect to read instructions, but maybe they do this because they have come across so many crappy manuals.
I wish people would talk about "logically sound" rather than this completely nebulous concept of "user friendly."
Look at Windows. A great deal of the garbage we hate in Bill's operating system was stuffed down our throats under the guise of being "user friendly." For example, changing the name directory to "folders" because directory has unfriendly latin roots. The actual result of this great "user friendly" move was Microsoft now stuffs the end user's data in a bunch of folders that you cannot find...making back ups harder. The goal of an OS should be to concentrate on creating a logically sound, secure foundation on which you can build other applications. But we compromise the foundation for an undefinable user friendliness.
It is so funny. I see it time and again. People love the "user friendliness" of MS word when they log on the first time. A few years later they are pulling out hairs as they find their systems clogged with gigabytes of files, odd templates, virii and other mysterious things that happen with word documents as systems age.
That really crappy registry thing we have to deal with came out with a great deal of hype about a "user friendly" registry replacing unfriendly ini files. Instead of coming up with a logically sound and versatile and extensible mechanism for recording intialization parameters...we have this supposedly user friendly monster that bites our tails when things go wrong. The only way we can deal with problems in the registry is to hope that some programmer somewhere was good enough that their 5 year old win 98 program will fix the registry problem with XP when you reinstall.
The parent of this thread was "Learning Curve." The result of the user friendly movement has been to add a bunch of garbage to programs to get the public to a feel good level, but the garbage ends up blocking them from complete mastery, since you know have a garbage user friendly layer in the way.
Instead of "user friendly", if you aimed at the goal of logically sound...you would find yourself with products that have only a slightly higher initial learning curve, but that people can master and build on. Take the threads about driving. The configuration of the driver seat has a nice logically sound foundation. It is driven by the logic of the vehicle and it works better.
When you really have a sound logical foundation, the actual workings of the product is all but driven from that foundation. A phone is totally un understandable until you know the logical premise that you have to hold it to your ear, and that different phones have numbers that you must dial before calling.
Imagine a car designed by the "user friendly" gurus of MS. A six year old could get it out of the driveway, but it would take a certified MCD (Microsoft Certified Driver) to get it back in.
I agree that people cannot be bothered taking the time to figure out how things work, however, I must say that their attitude is not only justifiable but that of a well ajusted persone. When programing two VCRs from the same munufacturer only 2 years apart requires a totaly different proceedure, why bother taking the time to learn how to use it? The knowlege is totaly unapplicable anythwhere else! I think that many things we learn in the computer industry are totaly absurd and useless. I mean if it takes 5 to 10 years to go from a newbie to linux user, that's 5 to 10 years of your life that are gone forever - you can't have back and what have you gained? The knowlege of how to interract with a niche OS that probably will work totaly differently in 5 years anyways....
It's utterly embarasing, I find, that some people know so much, of what is ultimately trivia, about interracting with a big, complicated, proceedure and not even paid for it. It doubly spooky to think that at the same time, that linux and it's supporting structure are about the extent of these people's knowlege. Getting all snoby about how no one bothers to learn some here-today gone tomorrow technological gaget seems a bit.. miss-guided to say the least. If anything, spending 5 years or so obsessing about some gizmo and not getting paid for it is the truely disturbing thing. My personal opinion is that if the specialist (aka programmer or engineer) did not spend the time to make his program or gaget as easy and intuative to use as possibly he is wasting my time - forcing me to understand some irrelevent minuta of his domain. As a result he is an ass hole, just like the sales clerks that keeps me waiting in line for 5 minutes for nothing, just like the jerk in traffic that sits in the middle of the intersection on red. To hell with him and his program.
The people who complain about user friendliness thinks of computers as tools. Meaning they only are useful insofar as they accomplish other taskss.
Slashdotters, by and large, look at computers as a trade. Meaning they want to understand why and how they work.
I don't see this as an either/or paradigm. User friendliness and functionality are symbiotic features. One can't exist without the other.
You don't know what you're missing. One of my favorite features on my DVD player isn't even listed in the manual. It allows me to FF through the opening credits without missing any dialogue or narration. It also allows me to fast forward through slow scenes that have no dialogue and still not miss any of the dialogue in the film. I also don't miss any images, they simply go by at double speed. I don't know how many DVD players this will work with, I have an Panasonic RV20, also the film must be subtitled in English, which most DVDs are. First I set the subtitles on, then I go to double speed FF and as soon as anyone starts talking the subtitle will come on and then I just go into reverse for a second and start watching without missing any dialogue. I must have saved myself at least 40 minutes on "Ulee's Gold" alone ;) That film had so many long pointless scenes without dialogue and I really enjoyed the film more by being able to speed through them at double speed. Of course you might feel differently about FF through those scenes, but even if you do, you can still use this feature to FF through the titles at the beginning of a film without missing any dialogue or narration as long as the DVD has English subtitles.
I also like being able to toggle subtitles on and off with the remote. Anytime I have trouble figuring out what someone is saying, I toggle the subtitles on, find out, then toggle them off. Most DVDs are subtitled in English, so this system works quite well.
Here's my thoughts on User Friendly:
In principle, I love the idea of something being easy to use. When you can pick up a device and be using it fluently with minimal effort, you've got a well-designed device in your hand.
However, it just doesn't always work that way.
People need to look things up in the manual every now and then. Once things start getting to the point where the Product Manufacturers are trying to make your decisions FOR you to keep you from having to learn anything new to solve a problem, well, you create a populace of lazy, dependant users. Too much "User Freindly" leads to an inability to even WANT to try to fix problems yourself. It's something akin to the old addage, "Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime." Sure, throw up a Wizard to help me configure my Inet settings - but TELL me what that wizard is doing, so that in the future, I can do it for myself.
The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
Really if the device was user friendly then it wouldn't need a manual. Using something like a word processor or a scheduler should be absolutely intuative. On the other hand if it is an activity that requires existing knowledge (mananging say, network provisioning) then user-friendly is still important but changes focus.
Really, anyone who says that users should just read the manual is really not spending enough time in the users boots. Most good games these days have far more complex interfaces than the average application, but they are infinately more usabable. That says to me that it can be done.. but for whatever reason hasn't been the focus in most of the industry
The purpose of any tool, whether it's a hammer, a TiVo or Perl, is to enable its user to do something. The goal is to get something done, not to use the tool. The less that the tool gets in the way, the easier it is for the person using it to do what they're trying to do. Learning about the tool creates a hurdle on the way to doing something. As in running, the fewer hurdles, the better.
Now, every once in a while I get asked this question: how is it that a VCR can record a TV show when the TV isn't turned on? Yeah, I can hear the snickers. But I get this from a lot of basically intelligent people. And the frustrating thing is, I've never found an explanation that makes sense to the asker. To me it's obvious, "You see, there's two tuners, the TV has one, the VCR has one...." But the eyes just glaze over.
So the whole idea of Making Systems User Friendly is just plain bogus. It assumes that people can come to terms with any system if you just find the right methaphro for them to use. Doesn't work.
In the real world, there are three solutions to this problem:
- You do a better job of explaining the basic concepts of the system to your users. But only a few really brilliant teachers seem to have much luck with this approach.
- You build systems that do a good job of hiding the unfamiliar paradigm with a simpler paradigm ordinary people can wrap their minds around. But again, this takes a certain brilliance on the part of the designer, who has to be at home with both paradigms.
- You take the Kuhnsian approach. That is, instead of trying to bridge the nerd-mundane gap, you wait for both sides to die off, to be replaced by big-thumbed folks who've grown up with the technolgy and have no trouble coming to terms with it.
Now, you might think that solution number 3 is basically a cop-out. And I'd agree. But I think it's the solution that will be implemented -- by default.A "user-interface" is effective if it matches the intended purpose of the application.
.02 worth.
Television remote controls which require a CS degree to operate are absurd. However users who expect thier PC to fire up and operate by means of telepathy are equally absurd.
That's the trade off.
I've often times watched office workers switch on thier "workstation" and spend an hour trying to figure out how to compose an email. The interface is simple, write your letter in the big white box, put the email address in the little box that says address, and click that fat-ass button up on top that says "Send". After I explain these little trivialities to them I get to watch thier face light up when they comprehend that "Send" actually sends the message.
This indicates to me that the user is intellectually lazy, or just plain stupid.(As if theres much of a difference.)
The only conclusion I can draw is that end-users(as far as Office applications go) are trained to see thier computers as magic talismans that are supposed to read thier mind and magically know whats supposed to be done. Hence the users dont bother to excercise the reasoning that says "To print my document, I click the button labled 'Print'."
I really dont know how to turn thier minds back on again.(They really are smart people.) Perhaps a psychologist would be better suited to this analysis then I.
On the other hand, if someone tried to sell me a remote control, or a walkman with the complexity of some Office Applications, I would beat them senseless.
My
McDoobie
Children don't seem to have any problems with VCR's, Computers, remote controls, cable boxes, DVD players, and I would dare say with a TiVo. My nine year old daughter can work the above.
So what gives?
Have you seen movies depecting older times where things like cars were considered complicated? In fact, I would daresay that cars probably *were* complicated until automatic transmission came along. Imagine having to explain to someone that they need to understand how the gears engage, the clutch releases so you can change gears, etc.
When new technology first appears, it probably is complicated to older people who grew up in simpler times.
Why does a toaster seem simple? Because there are no complex concepts behind it.
Much more of what I would say here is said in books such as "The Design of Everyday Things." Or try other good books on UI.
Just a tiny rant now. It is apparent to me from several years of slashdot reading that most here don't really know what makes a good UI. I don't mean people are stupid or anything. But people don't understand the principals of the psychology of what makes a good interface. Concepts like mapping, affordance, etc. are all strange. Just like we look down on people who don't understand the complexities of our systems are implemented. It frustrates us that others who don't know what we know seem to love to vastly oversimply what we do. I don't mean this in a mean way, but maybe we collectively need to RTFM a little more on actual existing research and work on what goes into a good UI. (Example from "The Design of Everyday Things": why do people intuitively understand two seperate hot/cold faucets, but have so much trouble with those confounded contraptions in a hotel shower?)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Try and imagine the DOS PC of 1984. Friendly interfaces like "Alt-F3" for help (unless you're in Lotus, in which case it is not). etc.... The OS does not provide a full-screen editor, just a line editor. You have to buy extra utilities to get functionality like deleting a directory subtree, a shell with history, etc.....
Then think of the Mac as it debuted in 1984. It came onto the world with Cut/Copy/Paste/Save/Open/Print/Find THE SAME in all the apps. And they mapped frequently to quite intuitive keys, like Command-S for save. It introduced us to bitmap graphics in MacPaint, which was friendly enough for a 4 year old. Granted you did have to learn to operate a mouse (remember when you learned that?) and so on....still, it was a massive step forward in what the programmer can do for the user.
Now, I am an application programmer. And I will confess - I HATE making things friendly for users. The fun part of the programming is getting the thing to work internally, fine tuning the UI is painstaking and boring. Also when the users are employees of your company who use your program for their job, one could argue there's a point where making the UI better is not worth the cost in programming.
Still, The Mac of 1984 should be an inspiration to anyone contemplating how to make things user-friendly. And user-friendly is an ideal like a fast algorithm - there is no limit to how good it can be, it just hasn't been discovered yet.
Obligatory anti-Windows comments suppressed - they may not have as good a UI as Mac but does Linux either?
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/dr-episode1/pa ge-04.htm a ge-05.htm a ge-06.htm
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/dr-episode1/p
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/dr-episode1/p
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Apparently it was important enough for the consumer to take the effort and purchase whatever product. Why should we assume they not take the effort to learn about what they purchased?
Recipe- If I planned on cooking(which I don't), I would probably read or browse a cookbook to figure out what the hell I'm doing.
Clothing- I almost always try on what I buy before hand. Isn't that RTFM the clothing?
Fine Art- If I had the cash to purchase it, wouldn't I research enough, so I don't spend a half a million on some crap that got copied from Kinkos?
I don't think it's too much to ask consumers to pull their head out and think.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
For example, credit/debit card terminals are now installed in almost all of the grocery stores, drug stores and convenience stores in the area where I live. The problem is that each chain of stores uses different hardware and/or software, resulting in a unique user interface for each store. The number of steps to perform a transaction differs, as do the queries, prompts, and locations of buttons. On some terminals, YES and NO are on the top row of buttons, under the display. One other terminals, YES and NO are on the bottom row of buttons.
All of these terminals are used for the same limited number of functions. There is no good reason why they could not be standardized.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Engineers shouldn't design interfaces, just implement them. The design of the interface should be left to what is called an "interaction designer" or "user experience designer" these days. The interfaces they come up with are sometimes hard to implement, but will offer a much better user experience than the collection of menus and buttons that your average (or even good) software engineer would come up with.
My father - as an undergraduate - got an award for math. He basically got the second highest score in the country for his exam, and used his skills every day navigating ships across the oceans in the days before satelites and calculators.
The weird thing was he could not get his head around the Commodore 64 I got for Christmas. He never worked out how to use a calculator - he didn't need one, because his mental arithmetic was faster than you could type numbers into a machine. He never even worked out how to set the video recorder...
My wife, a succesful woman who has been in charge of large teams and managed multi-million dollar projects can't get to grips with email.
What this boils down to is that all devices - digital, analogue, physical - rely on some pattern of understanding in their users.
If the world view is not shared, or not communicated clearly, no matter how "smart" your users are, they won't be able to use that lovely gadget.
The problem is - of course - that you can usually only afford to implement a single metaphor. Your VCR can either behave like a tape recorder (remember those ?) or like a TiVo ( i havent got one, so I have no idea how they behave), or like your cable digital set top box.
That means that you will nearly always have a whole bunch of people go "it doesn't make sense". Live with it.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
A client of mine was having problems with her computer... of course she was infected with a virus. Anyhow, even though she had Norton installed, she had never updated the virus defs.... Because she is 60+, I opened up word to write out the procedure step by step. As soon as the gayrod Paperclip wizard from office popped out, I killed it without thinking about it, and selected the "go away forever" option (whatever the menu option says).
The next day she calls me because Office wasn't working properly... I go back, thinking I must have missed a copy of the virus on her HD. Of course office launches just fine.... but the paperclip character was gone... and she used it all the time. Took me 10 minutes to figure out how to reactivate it.
POINT: What an "advanced" user finds useless, a novice user finds vital...
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
"gee Jesus, Id love to be able to read your teachings in my free time, but Im illiterate. Cant I just pay someone to read it for me?"
We all know what a bad idea that is....
Why do we pass right over the phrase 'computer illiterate'with a laugh. But when we hear of someone who is just 'illeterate' as in being unable to read a language, a sense of sorrow for all they have missed out on comes to mind. A book is still technology, its just really really old technology, same goes for language.
I do feel sorry for those that say they are 'computer illiterate', but I dont think they are quite aware of what they are actually saying. Nobody 'knows' how to program a tivo, or VCR or whatever else electronic you would like to plug into this statement, but at a certain point a rational person sees that doing something a certain way has advantages over other ways. Its up to the individual to make the decision to adapt that new way of doing things into a routine of daily life.
Hopefully one day, the phrase 'computer illiterate' will instill the same feelings of sorrow that being unable to read does, instead of being used as an excuse to not learn something new.
--back to automatic transmissions. Stick shifts are cool and fun, I like them, liked them more when I was younger, but I'm not out babe hunting. I already got a babe. Having an automatic means I can steer with one hand and feel her up with the other hand.
this is "user friendliness"
automatics=worth_every_penny
Actually, usability tests have repeatedly shown that the mouse is faster (especially if the menus are located at the top of the screen like on a mac. Fitts' Law and whatnot) but the keyboard feels faster (while actually being slower)
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
People expect a widget to do what the packaging said it would, and do it NOW. If you have to futz with it for more than 20 minutes, its too much trouble.
Likewise a feature isn't a fearture if it takes more thab 2 seconds to calculate.
Hence the pre-eminent position of Mickeysoft in the market. Linux is destined to a distant second place until oufits like Avery Paper start making AbiWord macros for their little stickers and all that user fiendly crap.
Linux true belivers can flame me all they want, but that's the long and the short of it. Linux is too much trouble and Mrs. Jones the secretary can't use her little stickers.
Fix it, propeller heads.
I hear of people at my isp who crash their web tv in one week.
And I had to explain to my Mom that there _is_ no needle in her cd player.
And I'm not comfortable with the tech of a generation younger than me.
And you know what? That's ok; it's probably a natural phenomenon of just being human. [fsvo human]
But then, it's Friday so I feel generous.
C|N>K
What is "User Friendly" (besides a web comic)?
Well, User friendly is any thing that is easy enough to understand with only minimal use.
If something has to many options, it falls out of the realm of User Friendly. Same thing if it doesn't do what you want it to. So, the balance is between making something that does what you want it to without doing too much. Hard to do, especialy if you don't know what your customer wants to do. There's the rub.
Pathway
To be an effective technical person, you have to have an RTFM atttitude. The RTFM attitude is one of self-reliance; it says that if there's no one else in the room but me and this problem, the problem is damn well gonna get solved. Results are everything.
However, if you want to sell devices (that get used, that don't get returned, that get a good buzz, and that lead to a good overall reputation for the company producing the device) you have to provide users with a positive experience. And, for better or worse, Reading the F'ing Manual is not what most users consider a quality experience. Most users are expert in only one thing: what they want. To me, a high-quality user interface lets the user walk up to the interface knowing what they want, and they can quickly figure out how to get it, with little to no mental effort required. Give the people what they want, and they'll come back for more.
Seriously: the fall-off for technical competence among the general population is at least exponential - remember that half of the world doesn't even have telephones, a lot of people are older and unused to modern gadgets, and so on.
Only a tiny fraction of folks are young at heart enough to enjoy novelty in their everyday objects, and the rest just want the bloody thing to work.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
not too sure when that might happen though...
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
I did a paper freshmen year about why ONLINE PC GAMERS are the smartest people around.
You figure out what I wrote about, b/c im tired to type =\
It was a good paper about how they pick up information through irc and how gaming online makes them smarter. and it stems out to news sites, hardware, software, this taht.. it was cool.
azpenguin's grandfather isn't as mentally sharp as he thinks he is.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
When you are selling software to the lowest common denominator then, yes, making the user interface idiot proof is a must. But can the same be said in business?
Consider someone who uses Microsoft Word all day, every day and has yet to learn a single keyboard shortcut. That person is inept at his/her job and is wasting company time. Contrast this user with a proficient Word Perfect 5.1 user of ages past who could do ANYTHING with but a few flicks of the wrist.
I've worked with autocad users and have found that they fall into two categories: those who use the command line and those who use pull-down menus. Using the command line to draw a circle works as follows: "c[space]". That's it. You can type it in a fraction of a second. The same goes with about anything else in autocad, even complex operations. Users who spend most of their time searching through pull-down menus don't get nearly as much done as those who know how to do their jobs properly.
The customer isn't always the end user. Sometimes the customer is the business that the end user works for. When an AOL user says "This is too hard, I don't understand" then AOL has a software problem. When someone working for a business spends most of their time farting around with menus instead of getting any actual work done then the idiot's employer has a problem and it's not with the software.
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Personally, I've been meaning to learn to program my computer, but it has no keyboard (lost by previous owner). It only has a few tiny buttons on it: reset, power, turbo...
Don't lead off on bitching about something's interface by complaining about how hard it is to use when you don't have the main input device.
Well, first the VCR ought to have the tv listings.
Yes, while we're at it, let's whine about the expensive and near-impossible features we'd like to have and pretend it's an interface issue! Why not complain that it doesn't just let you watch any show that's ever been aired? "What do you mean you have to record shows before you watch them?! What a terrible interface!"
well that depends alot on the time of the month doesent it?
People will believe whatever is advertised.
Period.
Think your customers don't "take the time"
to learn your product??? -- Don't advertise
your product like you do!
Accepting part of the blame would be the
responsible thing.
How come kids pick up these things so quick. My 3 year old can turn on the TIVO and pick his shows with no problem, but his grandparents don't even try? I think its a matter of taking the 10 min's to listen, play with the functions or heaven forbid go thru the manual.
E
For want of a nail, a shoe was lost
.yes, makes sense to me. Please don't misplace those massages
For want of a shoe, a hoarse was lost
For want of a hoarse, a Ryder was lost
For want of a Ryder, a massage was lost
For want of a massage, a battle was lost
For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost
All for want of a nail
. .
Stoptional
I just bailed out of this thread when I realized with horror that it was all devolving towards the "lowest common denominator"... what if we applied these attitudes towards other social phenomena?
C|N>K
I think User friendly can easily be overdone by Are You Sure and similar questions. I guess this eventually will be a battle between how the users earlier experience will be. More and more programs are coming with "expert options" or "basic options" for windows. I guess this is the correct path to go.
The more user-friendly something is, the more variables the programmers need to take into account. Which means more code, and more complications(See:bugs). This is why Microsoft has had so many problems. Ease of use comes at a very high cost(60-some million lines of code are NOT easy to maintain).
On the user-end of things, ease of use can mean lack of choices. I may not be able to select custom options because everything has been packaged in a convenient one-click interface.
For the user who likes more options, the more user-friendly programs out there can actually be counter-productive and even more difficult to use than their more complex counterparts. Some habits are hard to break. Just ask any by-hand HTML coder what he thinks of Frontpage.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
Funny how everyone equates VCRs with user-friendliness. Wonder why. Could it be that it's the most common device Unwashed Public comes into touch which that requires you read some docs to make the clock work..
On the other hand, some VCR UIs really do stink. I think a good lithmus test would be whether you can use the remote without reading the manual.. That's not as obvious as you might think. Many VCRs, mine included, require you to hold down button a while you're using rocker b to perform function c. All completely unmarked in the remote, of course. And the docs. Oh god, I'm an engineer, I write technical docs and I'd fire half of the people on the spot responsible for some of the docs.. If you need to re-read the same page more than twice to make sense of what's written there, either the docs suck, or you do.
Okay, I know what the *nix crowd's gonna say to that..
I am a tech savy person, an engineer by profession, I can program in C++ and understand
deep mathematical concepts; but, I am really annoyed by the microwave. I think it is more complex than the phone, tv or vcr. In its favor, for packaged meals you can follow very precise instruction about setting timing intervals and come reasonably close to expected results. But if I take something random out of my fridge and try to predict how it will behave in the microwave, I am stumped. I have a new microwave with lots of bells and whistles; the most interesting feature is the sensor reheat button. On this feature the manual is useless as it basically says that when this button is pressed the microwave senses how long it will take to reheat something. How? On this point the manual is mute. I can imagine myself spending a weekend, stop watch in hand, trying every organic material and combination of materials I can think of, exposing them to the sensor reheat 'feature'; seeing what happened. It would be like my computer having a 'do something cool' button.
I never thought I would say it, but the moderators disappoint me.
-- Posting anonymously because I like having 50 karma, even if I lost it now....
Admittedly, I think computer-like devices are sometimes held to too high a standard. We forget how much effort it initially took to learn something we now take for granted, like how to use a pencil to write, or how to drive a car.
That said... it is ridiculous to expect users to read a manual. For a device to become accepted by the majority of people, it has to be understandable with minimal effort by a majority of the people. Most people are not engineering types, and they don't give a rat's ass about the reasons things work the way they do, they just want their tools to do exactly what they expect. If they can learn socially (the phone is a good example -- watch somebody dial a number and you realize "I can do this too"), then people will accept it. If they have to be trained to use it, it will never succeed as a mass-market product.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
From The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
..."
"Computer!"
"Hi there! Are we going to have a conversation?"
"No. You're going to tell me what those Vogons want, and how they are armed."
"Then shall we have a conversation?"
"What?!"
"According to my programming, in the evening leisure periods, the crew will like to relax, and enjoy a wide range of social activities with robots and computers. And have the machines share in a stimulating -argh whooi
"I just jammed a quick negative load across it's logic terminals."
"Hey, that hurt."
"Good."
Reminds me of some of my own eXPeriences with computers...
"Right, it's the computer that's stupid, not you?"
Everything will be taken away from you.
Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"?
Yes, it's called a Mac.
(Mods, if you don't reconize this as an attempt at humor, I really have to pray for you).
The Internet is generally stupid
This isn't about being interested or not. This is about people who clearly want the result but are unwilling/unable to learn the process.
This isn't about disgust with people who say, "I don't want to program my VCR." it's about those who say, "The VCR is too hard to program, I can't learn it." Usually, this can be translated as, "I am too lazy/frightened to bother trying."
In my experience, if you have authority over these people, you can easily make them figure it out. Without authority over them, they'll make weak excuses why they shouldn't bother trying. If they have authority over you they'll get you to do it over and over again, regardless how much of both your time and theirs this wastes. 90% of what computer class teachers do is say, "You have to try."
It's a truly pathetic phenomenon. I could throw theories at you about why it is, but I'm not sure why most people's minds work that way, they just do.
Short answer: No, interfaces can't be too simple.
Long answer: Something to consider is that as Computing Scientists and Engineers and Designers and whatnot, WE'RE the ones getting paid to construct these things for the average person. It's our job to make sure that these things are as accessable as possible, even if that makes our job harder. We're expected to be experts, and we expect the user not to be.
Giving a user a manual is rarely the best solution. Why isn't it possible that these things just work right away? Most people understand volume dials, on/off switches, big clear digital numbers and big, friendly well labelled buttons that say things like "ON" or "NEXT". We've actually got a fair number of things to work with, we just have to try hard to use them effectively.
Ideally, the interface should be so transparent to the user that they don't notice it get in the way of their task. It's an important tenet to remember: The Interface is what is supposed to FACILITATE completion of the task, not impede it.
First of all, if something doesn't need a user interface, it shouldn't have one. You should never have to tell the computer something it already knows. This is the biggest single thing you can do in the user friendly direction.
It takes a while for a new technology to get to that point. Electric motors once required manual brush adjustment - that's gone. Auto engines once required manual spark advance adjustment and manual fuel/air mixture adjustment - that's gone. Televisions once had vertical and horizontal hold controls, plus other obscure knobs like "vertical linearity" and "horizontal drive" - that's gone. General rule: if there's a definitive right answer, the system should take care of it itself.
Yes, this is hard to do. And it takes lots of ass-kicking to insist that it work right.
Once you get that right, everything else is a user preference. The MacOS made this distinction explicitly - there was the Desktop, where automatically generated information for setup was stored, and Preferences, where user desires were stored. Preferences were disposable; if you delete a Preferences document, it just took you back to factory defaults.
The next step is to make the world safe for the user. It's not how easy it is to do something; it's how safe it is. The user should be able to try things without penalty, and thus without fear. The user should never have an "Oh NO" experience. It took a long time, but now we have unlimited Undo in many programs.
Related to this is the rule that if it can be easily undone, you don't have to prompt for confirmation. Note that that's the key to the Amazon one-click approach. It's not that you can order with one click; it's that you can easily cancel an order, which makes ordering with one click safe.
Then, and only then, do you start thinking about user interfaces per se.
I used to work in a pharmacy. One thing that never ceased to amaze me was that people refused to even take time to learn about what they were taking. They'd refer to the drug by the brand name and have no idea what the drug was really named, have no idea what the drug was doing to their body and no intention of learning, and get mad at you if you dared to tell them what they should avoid eating or drinking while taking it if they didn't wait to, you know, die.
My point is that you can't even make the average person take ten minutes to learn about something that is keeping them from dying. Thinking they'll take five minutes to learn how to record a show is way too optamistic.
Everything will be taken away from you.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
I work in a Help Desk in a smaller University where we support both staff and students with basic needs. (Connectivity and basic operation of a computer.) It has crossed my mind MANY times that 'I don't need to know how to build or repair my car in order to operate it, why does it seem that I do with a computer?' Now I realize that I am exagerating but only a little bit. And I know there was a time in the history of the automobile where this was the case too. But as time passed technology improved, and user AND designer experience increased and the automobile became more reliable and easier to operate. In some ways they are still getting better. The "computer" as we know it must also get better and easier, even if only as a result of user frustration. It is inevitable. Have patience.
"Waitress I need two more boat-drinks..."
"The telephone isn't all that simple and yet more basic than you give it credit for."
No shit. My sister in law asked if we had a phone where she could make a 'private' phone call last week; I directed her to the back bedroom where we still have a rotary phone. 3 minutes later she was back asking "so how do I use this thing?"
She's 23. I feel old.
User friendliness is subjective and covers many more or less measurable properties usch as user experience, user efficiency, learning curve, etc.
Most new users of a product will get a bad experience from an interface with a steep learning curve. They want to be able to use only the most basic features, here and now. They will never care about the fancy features due to little interest in the technology.
Experienced users [geeks?] will get a bad experience from an overly simplified user interface. They will want to be efficient with the interface, know about and control every feature, and are willing to spend time learning new concepts to get there.
This conflict is solvable (only?) by having two or more versions of the user interface and let each user decide.
-larsch
On my computers, I prefer *nix systems - not because they are "harder to use," but because I find them easier to use. To me, they are less limiting. They let me do what I want to do, the way I want to do it. I just bought a new box with Windows XP preloaded, and it stubbornly tries to prevent users (and administrators!) from stepping beyond its carefully-delineated pathways. If others prefer that regime, fine; I can't work that way.
I apply a similar philosophy to standard transmission vehicles; when I have to drive in the snow, I want as much control over the vehicle as possible. Automatic transmissions don't give me what I want, standard transmissions do. However, each has its particular niche and the end user must decide which he/she needs.
When you dumb down any complex system beyond a certain point, you risk losing practical value in the name of so-called usability.
In general, user-friendly is good, but bottle-feeding the user constantly is bad.
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
You've got to be kidding. Why? Because it's their money.
People can operate very complex systems - if they have to, or if you pay them enough.
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
> The word is MOOT
Yes, the word is "moot", but if you are going to
correct grammar, and cannot manage to use correct
grammar when doing so, please refrain.
> A "mute topic" is a topic that doesn't speak.
Perhaps it would be, or perhaps it would be a topic
about which no one speaks.
> I had a partner that used to say that ALL THE
> [...] TIME [...]
No, you had a parter who used to say that frequently.
I doubt very much whether your partner was in inanimate
object, or whether it had an unlimited capacity to
continue speaking day and night.
> Sheesh, are people that ignorant and retarded???
Many people are indeed that ignorant; whether they
are retarded is a separate (and irrelevant) matter.
On a related note, it is incorrect to treble the
interogatory mark; one piece of end punctuation,
together with the introductory interjection, is quite
sufficient to indicate the mood of the sentence.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
That is exactly why I like Mozilla- you have to make it user-friendly ;)
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
You first have to consider who's job is it to create an interface that the customer is to use.
-The Engineer.
What is the market for the device?
-Everyone who owns a TV, and those that may ever buy a TV.
Who then is the customer?
-Everyone who owns a TV?
What is ther Engineers job?
-To make an interface that Everyone can use; not just the people who read manuals. The easier the better. If we don't do it the competition will. If the competition does it first we may not survive.
So it is the engineers job to create the interface. If the Engineer doesn't make an interface that allows the user to say "tape star trek at 9:00" and the TiVo can't say "All good things on channel 59? or Farpoint on channel 60?" then the engineer has failed; the customer can't fail they are paying.
-Ben
I think the theory of learned helplessness is what we're looking at here.
There is one thing more important than user friendly with technical junk...*indestructability*
Technophobia is still at heart only fear. If you design your gadget so that you simply can not break it with the basic interface, then you eliminate the fear factor.
This will mean that some advanced features are *not* going to be part of the basic interface.
This would give people the freedom to play with their computers, VCR's, TV's, whatever to their heart's content, and they know if they don't cross this line, they can't break it.
Until that time, if you can't set the clock on your VCR, don't own a computer!
-Zaphod
You've got the right idea, but take it a step further (and simplify the concept while I'm at it :)
:)
When a consumer is confronted by a computer manual, he must first LEARN THE LANGUAGE that it is written in: because the average user lacks the points of reference required to understand it, the terminology and the entire way it's talked about in the average manual (or textbook) are essentially a foreign language. That in itself presents a barrier, not just to understanding, but to even reading it in the first place.
This is true in any field, not just in computers, nor physics for that matter
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I have to say I'm sick of hearing about how the users are so important, and every bloody thing has to be easy for the users. What about the engineers?? Surely the vast majority of you have used a device at one time or another and gotten really pissed off by the way you can't do what you want to do, instead you have to do what the device wants you to do (I remember when I first used Windows I got this horribly psychotic feeling, it happens when things tell me what to do). In the age of "user friendliness" too many people forgetting the users (let's face it, engineers are users too) who want to do more than just the average tell-me-what-to-do user!
For a consumer product, if it needs a manual, the interface is too complex.
Back in the days before cordless phones and integrated answering machines, did you ever see a manual for a single-line telephone? Nope.
Before "home theater", did televisions need instructions beyond a card showing which antenna wire goes to which connector? Nope.
Have you ever rented a car and needed to read its owner's manual? Nope. What did it take to learn to drive a car? A few minutes' orientation and some practice on your own, right?
Except maybe for the one time three years ago when you cleaned your oven, have you ever felt the need to read the owners manual for it? Does your refrigerator need more instructions than the two sentences printed next to the temperature-setting knobs and the labels on the "fruit" and "meat" drawers?
How about an old Polaroid camera? An electric razor?
Sure, professional tools have always required training and big instruction books, whether it's a jet plane, a video editing console, a steamboat or Adobe Photoshop. But why do consumer e-mail and DVD players need more than a page of instructions?
The personal computer and the VCR trashed over 3,000 years of intuitive tool design. Before 1976, there was never a consumer product that needed a twenty-page instruction booklet (like a VCR), much less the shelf of books needed to operate a PC. Though it's understandable that something as complex as an office suite needs big manuals and user training, it's disgraceful that "wizard"-driven VCR programming has become a common feature in only the last five years, and appalling that anyone is expected to operate a typical home-theater setup. It's a wonder so many people manage to operate their main television these days. There's nothing intuitive or pleasant about the process.
If anyone with basic hand-eye coordination and an elemantary-school reading level can't operate a TiVo, then the answer is no. The TiVo's user interface isn't simple enough. With nearly all cable and satellite TV systems now transmitting listings on a side channel, not to mention dialup data transfer available to the TiVo itself, there is no reason at all that operation of a PVR should ever require a user to make use of ambiguous symbols on a one-way remote control or nonverbal cues onscreen. Anyone who has used a pocket calculator, a touch-tone phone or changed channels or adjusted volume on a TV should be able to use a TiVo without so much as touching a manual once the gadget has been connected to a TV and a power outlet.
It's not the users. It's the engineers. Get over it and do something about it, and stop using your technology background, whether self-taught over endless hours, or picked up in school, to demean and devalue others. People aren't going to "evolve" and be "trained" to spend hours and hours paging through manuals and fidgeting with lazily-designed tools; CompSci majors enjoy it as a sort of hobby. Other people have other hobbies, like playing outside. The purpose of a TiVo is to simplify the act of watching television, not to replace it with a puzzle game.
It's up to the devices to meet people at their own level, and any engineer who feels otherwise should find a new profession. Creating--and supporting--devices that people use is about helping people, not rubbing their faces in the dirt.
How I know your XP-related rants! It took me awhile to figure out how to adjust the settings and bypass all this stuff that assumes you're a total idiot when it comes to computers. One of the main reasons I got the office edition was so I wouldn't have to waste time navigating around all the "helpful" roadblocks to keep you from harming your computer accidentally.
I've used high-technology since my single digit years, trained others for thousands upon thousands of hours in how to use all kinds, and even written manuals that address the very issues discussed here, and the joke as I see it is the belief that technology makes life better. It can, as the power of instant information distribution through the Internet proves, but the posters complaining about those who don't or can't "get it" aren't "getting it" themselves.
The manual for TiVo should start, "So, you don't know what's on, but you want to watch more of it."
Or for an MP3 player, "I hold more than your entire collection, only 10% of which do you ever want to listen to anyway."
A palmtop computer, "Take me anywhere that you can sit hunched over to see my tiny screen and peck my infintesimal keys." (The same goes for cell phones with Internet access.)
Computers, "Games! Music! DVD! Office software! Tax prep! None of which look anything alike, work the same way, use the same key sequences or have a uniform help system to show you what you need, thus requiring you to call the same people that seem frustrated that you don't read the "Quick Start" manual which shows ONLY what SHOULD happen not the thousands of possible conflicts that will render useless your best efforts. Enjoy your new computer."
Many posters are being too hard on people who probably shouldn't have picked up these devices in the first place. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
I can write programs in a number of different languages.
Can I set my VCR to tape Farscape for me? No. I've tried on and off for a couple of years now. I've read the manual from cover to cover. I can't make the frelling thing work.
There are a couple of basic problems here.
1. Consistency. Why does every screen have to look different(and by this I mean organization as opposed to colors)?
2. Consistency. Why does every brand feel the need to reinvent the wheel with regards to how I do something as simple as taping a show?
We need a well-designed, well thought-out standard for these things, because it's not just the technically inept who have trouble with these things.
Design patterns for human-computer interaction are nascent but document well the common metaphors used in nearly all GUI computer applications today:
. html
http://www.mit.edu/~jtidwell/interaction_patterns
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Everything is too friendly, and not friendly enough. It's friendly enough any moron thinks they can use it, but stupid enough they can't.
Using TiVo as an example: While the interface is simple to understand, almost too simple, it doesn't make the concepts under the interface simple.
PVRs are a new concept. While you can relate some features with ease to someone who has a VCR, other features still confound people.
So, while we all talk about making the interface easier and easier, give people time to understand the underlying concept or you're wasting your time...
Meanwhile, those of us who "get it", have to confirm every fscking delete. It'd be nice if some of these friendly interfaces let you make the interface less friendly. I'd rather take my chances with an accidental delete every now and then, for example, instead of confirming each one.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
"Things should be made as simple as possible--but no simpler." Put another way (by Larry Wall), it should be easy to do easy things and possible to do hard things.
It's funny that you should mention the telephone. A receptionist transferred a customer to me by mistake. After fiddling with the "forward" button for a minute, I was forced to ask the customer to hang up and call again. I later discovered that my phone was an old model that lacked the "transfer" button. It required a "*" code to perform that function.
It's typical that Linux/Open Source nerds don't give a rat's ass about user friendliness, which is the reason why Linux was the way it was until a couple of years ago. A lot of improvement has been made to the UI for the specific reason of getting more people to use it.
But to companies that want you to buy their product, of course they need to make the UI as easy as possible, because you want people to pay you money for it and NOT return it. For more advanced users, they can add more features and gadgets for bragging rights, but really it's whoever sells the most units that wins at the end of the day.
If corporations had a choice, they wouldn't give a shit whether or not we liked their product, or used their product, as long as we paid them money. That's why monopolies like Microsoft are so dangerous, because inherently they don't care about us. The only reason why they do is because we have choice over who to buy, and where to spend our money, which is why they end up throwing us a bone and trying to appeal to the larger masses.
Bicycles are not "User friendly" to begginers, but the interface is designed appropriately because it lets you operate the bicycle effectivley. If you want to simplify the interface you need to add to the bicyle itself. Like a computer operated universal gearing system with gyroscopic sensors to remove the gear widgets. Or training wheels so you don't need to maintain you centre of balance.
I can use an example with a computer program.
When I install old dos games on my computer (C&C, KKnD, quake, etc.) They all need to ask me about my sound card set up. More recent programs can figure it out without bothering me at all.
- Alysander.
"Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"
--because it makes money!
c'mon now, you really had forgotten that? he who makes it easier will sell more than his competitors. this is practically darwin.
and i'm not being elitist about the 'dumb masses' here. chances are every single one of us reading this would not have a computer if it was as hard to use as fortran punch cards.
the 'make it easy' urge is a strong feedback vein in technological progress. don't miss that point by giving in to a sneer-session at anyone who is less adept than you, disguised as an intellectual probe into the responsibilities of the user.
Bicycles are not "User friendly" to begginers, but the interface is designed appropriately because it lets you operate the bicycle effectivley. If you want to simplify the interface you need to add to the bicyle itself. Like a computer operated universal gearing system with gyroscopic sensors to remove the gear widgets. Or training wheels so you don't need to maintain your centre of balance. I can use an example with a computer program. When I install old dos games on my computer (C&C, KKnD, quake, etc.) They all need to ask me about my sound card set up. More recent programs can figure it out without bothering me at all. So do things the best way you can see, and listen to other people. Usefullness is sure to follow. - Alysander.
you've given a semi legit reason for that fucking paper clip to exist!!!!! Satan's already running over to REI to buy a ski parka, and rumor has it flying pigs were the true cause of the mid air accident over germany recently.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
So why doesn't this work for Joe Q. User? They don't know how we think. Let's take IE for example.. for most of "us" it's pretty easy to get around with (yes, it still sucks but that's another story ;)) Let's say Joe wants to get into the options. We'll save him some trouble and let him know that it's in one of the menus, somewhere... Where does he go? File? Well, the configuration is in a file.. we'll go there. Edit? Yes! I want to edit the options, that must be it. View? Yes, let's view the settings. Tools? Well, that must not be it... I want options, not tools.
Yet, the experienced computer user will almost immediately check tools and find options. It doesn't make sense, but we're used to it! Windows XP was supposed to help with this.. and it did, a little. Take a look at the search, it's dumbified. My grandma could use it. Unfortunately, whenever I use it it's annoyingly preschoolish to me.
So, what can be done? Well, there's two things. First, we can start making all software dumbified. tar -xvIf? No.... tar, please extract this tar with bzip2 compression. Some of it simply isn't possible, and the experienced users (meaning the people who write the software) aren't going to like it. Scratch the move everything to dumb idea.
So, that leaves a partial dumbification. Programs need dumb modes. Even Windows XP's search as I mentioned earlier has a someone un-dumbified mode. It's not perfect, but it's the right idea. We need different modes of programs for different types of users.
All of this can be applied to electronics in general too. Think stereos, think play buttons.. couldn't they just write 'play'?
We can talk rounds about how grampa didn't grow up with a computer and we did, but that an oversimplification. The truth is that some ppl not only don't get, but don't CARE. We take some pleasure in the understanding how things work. Many, if not most, do not.
And we're outnumbered too, gang.
Think about it this way: do you tune your own engine? No? Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to drive.
And for those geeks that DO tune their own engine, well, I hope that you see the point also. We all have our own skills, and we shouldn't deny the fruits of our labor to those that couldn't replicate what we do--instead we bill them, and they bill us for what we can't do (and they can't understand why we can't do it, either.)
--
$tar -xvf
A quick example... about three years ago, I commented that you should always use a UPS on a Linux box, because the ext2 filesystem was fragile. (there was much more to this, but in the interest of brevity I'll omit it.)
So what did I get in reply? "You're a moron, you should be manually editing your filesystem when it's corrupted and using backups of the superblock." And other posters appeared to agree with him. I don't think I got even a single reply in support of my stance... that I shouldn't have to, that a properly designed fileystem wouldn't have these problems. I'll not repeat the whole argument. Either you will understand why this was a ridiculous thing to say or you won't. But the blame-the-user mindset was firmly in place... it was MY fault because I didn't know enough, not the fault of the designer(s).
Read the book "The Design of Everyday Things". It is a great set of examples of how badly real-life things can be designed... and how a properly designed real-life thing should automatically guide the user into using it correctly. A door that pushes, for example, should NOT have a handle, it should have a push plate... and maybe a handle for the other side, because it pulls on that side.
According to research, there are two basic ways that humans organize data and navigate through the world: "knowledge in the head" and "knowledge in the world". People who use the former are Slashdotters... they use their memory as their primary navigation device. They tend to trust their own memories over things like street signs and maps.
The other type of thinker uses the world around him/herself to keep them organized. WHERE the piece of paper is tells them WHAT it is. They'll trust a street sign over their memory every time. They don't try to store the entire world in their head, and (this is the crucial part) they get confused when input isn't consistently mappable to output.
A car is easy to drive for everyone because inputs translate to outputs in a simple, direct way. There are only a few states and only about five main inputs. Anyone tall enough to see over the dashboard can successfully move a car with an automatic transmission.
For 'in the world' thinkers, however, a computer is a deep mystery. Inputs don't translate into outputs. In a car, if you push the accelerator, the engine revs up, and the car usually goes faster. On a computer, if you click the mouse, a zillion different things could happen, depending on where the pointer was, what mouse button you pressed, what program was running, or what the time of day was, or what have you. This means computers are HARD for 'in the world' types.
That is part of what was so successful about the Macintosh. One button. Short menus. It's still complex, but the inputs map more closely to the outputs, and the onscreen cues make it easier for externally-organized people. The internal states of the machine are more clearly reflected on screen.
Just because something is complex on the inside doesn't mean it has to be complex on the outside, too. A modern car is an exceedingly complex device, and it takes a lot of training to be able to repair one if it breaks... but pretty much any idiot can drive. (and, judging from what I see on the freeway every day, every idiot does. :-) )
Computers can be this way without sacrificing their power. But it's easy to blame the user and ignore the problem when the solution isn't easy. Look at my ext2 experience. Back then, it was my fault. Now that we have journaling filesystems, it's obvious that a well-designed filesystem doesn't need manual editing of the superblock after a power failure.
Likewise, we'll someday look back and realize that gadgets didn't have to be hard, we just made them that way. And it's nobody's fault but ours.
Yes, clippy.
Thank you good sir, I was going to make the same comment myself, yelling at the guy for being an idiot and all.. I'm tired of seeing "mute" instead of "moot." Its not just being anal -- this kind of misuse simply makes one look like an idiot and they should be corrected to avoid future idiocy.
Don't use the wrong word again ass-monkey. This goes beyond your typical spelling/grammer error and just makes you look stupid. Learn something from this and don't act like people are criticising you because they're anal. We're here to help you.
It's called Consumer Economics. You can expect the consumer demand for high tech gadgets to continue (increasing), however their technical abilities will not scale to match. This means that although consumers will want fancier toys, they don't have the patience the invest the necessary time to become an expert in any given device or technology. They just want it, and they want it now. This fact really hasn't changed in quite a bit of time (say...since the consumer economy was born.)
We, as engineers, know that this pretty much sucks. However, if we (or the companies that we work for) want to make a buck (and they do) this is the reality that must be dealt with.
However, there is a segment of this consumer population where the above is not true--us. We want tech, we want it now...and we don't mind if it's complicated. Understand however, that we're not the target market that is going to make our companies millions of dollars.
We, as engineers, have to come to grips with the fact that we're not the target consumer population, and that we do, in fact, have to build for the lowest common denominator.
Sucks. Get over it. Or, just keep posting silly Ask Slashdot questions, and not getting the answers you're hoping to hear.
Like those indoor used cordless (aka wireless) phone here and here (all in Japanese, you will need the fish to translate for you), don't be scared away with the numbers of buttons on the key pad. Most of them have step-by-step voice and text prompts and the buttons you would mostly pressed following the prompt will either flash or show in a different color. Those buttons that are not related to this particular function will not lit and function at all.
There it becomes a simple task to follow these "instructions" to setup the phone, set the morning call time, use the telephone answering system, forward a voice mail to another phone number, etc.
One doesn't even have to look into to manual for these features but if you do want to, the manual is clear, precise, well organized, step by step with illustrations (especially on do and don't) and mostly, is fun to read and easy to follow.
And I have seen sentence like this on the mobile phone manual: Please consider not to use this mobile phone in restaurants because it could disturb other diners. Nice, isn't it?
---
Sic? What sic?
Yes, the word is "moot", but if you are going to correct grammar, and cannot manage to use correct grammar when doing so, please refrain.
I suggest not correcting QWZX on matters of grammar. You will just embarrass yourself.
I had a partner that used to say that ALL THE TIME [...] No, you had a parter who used to say that frequently.
This may come as a surprise to you, but language is more than the literal meanings of words. For example, if I say "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse", I do not mean that I could literally eat a horse. This is often called a "figure of speech".
Now, in this case, when I say "all the time", this is a figure of speech that means "very often".
On a related note, it is incorrect to treble the interogatory mark; one piece of end punctuation, together with the introductory interjection, is quite sufficient to indicate the mood of the sentence.
In formal writing, you are correct. However, the purpose of grammatical rules is to enhance understanding and communication. In the case of creative writing, one of the most important "rules" is knowing when to break the rules in order to enhance communication or even style.
For example, in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, it starts "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity..." By any formal standard, this is a horrible sentence. Yet, by breaking convention and being very redundant, it evokes an unforgettable image and is one of the most famous opening sentences in literature.
My choosing to use multiple question marks is in that spirit; the spirit of breaking the rules in order to create a specific mood.
Grasshopper, when you can snatch the participial phrase from my sentence, it will be time for you to go.
P.S. I intentionally put my punctuation marks outside of quotation marks, so don't bother to nit-pick me on that. That is one rule that I intentionally ignore.
Actually, people like you are what makes Slashdot successful. There's so much group-think on this site yet some aren't willing to succumb. I know I don't, and I get modded to hell for it sometimes.
:-) ) "
---"This is really NOT the forum in which you want to post this kind of question. It feels like you had already drawn a conclusion "users are dumb!" and you wanted support in that conclusion. You'll get plenty of it here, but I don't think it will be very useful advice.
"Well, if you don't use the command-line ONLY, you're a lamer".... Yeah. Guess I'm a lamer.
---"A quick example... about three years ago, I commented that you should always use a UPS on a Linux box, because the ext2 filesystem was fragile. (there was much more to this, but in the interest of brevity I'll omit it.)"
I thought the same thing. "Windows sux" yet can survive resets like that. With the ext2fs, you had to wait for a fsck. Then you wait for the filesystem to fsck you.
---"So what did I get in reply? "You're a moron, you should be manually editing your filesystem when it's corrupted and using backups of the superblock." And other posters appeared to agree with him. I don't think I got even a single reply in support of my stance... that I shouldn't have to, that a properly designed fileystem wouldn't have these problems. I'll not repeat the whole argument. Either you will understand why this was a ridiculous thing to say or you won't. But the blame-the-user mindset was firmly in place... it was MY fault because I didn't know enough, not the fault of the designer(s)."
In a very few instances, you should do as such. If you're investigating a crime (where logfiles were deleted), you use the Coroner's tookit. Other than that, it should be AS EASY as the fat32 partition type. Instead, they made it horridly fragile.
---"Read the book "The Design of Everyday Things". It is a great set of examples of how badly real-life things can be designed... and how a properly designed real-life thing should automatically guide the user into using it correctly. A door that pushes, for example, should NOT have a handle, it should have a push plate... and maybe a handle for the other side, because it pulls on that side."
I remember a web-site that covered the worst software UI's. I cant remember (or find) the site. It covered Quicktime, some IBM software and others.
---"According to research, there are two basic ways that humans organize data and navigate through the world: "knowledge in the head" and "knowledge in the world". People who use the former are Slashdotters... they use their memory as their primary navigation device. They tend to trust their own memories over things like street signs and maps."
---"The other type of thinker uses the world around him/herself to keep them organized. WHERE the piece of paper is tells them WHAT it is. They'll trust a street sign over their memory every time. They don't try to store the entire world in their head, and (this is the crucial part) they get confused when input isn't consistently mappable to output."
---"A car is easy to drive for everyone because inputs translate to outputs in a simple, direct way. There are only a few states and only about five main inputs. Anyone tall enough to see over the dashboard can successfully move a car with an automatic transmission."
---"For 'in the world' thinkers, however, a computer is a deep mystery. Inputs don't translate into outputs. In a car, if you push the accelerator, the engine revs up, and the car usually goes faster. On a computer, if you click the mouse, a zillion different things could happen, depending on where the pointer was, what mouse button you pressed, what program was running, or what the time of day was, or what have you. This means computers are HARD for 'in the world' types."
Command line is somewhat different. Yeah, the commands are a bear to remember, but input and output are simple. In a way, this is what makes Linux really nice, but also excruciatingly hard. You can simply pipe the outputs from 1 program into another program. However, this type of thoughts are usually held by very logical people. Your average person doesn't fall into this category.
---"That is part of what was so successful about the Macintosh. One button. Short menus. It's still complex, but the inputs map more closely to the outputs, and the onscreen cues make it easier for externally-organized people. The internal states of the machine are more clearly reflected on screen."
The KISS principle had a good impact.
---"Just because something is complex on the inside doesn't mean it has to be complex on the outside, too. A modern car is an exceedingly complex device, and it takes a lot of training to be able to repair one if it breaks... but pretty much any idiot can drive. (and, judging from what I see on the freeway every day, every idiot does.
---"Computers can be this way without sacrificing their power. But it's easy to blame the user and ignore the problem when the solution isn't easy. Look at my ext2 experience. Back then, it was my fault. Now that we have journaling filesystems, it's obvious that a well-designed filesystem doesn't need manual editing of the superblock after a power failure."
True, thank goodness for Reiser, XFS and others.
---"Likewise, we'll someday look back and realize that gadgets didn't have to be hard, we just made them that way. And it's nobody's fault but ours."
That "hardness" is what keeps geeks cool (heh). It's the whole "I can do it and YOU cant" attitude. That's one of the things that's boosting Linux up. It has the capibility of nearly everything. If you dont like component A, you can put component B in its place or make your own. That A and B hold true for GUI's, Graphic subsystems, text editors, web servers, (soon to be) kernels, filesystems, command lines..... anything. Once Linux becomes the standard (soo many numerous reasons which I will not state here), you'll see usability on Linux (for the average person) to go high.
This is some breaking news related to this story.
My girlfriend was checking her email just now and discovered that Yahoo! had switched the order of the buttons. Now Shop is where Mail used to be. I used to work for a dotcom (actually, I used to work for Yahoo! too) and I can tell you that what probably happened is that some guy in the e-commerce branch said "We're not getting enough hits on Shop - do something or you're fired!"
I don't know what all you user interface people think about this, but I'm inclined to say that it's never a good idea to change an interface for the purpose of driving accidental traffic.
I remember a web-site that covered the worst software UI's. I cant remember (or find) the site. It covered Quicktime, some IBM software and others.
The Interface Hall of Shame, most likely.
it will be time for you to go
HA! The exact quote from Kung Fu is "it will be time for you to leave"!!!
Gotcha! What a burn!
d00d ur n0t l33t. omg gr4mm4r pwnz j00. n3wb. :P
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I wasn't going to nit-pick your grammar, but what the hell. I might as well give you a full education. Your biggest problem is a tendency to overuse commas with small, choppy phrases.
Yes, the word is "moot", but if you are going to correct grammar, and cannot manage to use correct grammar when doing so, please refrain.
"Please refrain" is somewhat of a dangling clause. This is better: "Yes, the word is 'moot', but if you are going to correct grammar, please refrain from doing so if you cannot manage to use correct grammar". Notice the better sentence flow.
I doubt very much whether your partner was in inanimate object, or whether it had an unlimited capacity to continue speaking day and night.
First: "an inanimate object"
Second: "or whether it had an unlimited capacity" is awkward phrasing. Try: "or that it had unlimited capacity".
On a related note, it is incorrect to treble the interogatory mark
First: Spelling error: "interrogatory".
Second: Ah, that's enough. I think the point is made.
I've designed several, IMHO (and that of my users), very user-friendly programs for general vertical-market use. The key to making something both 'easy to use' and 'easy to learn' is to find ways to constantly and *unobtrusively* (Die, Office Assistant, DIE!!!) provide the user with feedback, and make the most common choices apparent visually and functionally.
For example, each time a user presses a key on the keyboard in one of these programs, the field they're typing in checks to see if the input is appropriate. If not, it doesn't distract the user from their task. It doesn't beep. It doesn't present a dialog box. It doesn't flash a message in the status bar. Most importantly, some little paperclip cartoon doesn't tap on my screen and pop up a balloon covering half the document. It dynamically turns the field's label red, instead of black.
Since I began using this feedback system, I've only received two support calls, from users whose input wouldn't validate because they put foreign currency symbols in with their amounts (which has since been fixed).
Buttons should be obvious, and have little pictures. Wizards seem to, in my experience, frustrate the user because if they're not going to read the manual, why would they want to read the same amount of text to walk them through the same process on-screen? Wizards seem to be bogged down with too much textual explanation and too few obvious visual hints. For a good example of a Wizard-type interface that works, check out Nero Express from Ahead Software.
--Jasin Natael
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
The world is divided into two categories. Those who "get it" and those who do not.
Yes, it is true, but how about making life a bit easier for us, those who get it. I mean, I do programming for living and read a lot of manuals, but I can do only finite amount of RTFMs in my limited lifetime. There should be a simple ways to perform common tasks like for example recompile apache with mod_perl, which is far from simple. Or easy way to install and set up sybase server and I want GUI for it, even a wizard. Actually I want mind control, but that is another story.
From doing tech support for a few years, I came up with this plan.
When a user first turns on his computer he's presented with a test. Kind of like an IQ test, but a tad PC oriented. The smarter that the user is, the more features that he is allowed to access. Lower scores mean, of course, less features. The lowest of the low will get one button on the screen that makes a 'ding' sound when you click on it.
One day, I would really like to see this in action.
Well, for one, "The Customer is always right." That's the way many companies operate.
Secondly, although user-friendly stuff serves a purpose for stupid people who refuse to learn more, it also has other purposes.
Firstoff, do you expect the human mind to memorize every known fact in existance? No, you don't. So how do you expect intelligent people of non-computerized vocations to understand every nook and cranny of a complicated OS with limited time and limited mental resources?
And another, do you expect a twelve year old to understand a complex OS with no "user-friendly" features when no classes or books are availbile on it in his or her area.. or at least, not at his or her age/reading level?
Well, typically that twelve year old would learn the user-friendly stuff, and then, if that twelve yera old were of the more computer-suited type, that twelve year old would go through all the menus and mess with everything they could unless they were pretty sure that their OS would get screwed up from it.
So why is User-Friendly stuff there? It's not just there for the morons. It's also for the people who're too busy or too young to be tech-saavy.
When you do something you base your actions on a number of assumptions: here a few I can see in your (above) statement.
- They understand english
- They know what a doorbell is
- They what a bell is
- They know what ring means in conjunction with bell
- Repetition helps you recall something
- If you can't recall something after being told 10 times you are brain damaged.
You mom isn't brain damaged, it's just what you are saying isn't relevant to her. It's egotistical to think that it does (The world revolves around me!!). You need to listen to the situation if you want to help."There are no settings. There is nothing to remember. You drag the mouse to highlight the text you want to copy. You press the right mouse button and choose "copy". You move to the new document and right-click and choose "paste" HOW is that more complex than what you just did with the copier over at the drugstore? HOW is that more complex than tying your shoes?"
Did you mean "Drag the mouse to highlight" or "Click and drag the mouse highlight" or "Left click at the begging of the area you want to highlight, keep the button depressed, move the mouse to the end of the area. Press the right mouse button over the now selected area. Move the mouse down to select the copy function and left click."? Things seem complicated when you don't understand them, remember that they don't think in the same way as you.
"Those who ask us 200 times how to copy/paste and cannot remember simply because their mindset is that computers are scary complex things that do not make sense."
So help them understand computers so they become simple and harmless.
Don't Forget! A Practical Guide For Improving Your Memory.
Hey bitches.
This goes for both of you:
When you have punctuation directly following a citation, the punctuation should be placed inside the quotation marks. It does not matter if you don't like it, it's the rule.
Correct: "I paid attention in school!"
Incorrect: "I can't spell or regulate my bowel movements".
There is such as thing as usability for expert users. AutoCAD is probably the best example: Grandma can't pick it up in 5 minutes of use, but Sally the engineer can absolutely rock out with it. But, you have to pick a target audience. If you are building software for Sally the Engineer, you still have to design it carefully, and test it to make sure it makes sense to her and is designed to maximize her productivity. A crap UI is still a crap UI.
There is still a serious "fuck the user" attitude problem among developers. "We had to memorize arbitrary and even counterintuitive commands and conceptual models of badly designed software while we were learning about computers; why shouldn't they have to do the same?" It's pathetic. It's purely due to laziness on the part of developers, but the defense is always based on ego. Why bother doing all that extra coding to make it easy to use, the users are just stupid and won't get it anyway, so let's just code it the easy way. Right. User hostile developers create user hostile user interfaces. Just because there are *some* truly stupid users, and *some* cowardly folks who just assume they can't figure it out without trying, that's no excuse for throwing in the towel and designing junky software.
The more complex your application, the *harder* you should be trying to make it easier to understand. That doesn't mean Clippy. That means giving it a solid, predictable conceptual model, that people can learn and feel comfortable with. Interaction designers know all about this - read a usability or information design book sometime. It's not about printing a 900 page manual, although that isn't obsolete. It's about thinking about the design of your software before firing up the text editor and coding, and testing it with real users to see if your hunch about terminology was right.
It's time to get developers to base their ego on how *good* the user interface it is, instead of how *exclusive* it is. This ain't a bloody nightclub. It's the code you want people to use (buy?). Look down on them and tell them they're not worthy of a manual and you're just giving a competitor an opportunity to kick you in the nuts.
Hm. Recompiling apache with mod_perl takes what? fewer than 5 minutes of hands-on time? =] Can't get much more simple than that.
;)
I find command-line interfaces supplemented by man pages to be the most intuitive, easy to learn interface possible... Probably because you only need to learn each component once, and then it interacts with all the other components of the OS to produce the desired effect. GUI's make things needlessly complex in their attempt at user-friendliness.
But... Seriously. Those things you speak of are geek things. Geeks don't need simplicity.
-Sara
"Oh. Oh, Fritz? Fritz, get up for God's sake! Get up! THEY'VE KILLED FRITZ!"
... have been around a long time:
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage
That being said there is the question of user-friendly to who? Generally user-friendly to a layman means the software makes certain decisions for you (because you don't understand). User-friendly to a geek means you can get under the hood and easily do what you want. Word 2000 makes the wrong decisions for you and is therefore not user-friendly to anyone and is worse than Word 97.
Notice that people rarely complain about GUI. GUI is great. It allows all users to work faster and doesn't disempower anyone. (The only possible problem is that it can tax the machine to much.)
P.S. You know drivers never complain about people who drive automatic transmission. (Stick isn't really that hard.) In fact, taxi drivers usually drive automatic transmission. Remember the customer (user) is always right. There is too much information in the world and if everyone was tech-savy there would be less jobs for us.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
"Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual?"
you moron, you forgot the cardinal rules:
1. USERS DON'T READ.
2. SEE NUMBER 1
for christ's sake.
good points - i think the fundamental thing is that our 'lusers' want to - or have to - perform some task on a computer, but refuse to take the time to learn.
for your examples: a recipe - if i wanted a particular dish, and i had a recipe for it, i would certainly try to make it. if i didn't have a recipe, i'd probably try to look it up online or in a cookbook, failing that i'd ask a friend who i know has some culinary skill.
fashion and clothing is generally a personal taste thing - i don't think that it really applies here.
as for fine art, i have only a passing interest. if i had the money and a fabulous house that i wanted to decorate with art, i would definitely do my research - 1) so as not to make "bad" choices and look bad to people who are "in the know" about art and 2) so as not to waste my money on crap.
you've probably got me on the elected officials thing. politics do not interest me, but then again, i don't really recall anything that has required a great knowledge of politics in my life.
i'm wild in bed. 'nuff said.
i think the point is that the general 'luser' mentality is that there is a very quick short-circuit from "i am going to sit down and use application X so i can Y" to "hey knowledgeable techie guy, show me how to do Y with X." they skip the intermediate step of trying to gather the knowledge for themselves and mastering it. is it that techie people have a higher aptitude for do-it-yourself-ness? possibly. then again, i am sure there are plenty of techies who would make fools of themselves in any of the situation/examples proposed.
the fundamental problem is that of doing the work of learning for yourself - and retaining the knowledge - rather than repeatedly asking someone else to help you - or worse, do it for you. people of all types - techies and non-techies, suffer from this in many different categories, both technical and non-technical.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
I got sick of dealing with people who are unwilling to learn how to use the tools required by their job. There are two or three positions in our company that don't require the use of a computer. They also happen to be the lowest paying jobs. Go figure. I have no empathy for people with letters after their name who can't configure their own email. Even worse is when they ask me how to do something in Word or Excel. It's not my job. I wasn't hired to provide tech support for lazy bastards. I finally just started saying, "Look. I have no idea how to do that. Yes, I could go get the manual and figure out how to do it then show you but that just doesn't make sense. Why should I spend hours learning how to do something just so I can teach you how to do it? You can read English and you're the one who needs to put graphs in your reports. The manual is on the shelf over there. If that manual doesn't do it for you, go to Barnes and Noble tonight and find one you like. Give the receipt to accounting."
Believe it or not, that actually worked.
Anyone else find this incredibly ironic?
A bunch of Open Source people arguing about usability, when it's clear that Open Source projects can't productize code to save their lives?
Having been on both sides of the fence here, it's undeniable that Open Source volunteers rarely volunteer effort on boring code like that necessary for usability. About the closest thing to it are the vendors like Red Hat, which pay people to do the unsexy work, and most of that's pointed at installers.
This article declaring uasability undesirable won't make it so...
-- Terry
Well, may be I brought up wrong example with mod_perl.
> only need to learn each component once, and then...
I all agree with you on how good CLI tools are, but that is only when you repeatedly use them.
If you don't, if you need it to bee done once or twice then give me a nice clean GUI with one button on it 'Do It'.
There are a lot more than one thing that goes into user interface. There are more than three, but I think it breaks down nicely into three.
1. Self explanatory interface - this I personally think is what is often confused with Usability. Microsoft's wizards explain things in such annoying depth that it insults your intelligence. The little tool tip that pops up in Photoshop, Download mage, Word, etc gives you a suscinct summary of what the button will do. Part of this is intelligent design... The new version of Photoshop hides the paintbucket behind the gradiant tool... a highly illogical place to find it. Yet when you look for the polygon selection tool, it's right behind the lasso selection tool, exactly where you expect to find it.
2. Intelligently designed back-end. the system has to be designed in the cleanest, most logical way for the interface to make any sense. I can never find the "Envelopes" command in Word, because it is a feature that was tacked on after the fact and never really fit into the program. I always liked the fact that you never had to worry about breaking dependencies on the MAC by moving programs or folders around, because the file system was designed to expect users to want to. Likewise, changing icons and adding things to the apple menu are simple, because the system was designed to do those things. Dos was never intended to support icons, a start menu, multiple users... but it was jerrymandered into it. The back code is a mess, and so the front code is a mess.
3. Trust. My mother will still say things like "I want to check my e-mail. Should I press the green 'get e-mail' button?" But she grew up in an area where computer technology was more expensive than your house, and more valuable than a department full of graduate students. Touching ENIAC would be as blasphemous and dangerous as touching the arc of the covenant. She knows it says 'get e-mail,' which is what she wants to do. She even presses it unprompted when I'm not around. But she doesn't feel confident enough to try.
And quite frankly, once you have the hindsight to use a machine and discover what it does and how it works, it becomes quite clear that the whole bloody experience was designed by a committee and not by a person. My VCR remote has a second set of channel up / down and volume buttons, a "tape position" button, a "counter reset" button, a "speed" button, a "search" button, and a "CA / Zero" button, none of which have ever been pressed. But it doesn't have a "set clock" button or a "record a program" button. Those options are hidden behind a menu in the aptly labeled VCR+ button, which appears to be a suboption of the Fast Forward button but really isn't.
I believe strongly that people are too lazy to do any research and read the fscking manual. It's unfortunate that this society has raised us to believe we don't have to study anything to get things right. But really, why does the yamaha amp here have five lines in with five buttons and five audio out streams, but two of those buttons only work in conjuncture with two other buttons (and eachother) even though they completely override the signal? Why is the menu button on the TV only available on the remote control? Why do USB cables come with three different ends? None of these things make any sense. Most of them happened because someone tried to, say, hack on a submenu onto an existing television, or setup a new feature without adequately explaining what it does in the context of what the user is experiencing.
Like the good Perl says, "make the common things easy and the uncommon things possible." That doesn't mean you can get away without studying how to program, but it does mean that your device has to be layed out wholistically around how people will use the device.
And quite honestly, most devices are so painfully simple in function that there isn't any good reason to need to read the manual.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?
Perhaps because standardization makes sense? Although regretably not to manufacturers, it seems.
In my house I have two VCRs. One of them, if the timer is set to record, requires that the VCR be on when the given time comes up. The other, however, requires that the VCR be turned off when the given time approaches, or it won't record. Even if we get users to read the manual (and I do believe that a good number of consumers are willing to read the manual, so long as it's easy enough to confront their specific issue), what're the chances that we're going to get them to read the manual each time they're forced to remember how their specific hardware performs?
It's the same with phones, particularly portables. Some have one button to place a call and another to hang up. Others use the same button. I don't know how many calls I've had logged on my answering machine from those who've accidentally hit the talk button expecting the phone to disconnect (because it does on the phone they're more accustomed to using).
Heck, if you wanna get technical, it all starts at the input device. Some time ago I went so far as to purchase a "simple" controller for my mother, as the controller that game with her present TV confused her with the circular button arrangement, four different menu-opening buttons, and six different menu navigation buttons.
I'm convinced the average consumer could pick up a given device and use it straight out of the box if their creators didn't go out of their way to confound the user with new "innovative" interface features.
The "moot" gripe was completely appropriate. Your response is an anal grammar flame. Go to hell, you shrivel-skinned shyster.
Looking for a front end to everything from plucked or hammered strings, hammered bars, tuned air tubes, or digital synthesizers? Look at a piano keyboard. On the other hand, a violin gets its personality from the intimate contact with the strings.
These instruments didn't just appear, they evolved over time. Trumpets didn't have valves until midway through the 19th century.
We are in the starting phase of developing user interfaces that will be used for the next nnn years. If music history teaches anything, it is that no one interface does it all. You end up with a whole orchestra, or at least a small group. Even a rapper has a turntable AND a microphone.
If you got a $100 bill, put your hands up...
Lets face it, some people don't give a damn about computers, so long as they work !
:-
The majority of the people in my office only do this
email
Write a simple document
Play solitaire
That's it !
They don't have any interest in using thier computers for anything else and why should they ?
If something happens to thier computer they don't understand, they call in help.
If something happens to my car that I don't understand, I call in help.
The motor-mac that fixes my car probably thinks I'm a complete moron, just as I'll think about him if he can't figure out how to copy and paste !
We need to stop thinking in terms of the way we figure things and just give the general users what they need and NOTHING more.
Four icons on the desktop for mail, documents, www and games, all files get saved to a network directory maintained by an IT dept. - that's it.
Sometimes constant innovation is nothing more than an exercise in making money driven by the marketing department, resulting in over-complex, redundant architecture that attempts to fulfil the needs of everyone, even though most of us never missed those needs until they gave them to us !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
There is no such thing as too user friendly simply because there is no person so non-technical that I don't want their money.
The more friendly the product the more potential customers it has. That's the same reason why we localize software into different languages.
Read Jef Raskin's book, the Humane Interface.
There are people who don't like user friendly software. Generally those people are snobs who feel that "normal" people don't deserve to use technology.
*laughs* I think the only interface that has that kind of button is a porno site. =] And even THEN you need to jump through the hoops of proving you're an adult.
-Sara
Bruce Ediger's The only intuitive user interface is the nipple, after that, it's all learning contains a lot of wisdom. No designed user interface is, in fact, intuitive. The best one can hope for is familiar.
Geeks like the type of interface that usually comes with VCR's and the like because they in fact are familiar. They are used in the same way as dials and keypads and other stuff we already know and love.
Familiar, though, means different things to different people - there is no need, for instance, for a computer program to look like other computer programs. Using computer programs is a small part of most people's lives - programs should borrow metaphors from user's entire lives, not just from the part of it that they dedicate to the computer. The idea that computer programs should look like each other is almost totally bogus.
If a user finds the TiVo difficult to use, it's probably because the user interface borrows metaphors from that part of life - dealing with technical gadgets - that the same user has experienced as intimidating, difficult, embarrassing, etc. And that again means that that particular user should have an entirely different user interface that bears no resemblance to dials, keypads, etc.
The TiVo, then, is not user friendly - it's easy to use, if you're a geek. But just as being a geek is an aquired skill, so is, say, speaking Norwegian. Lisa gikk til skolen is an unfathomably simple sentence - if you speak Norwegian. It's in the past tense and contains one preoposition, but like, the words should be familiar to anyone, and how difficult can it be to learn Norwegian - I mean, my daugher speaks it fluently and she's not even four yet.
-- Rolf Lindgren, cand.psychol
..it might be your mom has the beginnings of a biological problem, she has classic symptoms you describe. Beginning alzheimers or CJD-of which there's a lot more than the scared medical establishment will admit to-show symptoms like you describe. As the brain gets destroyed piece by piece, some areas are fully intact, other areas gradually stop functioning. Once you've seen someone actually not be able to remember a familiar face you'll understand. Much longer term memory might be still useful, but others simply cease to be available, they have been actually destroyed. Learning "new" things becomes increasingly difficult as less and less intact neural pathways are available. As you learn you develop new ones, when the brain can't build new ones from disease and stress and accumulated trauma and in some instances chemical buildup that crosses the brain membrane area then new learning becomes almost impossible.
Not saying this is it, but it might be. Look for other clues before proceeding. 200 tries is way too much of a clue to ignore.
If there are more, by all means do some net resarch into the alternative therapies before rushing into a straight western style drug em till they drop approach.
good luck friend
Dude,
You so got me and I like to think I'm hip on all the tricks. Really thought I'd find a link to Boondock Saints or something.
Cheers...
As an example, lets look at a doctor who dials in to access medical records. She must be able to do this. I think we'll all agree that the finer points of Bell's theorem are well outside her scope, but she must know that it involves a phone line so she'll have to plug into into a phone outlet. Just from the fact that it involves the phone system I expect an adult with a high-school diploma to figure out that the modem needs to be conencted to the wall, that there has to be dialtone one that outlet, and that if you have to dial 9 to mke an outside call then the modem does too.
This last point shifts the blame to the users of the system. I've done a little work with a PBX or two(Meridians). And I've read up on my telecommunications background. So far as I can tell, please correct me if I'm wrong, no PBX designer has ever considered the fact that a foreign unit might need to access the system. The dialtone could indicate what, and if, you dial for an outside line. Standardize it in PBXs and modem manufacturers would imnplement the feature. No more "what do I dial ?". Just plug it in. The fact that modems don't work on a digital PBX line is annoying but probably unfixable.
That's an interface issue, but not a UI issue. A related UI issue is adding the prefix to the dialer applet. I have seen intelligent people stare blankly at me when I tell them that the hotel might require 8 instead of 9, and that they can just change it here [points to number field with cursor blinking faithfully in front of what I hope will still be a working POP next week]. They just stare. It must be too much information in one sentence, it needs to be broken down more.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Before adding mind control shouldn't we make such programs that they react correctly to whatever we might feed them?
I have conflicting views on this. I liked an earlier post on "logically sound" though I think it went a little far.
It's easy for our generation (and profession) to mock older people, or less experienced people. But I think our industry has a tendency to bite itself in the ass by overselling "user friendly".
Apple are a good example. By saying how easy it is to use a Mac they overstate how complicated PCs really are. And that means people get scared.
People who don't know are too afraid they'll "cause a virus" or wipe the hard drive with a random button press, because the culture of fear we've created suggests exactly that.
There's another side to that though. People are very unwilling to just TRY. I recently had to explain to someone how to use a DVD player. "How do I play the movie?" Well, when the thing comes up that says "Play Movie" hit OK!
It's not that hard. There are certain paradigms that should require minimal or no learning. The "tape deck" concept, for example. Play, pause, search, skip, etc. These are basic concept since (or grown from) the cassette tape. Tape, CD, DVD, mp3 player, minidisk. It doesn't matter. They work more or less the same. For a user to not understand the basic functions shows a basic level of laziness.
It's also worth pointing out the car analogy. If someone bought a car it would be reasonable to expect a certain level of understanding of how to drive it. Same with a complex machine, like a computer. to say it's "too complicated" would be like buying a car, without any idea how to drive and complaining that it's hard.
Another comment I want to make is that sometimes RTFM doesn't help. I recently bought an Ericsson mobile phone. Couldn't turn on a keypad lock. The FM didn't have it (as far as I could find). I had to search the internet, where I finally found it in a PDF document of the FM for another model.
It's worth pointing out that sometimes the FM does more damage than good. A good manual, like any good documentation, is well spaced out, looks pleasing, is simple, clear, concise and free from jargon. All too often this is NOT the case. Surely we've all read manuals that are tiny, cramped, poorly laid out, ambiguous and incomplete?
As a final note. There should not be a limit to user friendliness. Ultimate "user friendly" would be the ability to simply tell your "thing" what you want. Surely that's an admirable goal. As long as that friendliness is not at the cost of the "power user". Personally, I'd like to just TELL my VCR to tape Buffy!
Don't confuse "User Friendly" with "Dumbed Down". And don't assume that more complicated is always better. There's often charm in simplicity. In many cases advanced features are simply not needed.
Yes. and it even has a name: The ADA.
Nautilus had a preferences menu, with three items: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Beginner hides a lot of options, Intermediate hides some options, and Advanced hides nothing.
Yet this approach failed (everybody thought it was a bad idea) and they removed that feature.
I could not have put it better myself.
Actually, even Red Hat's installers have some really bad usability problems. I once mentioned these problems to one of the lead developers of the anaconda installer, and he thought that I thought the problem was that anaconda wasn't "pretty" enough. Not to just single out Red Hat, many open source projects make the mistake of thing usability == eye candy. And we get these beautifully anti-aliased menus with beautifully rendered font that still confuse the hell out of end-users just as much as the previous versions did two years ago. But I digress.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
One of the main problems with users are those who *want* to remain ignorant about things they perceive aren't worth the effort to learn, or use.
While working on a PC in the messenger department, I listened for about 10 minutes to the manager and another employee talk about sports. I was really impressed with their mastery of obscure baseball statistics, and the details of player's careers that were used to support their arguments.
Then for the 3rd or 4th time, I once again had to show him how to find the "print" menu item.
My Grandmother is another good example. At age 55 she went back to school and became a nurse, graduating 3rd in NY. Last time I offered to set up a computer and teach her how to use email and a simple word processor, she refused because she thought it would be "too complicated" so she wouldn't be able to understand it.
Then there are the users who simply don't read the messages that pop up when something does go wrong, even when the solution is in the message. Things like the user thinking the jaz disk he was copying to his drive was broken because he kept getting the "Drive out of space" error message, or DTP techs thinking the printer is broken when Adobe ATM puts up the "FONT not found" message.
The fax machine we used had the paper supply in a open, vertical feed tray. When you no longer saw the usual stack of paper sticking up out of the machine, it was time to add more. This was a bit too much for some people, so I taped a sign to the tray, so only when the last sheet was used, the sign would be visible. I still got the amusement of watching several people staring at the machine waiting for a fax to come out. After a few minutes I'd ask them to read aloud the sign, which was "If you just put more paper in you wouldn't be standing here waiting like an idiot"
Another example was in a simple program I made, which was used by a dozen DTP techs (whos *job* it was to know computers). Since there was one part that had the potential of the user making a typo, the error message gave very clear instructions on what to do. The 5th unsucessfull try resulted in a message that addressed the user by name, made a rude noise, told him to call for help, and did not have any buttons to dismiss the dialog box. It took less than a week before that feature was used, and the typo mysteriously disappeared when I was watching the user try it for the 6th time......
Basically, i think there is a case to be made for more user-unfriendly software. If the user is repeatetly doing something that can't be automagically fixed, rather than keeping him in a endless loop of:
user goof --> error message and fix suggestion --> user ignoring it and hitting "ok"--> repeat same user goof
the software should become unfriendly, and force the user to do something different, like actually read the error message.
There is also an issue of the software having the needed features, but the user hasn't been taught the skills on how to find things in a new program. Basic things like actually reading all the menu choices in a methodical way, or choosing the one labeled "help"
Anyway, the point of this is that it can be kind of funny what can happen when people's mental models of a technology device are mistaken. There are some interesting comments about this effect, if I remember correctly, in the book The Logic of Failure (author: Dietrich Dorner). It's amusing (and also hugely informative) to see how people get stumped by relatively simple technology such as a thermostat because they have a fundamentally incorrect mental model for how a thermostat works. It's a similar thing with VCRs, I suspect: Some people probably think that the TV "picture" (having no concept of signal that's coming in over the cable or the airwaves) is only there when the TV itself is on...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
In a world where users are deluged with new things, your new thing must be of one of two kinds. It might be so important to the user that they are willing to put substantial initial and ongoing effort into understanding it (e.g., the telephone). Otherwise, it must not require much initial or ongoing effort to understand (e.g. fluorescent replacement bulbs).
The TiVo, for example, is not a such a huge improvement over the VCR (something many users already know) that users would be willing to spend a week learning it and a few hours a week maintaining it. Fortunately, the TiVo is easy to learn and easy to use. This is one reason why it has held on when other PVRs have fallen by the wayside. It will be interesting to see if the MS X Box PVR stuff does as well: I doubt it.
One word: Virtual The pre-existing pigeon holes of the user's mind must be re-used (as championed by Trout and Reis in the seminal marketing tome "Positioning") so that the interface agrees with their pre-existing models of reality. Touch screens do this admirably. They're so obvious users and designers overlook the fact that they're rich with deep UI content: Even secondary effects of good virtaul models/UI's make sense. For example: Pressing harder means "more!" If it's so obvious you overlook it then it's probably something users will adopt without even noticing there's an interface.
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
I think you've hit on an interesting social phenomenon. It's culturally acceptable -- perhaps even desirable in some circles -- to profess ignorance about certain things. I can't count the number of times, for instance, that I've heard people proclaim "Well, I don't really understand math", not with shame but with something approaching pride. (In case math-savant slashdot readers have a hard time relating to this particular example, try replacing it with something more personally salient like "I really don't understand women". In my experience, such a statement is often used as an incentive to bond with other people who feel similarly, not as a shameful admission.)
Then again, there are things that it's not socially acceptable to admit lameness in. Openly admitting lack of knowledge of computers would probably be fatal in a forum like this one. Openly admitting a lack of knowledge about the mechanics of sex (once you're beyond a certain age / experience level) is probably something few people would do. (Though there is a Sex for Dummies book, so who knows -- I figure that's something you buy only as a gag gift, and you make sure that you get it gift-wrapped at the checkout counter!) Or ignorance of how to operate a motor vehicle (unless you're a lifelong Manhattanite, in which case it could be a perverse source of pride)...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
The 80 year old grandfather's problems with the TiVO can be attributed to the fact that as people age, they experience a decline in Fluid Intelligence (their ability to deal with novel problems that do not draw upon previous experiences). It's not that the grandfather was stupid, or that he didn't read the fine manual. It was that his brain's ability to deal with a new situation that didn't draw on his past experiences was not what it used to be. When you also consider the decline in performance of short-term memory that the average 80 year-old experiences, it is really no surpise the grandfather had so much trouble.
To design something for someone of that age, you have to draw upon their Crystallized Intelligence(the store of knowledge or information that a given society has accumulated over time). You might (if you're *really* a geek) be able to do something like rig up an analog alarm clock to the TiVO and expoit the grandfather's 30 years of experience setting alarm clocks to get him to successfully set the TiVO. Yes, he'll probably still need a TV Guide to look up the time so he can set it in the alarm clock, but the point is that the show will be recorded. It sounds crazy, but older adults often exploit their crystallized intelligence to create strategies that work around deficiencies in fluid intelligence.
If people hack network interface cards into their TiVO's, why not hack Grandpa interface alarm clocks into them as well?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Goddamn userfriendlyness sux, i think the world should go back to the stage of apps like 'vi' and 'ed'... The second thing i hate is them sounds... What do they think an OS is? Some kind of elevator? Playing brain-dead music parts when u start it! And the worst part is those "Are u really really really really really really really really really really really really really really sure you want to quit? if you are not, please visit www.microsoft.com/newbie/i_dont_get_a_thing/im_bra indead/i_was_born_yestaday/HEELP.htm to get support" ish messages...
I mean, where are we advanced ppl going to go?
Even linux is starting to get user-friendly...
My nightmare vision (in 5 years):
"Kernel compile blaha.blah-bla
Are really really really really [you know the drill] really sure you want to compile?
If not, please dial 01-800-BILL-GATES for support"
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Is there some reason why your post reads with the semi-literate, uneven verbosity of the sort not normally found outside of Japanese stereo instruction booklets?
Just curious.
Kid-proof tablet..
I think one problem is the people that are using technology: I guess in the days when VCR's were new mainly people that liked to play with technology bought them. Same with computers: when computers became avaible for private people, mainly people that liked to play around with them bought them.
:-)
/.ers know technology, we love technology and most of us understand technology ;-) We like to play around with nifty gadgets and even to take them apart. But most people see machines simply as tools and as such they have to do what people expect from them, and often they simply expect too much. They don't understand those machines and they don't like to which leads to the various problems we all know.
;-)
Those people are willing to read manuals or at least try everything till it works. That's people like us
But today even people that hate technology have to use computers in their workplace. Those people see the benefits of things like VCRs but they don't like playing around with them. They think there is too much magic going which they don't want to understand and because of that "magic" they also expect them to "automagically" work like they want them to.
I guess there was a quote like "Any reasonable advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", which describes just that. We
Or is there anyone who hasn't heard something like this before:
"Oh my god, an error dialog ! It says I did something wrong ! Oh my god oh my god I damaged something ! I sure must have damaged something ! HELP ME!" - "Just press OK and everything's fine." - "Oh."
If there are 100 operations then learning to use all of them the hard way is 100 steps not 1. The meny might have the shortcut printed in it so that everytime you invoke an operation then you are reminded of a faster way of doing it. You don't have to learn all 100 operations the hard way to use one of them.
FRA: STFU GTFO
She is used for the definite neuter, e.g. here she comes(the ship), isn't she a beauty(the xmas turkey), America and her army.
He is used for the indefinite neuter, e.g. an advanced user can get to the functions he wants.
Nothing sexist at all
The point here is well taken - devices that try to cater to people's unwillingness to work to learn eventually become restrictive and annoying.
I'd say we're wrapping up the first round of "user-friendliness realignment". As computers, which up till a decade ago were largely for the use of people who knew what they wanted to do, and were willing to put in substantial effort to learn, turned into something that everyone needed to use, someone needed to redesing them towards accomplishing the task these new users want to do, without needing a year's worth of engineering training. To continue the car analogy, we eliminated the choke, made the car automatic, and set up Jiffy Lubes to change yout oil. For this it was necessary to think from the point of view of a email/IM/word processing user rather than a programmer and see what these people were trying to accomplish, and how to make it straightforward for them.
I believe there will be several more rounds of usability improvments, as people begin to shape their lives more around computers, and all of these will involve making it straightforward (!= trivial!!!) to do what people want to do.
I won't go into the distinction between assembling an early automobile and driving it.
But step back for a moment and think about what you said about a modern entertainment system. Does it need to be complex to use? What has changed from the days of the three-knob television or the five-button remote?
The only thing people do with a home theater setup 95% of the time is watch something or listen to something. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that users should be forced to think in terms of the interactions between devices. Someone is either watching a bradcast, watching the thing on the tape in the VCR slot, or watching the thing in the DVD slot. Why is the channel metaphor broken when a user opts to watch the tape or the disc? Why is it necessary to "switch devices" and switch interfaces when going from VCR to DVD?
No, it's a design failure, and it's shameful.
Ask why a CD changer needs "more buttons" than a single-disc CD player. What has changed in its mission? It plays music. Why can't it have an interface that isn't coupled so literally to its mechanical design? Shouldn't the interface instead be based on its purpose?
An intuitive 200-CD changer should be oriented to telling the user simply and straightforwardly what's currently playing, and asking her or him what they want to play next or which disc they want to eject.
Have a look at an iPod. It's an extraordinarily complex device: it can hold thousands of songs, organize them by artist, title and album, by how recently they've been played, and in other ways.
Count the buttons and knobs. It has fewer than a single-disc CD player or a 1974-vintage portable cassette player does. It's still not as easy as it could be, but it's still a superb lesson in how to design an inetrface based on how a device is used rather than how it's built.
This was all caused the Apple. They created the IMAC. Now everyone thinks everything should be user friendly ;-D
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
Hey, Stallman finally cut his hair!
Can you show us more snapshots from your trip to Europe?
The Palm is an interesting example: it's a pretty good interface design for its kind, and apart from a Grafitti reference card, someone comfortable with a WIMP interface doesn't need an instruction manual in order to use it.
That explained a lot of its initial and ongoing success; as long as Palm buyers were businesspeople and others who use modern, mouse-oriented PCs regularly, the Palm was intuitive.
But it really isn't intuitive to a marginal PC user. What's intuitive about the "home" button and the "menu" button? What's obvious about clicking "Details.." to adjust the alarm setting for an appointment?
A paper phone book or weekly planner is intuitive, whereas a Palm simply does a good job of leveraging a user's already-learned skills in using a WIMP interface.
Instead of getting mad at your mom, find someone who will be patient and cheerful when showing her how to use the Palm's modified WIMP interface. It does take training, and reading a manual is only the best way to do that if a cheerful human teacher isn't available.
Don't you learn more easily when someone knowledgable and cheerful teaches you something than when you read a chapter of a book?
There's a weird, sad notion shared by many engineers--software, hardware, mechanical, electrical and otherwise--that the problem is with people, and that with time people will learn to think like engineers. 25 years into the personal computing era and the VCR era and the cable-TV era, it should be obvious that people are still people, and most will never be engineers. It's the engineering that has to adapt.
As I mentioned in another reply above (all the responses to my original post were so dismaying that I had to respond to all of them), Apple's iPod is complex and versatile, organizes its data more richly than any 200-CD changer, and yet has an interface consisting almost entirely of one knob and one button.
The Palm's interface is still the best PIM interface out there as far as usability goes--but it can still be made far, far more intuitive. It was a smart set of compromises when it was designed, making the best of cost constraints, technical limitations, and canny assumptions about its targeted customers at the time. Let me know when crossing out an item deletes it, like the Newton did years ago, or when flicking your finger across the page of an e-book turns the page. When interface moves like that are the norm rather than isolated frills atop a regular WIMP interface, nobody will need manuals. No general-purpose PIM should need a manual.
The reason most UIs are confusing is simply put: OSes and UIs are designed around the system (bottom up), whereas a user approaches the system from the highest standpoint (UI -> top down).
A user with no knowledge about the system workings feels he or she is constantly pushing a stick into a jar of what seems to be unchangeable jelly. Is it strange a user feels difficult to learn something like this?
And to put this into the 'current situation': Windows has a more intuitive UI because many users have seen it 'grow'. They or their neighbors have worked with DOS or Windows 3.1 and have seen the 'system'. UNIX boxen and Linux has only been used by a select group of individuals and the rest has not seen it grow to what it is right now. That is why people feel that Linux or UNIX is less 'intuitive' than Windows is.
The frame has arguably one of the simplest interfaces possible. It presents pictures to the user. It normally runs in a slide-show mode, showing pictures for a pre-set amount of time. A white button on the back allows the user to step through the pictures at will. A black button (camouflaged with the back of the frame) allows the user to adjust brightness. Two cords, a power cord and a phone cord, connect the device to the outside world.
On several occasions, my grandmother has called upon my father (and would have called upon me had I lived closer) to fix one of those cords when it came unplugged. Reducing the number of cords would make the interface simpler - but not by much.
Once in awhile, we talk about some picture I've sent recently, and I suggest she could show it to her friends - but she says she doesn't know how! All she has to do is push the white button on the back of the frame. Each time I explain it to her, she seems to understand. I wonder how many more times I'll be explaining it.
The Ceiva frame is an example of technology made simple. Yes, I had to do some setup, but that was just at the start. The Ceiva folks were smart to give the frame a slide show mode - so users need only look at the frame to see whatever pictures are there. The optional button on the back lets tech savvy folks display whatever picture they want.
User interfaces don't get much simpler than the Ceiva frame. You could use just a power cord and a wireless modem and do away with the buttons entirely, but they found a good balance between the simplest of devices (the old-fashioned picture frame) and a technological variation on that simple theme - and it's certainly not too user friendly for my grandmother.
I always wonder about the theory of Future Shock when it comes to these things. I do believe that there is a point where things advance faster than your average human can keep up or WANTS to keep up. Which, in theory, would lead to a coming backlash of sorts.
That and I think that people don't EVER want to accept responsibility for there mistakes or shortcomings so they blame it on the other person or device.
One thing though I try and stress to those that just don't get tech is that they are "dumb". I've been doing the computer thing since I was 12 (before hard drives and GUI's) so it's second nature to me. But I can't waltz, play a musical instrument, etc.. Since I know computers though, that makes me a "genius" in people's minds. I know you all also get that but don't let it go to your head. It's all just skills...
Why does my Philips clock cd/radio require 50 tiny little buttons, each the size of a wood tick, accompanied by unreadable silver-on-silver labels, arranged in swooshy patterns that have nothing to do with anything in particular? And which one do I push to turn the flipping thing OFF at 6:30 on a weekend morning when my eyes are gummed up and all I want to do is sleep for another hour? I'll tell you which one. The power cord. Yank the sucker right out of the wall. Works every time.
... fish, barrel.)
Why does my Mandrake Linux box revert to KDE defaults every time I reboot, regardless of the settings in GDM? Oh, I guess I should read the source code to figure it out. God forbid that the bleeping radio buttons do what they say.
Why does the UI for Gcombust look like a preflight checklist of a commercial airliner? (I'd mention Xine and the Gimp, but
What moron decided that in the service of fashion, all television, DVD and VCR buttons should be labeled in dark charcoal lettering on a black background, no larger than 4 point type, and angled slightly toward the floor?
Why does my Scientific-Atlanta TV remote have the power switch right next to "info?" Oops. And why does it forget my channel setting when turned off?
And then there's house wiring. Why are my wall switches wired so that the switch on the left controls the light on the right, and the switch on the right controls the light on the left?
Why does the fax machine require that the paper be inserted face-down, so I can't see/dial the phone number that's written on the document?
Why do no two photocopy machines work the same way? More paper winds up spoiled in the wastebasket next to the average copier than on anyone's desk.
How many U.S. post offices have you been to where the drive-by letter boxes are on the WRONG side of the car?
Which side of the car is the fuel filler door supposed to be on? Do car designers like to go to the 7-Eleven and watch the chaos?
Why does pushing the window button forward roll the window down in one car and up in the other? Is there something wrong with standards? Gee, maybe we should randomly invert the operation of the steering wheel, or the accelerator/brake pedals.
What idjit put the car radio's "AM/FM band" button right next to the "pop the faceplate off and drop it on the floor" button?
It must be the user's fault.
Simple: Users "pay the bills"/"do the work". If they think it is complicated, they will buy something else. In the corporate environment, the CFO doesn't have time to figure out how MS wants you to insert formulas into the spreadsheet. That's what the lowly techs are for!
ok..why should you HAVE to remember them ? think about it ... user interfaces are meant for the user. the computer should do all the handholding necessary if a user cant remember the steps required. if i always highlight text to do a copy paste operation only why should the computer keep asking me from a list of drop down choices ? just do it automagically. nano (version of pico) is one of my favourite text editors. if i do an action more than twice using the same keystroke sequence it remembers it and does it automagically the next time i repeat the first two keystrokes in the sequence. why should we expect users to remember n billion tasks when a machine can do them for us ? its supposed to be a labour saving device not a labour enhancing one.
The problem with computer programmers is that they have huge short term memories. its damn stupid to assume the average person has the same. also most programmers are too damn smart for their own good. assuming the user is brain dead/half asleep is a good assumption when programming. Lets face it -- the average human is NOT smarter than the average geek in terms of sheer logic analysis.
And yes, your mother should beat the shit out of you for being that patronising. a good whuppin does wonders for that overinflated ego.
There's motherboards, and then there's the mother computer:
-Computer, do this.
-No, my dear, trust me, you'd better do that, as this will not turn out to be good for you. Mom knows better.
*sigh*
It's actually easier to back up user data and settings in Windows 2000/XP because it is all stored by default in a user's profile under Documents and Settings.
Therein lies the rub. The name of the "Documents and Settings" folder contains spaces. You get paths like "C:/Documents and Settings/tepples/My Documents". Not only are long names hard to type into configuration scripts (making users resort to copy and paste), but some software gets confused by the spaces and perceives such a path as four words. Therefore, it's much harder to use the network backup software you had site-licensed earlier for a big sum of money with newer versions of Windows. C:/home/tepples would work better, no?
Will I retire or break 10K?
When you have punctuation directly following a citation, the punctuation should be placed inside the quotation marks.
Often, the placement of punctuation inside or outside can change the meaning. How about this: He did not type "ghosts." He typed "ghosts". Otherwise, on a technical board such as Slashdot, you get people writing fputs("hello," stdout); which is incorrect C.
Heck, I'll even bring it back to topic. Some of these prescriptive grammatical "rules" can create misunderstanding when used blindly in technical writing and can diminish ease of use.
Will I retire or break 10K?
everytime my girlfriend unplugs it to hoover (vacuum for those in the USA).
Has Maytag really lost the trademark on Hoover® outside the United States? Or is it in the same limbo where Kleenex® and Xerox® seem to fit?
Will I retire or break 10K?
uberworld.org
That was it. In short, it's a like a MUD, except it's full of people who sit around (mainly students and sysadmins) and chat about whatever they want all day. It's proper name is a "talker" and it used "telnet".
Now this is where the problem lies. I consider the interface to be obvious. You have a bunch of commands and help files called with "help" and it's all very easy.
But the people logging in from Slashdot, just didn't have a clue. And by that, I mean they had no idea what to do. These are people who use UNIX all day long and yet they were lost.
So I looked at the mistakes they made and I added handholding, better information, cleaned up the help files and stuff but STILL and this is the clincher: even then, people just didn't bother reading the information on the screen.
Even when you first log in, there are a couple of pages of information that tell you what to expect. When you actually "arrive" in the main room, you get told of the useful help file to read. Before you register if you type a command wrong, it again points you to that help file!
Most never even found the "say" command. They would log on, scrabble with a few commands, ignore the friendly points on the screen and the automated robot that pointed them to help files and in the end give up.
In the end, I now ask people who want to link, to actually point to a website (see my sig) in an effort to stop people logging on and being rather clueless.
So what am I saying here? Nothing can ever be too user friendly. But it's amazing (and sometimes amusing) to see that even those people who assume that they are cream of the crop when it comes to IT issues get totally and utterly lost using something that we have both 18 and 40 year olds using with little to no IT experience at all.
The problem comes about when there isn't enough testing. We learnt a lot from the confusion of slashdot people, but unfortunately you get to a point where you just cannot do any more but hope that users think for themselves.
(As an aside, if you can read and can handle telnet and some basic commands - you only need 20 odd to get started - then feel free to drop by and chat, website is here)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
User friendly interfaces are a convences only.
Users who believe it a need not a convenced become dependent on it so badly that otherwise briliant people become blithering idiots.
Most users seem to just accept that computers are to complex to understand and with that resolve they are confused by such complications as the on switch and power plug.
However the computer industry is not alone in this problem. Everyone who deals with people has a fair share of hopeless cases. Security, retail clerks, any area of marketting are all familure with clueless idiots.
In computers we end up forgiving the user becouse our own experences we had some problems. I myself have tossed my vic 20 in the trash a few times only to discover it was my fault and fished it back out.
However we were working with the internl complexitys of computers when we had problems. Somebody develuped a flaky chip and forgot to document the fact that certen features your now using don't work right and a software workaround was used instead.
Thies are things your going to learn as a programmer or systems expert but never have to deal with as an end user even on the most basic hardware.
So when a user complains that he can't get a program to work it's the users fault not the complex hardware.
Any five year old can learn computers for one reason. Nobody told them it's to complex and they are to young to be affrade to learn.
This is the core of the problem. Users are affrade to learn computers so they sabotog themselvs at every turn.
The start of this is the whole idea that they NEED user friendly. They don't. It's a convence plain and simple.
Todays computers are easier to use than cars are to drive. Linux being the exception.. more like learnning to fly.
But learning Linux is an investment of time not of brains.
if people needed user friendly interfaces those same people wouldn't pass a drivers test or graduate high school.
The only "user hostile" Linux has to offer is "obscure" commands. Not complex or difficult to understand but simply obscure. Linux is hostile becouse the avrage user has to already know the commands exist and what they do.
But learnning that is amazingly simple.
I don't actually exist.
It is easier to blame the nameless,faceless soul who built the user interface, than to blatantly admit their own stupidity and illiteracy. People (americans) think that when they pull their new toy out of the box, that osmosis will take effect and they will know all they need to know about it. People are basicly ignorant of their own stupidity, yes, even as great as it is, they are blisfully unaware.......
A voice based device should have a voice interface. Standard.
And watch it cost 6,000 times more to support all 6,000 languages and dialects that telephone users speak. "You mean I have to learn to say 555-9157 in Japanese to use this phone?" Keypad dialing is cheaper because it needs to support only two options: all languages used by literate telephone users use either Euro-Arabic numerals (0123456789) or the older Hindu-Arabic numerals.
A phone should have a built in answering machine. Standard.
A telephone with voice mail costs extra because 1. flash memory for storing voice mail messages costs money, and 2. licensing a codec to compress those messages costs money. If there were no demand for a less expensive phone that did not include voice mail, then all phones would have voice mail.
Will I retire or break 10K?
most of the non-programming computer books published these days are there to be the manuals the programs should have to start with. (One popular series is even called "The Missing Manual.")
Back in the day when most programs came with printed manuals, these books used to be called "pirate docs." They were the manuals you bought to use with software you obtained from somebody who broke the EULA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
One of these days we're all going to be in the same boat. Our parents/co-workers, etc. who drive us crazy with these requests aren't stupid; it's just that the operation of a computer has no analogs that they are familiar with. Because we grew up using electronics, you and I have the confidence that we can do 'most anything, given enough playing around with the gadget and reading through the manual. It's a challenge, a game. It's not that way with some people. I take the attitude that everybody - everybody - has skills or knowledge that I don't have, but need. It's just a matter of what their experiences are. Remember learning to drive a standard shift for the first time? How confusing was that gas/brake/clutch/shifter thing? Because it was unlike anything you'd ever tried before. It's the same with computers.
Excellent post. Thank you.
Your description of in the head thinkers being somehow better able to deal with computers than in the world thinkers is nonsense. I'm working for a husband and wife couple as a technical advisor. The husband is what you describe as an 'in the head' thinker while the wife is an 'in the world' thinker. The wife without exception has an easier time dealing with computer-related issues.
A typical exchange between her and I would be something like her asking me how to do something in Word. She would start Word, go through the steps necessary to get her to the problem, and then with the info on the screen she would describe what she wants to do and what she tried to do that didn't work. If I ask her to describe something in the abstract, without it being on the screen in front of her, she will always insist that she show me on screen. She frequently makes comments like 'I'll remember what the problem was when I see it again' (meaning the document she was working with). The 'solution' that she wants from me is always how to navigate the interface to do what she wants, rather than an abstract explanation.
In contrast, the husband when asking for help does so without looking at the monitor, trying to explain the problem in the abstract. I have to insist that he bring up the problem on the screen so I can show the solution because the abstractions I give him wouldn't have a referent in his mind otherwise. A typical example of the contrast is that when the wife wants to find a file, she immediately goes to her documents folder (this is on a Macintosh) and looks visually for the file she wants, with some broad parameters as a guide to narrow her search. When the husband wants to find a file, he asks himself what sort of file it is, and where in his directory structure would he most likely have saved it. He frequently decides that the file is in (say) 'artwork,' is unable to find it, and then thinks about it more and decides that it must be in 'images,' etc.
The husband distrusts 'in the world' knowledge and insists on having everything in his head, while the wife distrusts 'in the head' knowledge and insists on dealing directly with the world. Neither is computer-savvy, but I've frequently had times when I spent several hours plodding along with the husband through simple problems, then spending a few minutes with the wife and having her understand much more complicated situations easier.
So there's nothing about 'in the head' thinking that is necessarily better suited for technical problems. The intelligence of the person in question (i.e., their ability to effectively use whatever type of thinking they have), is the key factor. What you're describing above is an 'in the world' thinker whose resolution is much coarser than a 'in the head' thinker. There's no reason why an 'in the world' thinker would necessarily be unable to differentiate between a mouse click in one context and a mouse click in another. And there's no reason why an 'in the head' thinker would necessarily be able to.
The reason? Because if I accidentally highlight a piece of text after I already highlighted and copied a piece of text, I don't want to have to go back and re-do it. Because I regularly highlight text for reasons other than copying and pasting, and I don't constantly want to have to guess what the computer's twisted little mind thinks I'm going to do.
And as for patronising, you're assuming things. Patronising is saying "You're so smart if you understand this." I was not patronising.
-Sara
I'd be mean to my mom too if she asked me how to copy-paste, but fortunately she never asks. She has one of our old PCs and all she does is play solitaire. I concidered installing Mandrake since there are so many more games of solitare bundled - free (!beer). But my mom only knows how to turn the computer on, play, and then turn it off again - she COULD learn that the foot is equiv to the swinstika, but WOULD she? Just like I hear what she tells me about the washing-machine I didn't ever listen until I had to use it for myself (because I didn't give a shit). The point is, give your mom a break - but if she doesn't get IT after so and so many times, please be evil unto her.
A: Yes. Next question.
Nathan's blog
I worked with Yahoo aq couple of years back on a project integrating various finanical information into their pages. A colleague and I met with one of their UI folks. He was a Phd in neurolinguistic programming or something but what was really cool was that they had several pools of non computer folks that they ran UI screens by and got feedback on. Nice to have those resources.
Anyone complaining about Yahoo's screens?
Uhm, are these little people documented anywhere? :)
Could it be that what deterimines individual abilities is the user-friendliness of their mind in that situation?
Dave
> "Please refrain" is somewhat of a dangling clause.
... or that".
I elided the word "then" from its position as the
subordinator for the subjunctive clause. This is
standard practice in all dialects of English of
which I am aware.
> an inanimate object
My bad. (I've been fooling around with a keyboard
layout that is not strictly QWERTY, and have been
mixing up i and a lately; it'll clear up as I grow
accustomed to the layout.)
> Second: "or whether it had an unlimited capacity"
> is awkward phrasing.
Not one quarter so awkward as "whether
> Second: Ah, that's enough. I think the point is made.
My original point was that the original rant about
"moot" was stupid, and that we had better things to
discuss than grammar. Apparently I was not entirely
clear.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Listen you fuckin pill, the original sadsack couldn't even pick the correct word - in what way is pointing this out (albeit fairly forcefully) anal?
Fuck you, you self-righteous little worm.
The question is beside the point. "As simple as possible, but no simpler" is the correct attitude. Once you get there, there is a boundary of adding features means you need more complexity, but we've got to get there first.
I've used hardly any program or device that manages to get there. The steering wheel is a good example. A good *nix shell is another.
I've never used a word processor that comes even close. Word is closest, but it's still awful (try changing a style definition).
It's economics that drives this: ease of use is a tremendous source of economic efficiency but it won't sell: a better GUI would save how many millions of man hours per year? But M$ won't make money out of it, because it will look *less* flashy.
The world would be better off if you made you program easier to use, but you shouldn't bother, because you won't get paid for it.
In short: you are right, but your Grandfather is even more right.
Now explain how you can watch one show and tape another?
For the same reason you can have two television sets in the same house tuned to different channels. One TV (the one inside the VCR, connected to a tape recorder) is on one channel, while the other TV (the big one below the VCR) is on another.
Will I retire or break 10K?
No, the person is always at fault.
:)
Not ARROGANT enough.
You have to believe you're smarter than the designers to accomplish stuff with computers.
The day you believe programs are easy to use and made by smart people is the day you will feel stupid and ask for help. That's because you would feel YOU were at fault for not catching on.
That's the truth.
NEXT!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
> Sheesh, are people that fucking ignorant and
retarded???
Yes, apparently.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
>Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"?
Sure, It's called "Windows XP" and it treats
advanced users like idiots, untill we can make
the system shut the hell up and stop flashing
innoying messages.
Here ya go...
http://www.realdoll.com/faq.html
- MFN
Someone seriously needs to smack the University of Buffalo (NY, USA) over the head with a clue stick: putting the proper handles on glass doors is better than making them symmetrical.
I can open just about any program and figure out what to do with it. People I know refuse to even read what's on the screen, instead asking me "what do I do now?"
People are stupid. It's a Dilbert world out there.
Just noticed that this story had 665 posts attached to it.
Six-hundred-and-sixty-sixth post!
Yay me.
Don't think this guy was trolling, I firmly agree with what he is saying. That's all.
Your girlfriend seemed plenty user friendly to me last weekend. >:)
***
This is my Sig. This is my Glock, this is my Walther, and this is my Beretta.
Any questions?
With Linux, is there such a thing as user freindly at all?
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Her ego is not inflated, she's expecting a user to understand cause and effect.
... user interfaces are meant for the user. the computer should do all the handholding necessary if a user cant remember the steps required.
Example:
Mouse moves up. Cursor moves up. Duh.
She also expects a person to remember a simple three step process after she's told it to him/her 10 times. If your college professor told you how to do something for a project 10 times and you didn't remember it, what do you think your grade would be?
Oh, and BTW, programmers aren't geniuses. I know a few genius programmers personally, but programming is no harder than speaking Spanish as a second language (from English as your first).
Why do I say this? Because I was a non-programmer 6 years ago, and I can remember what learning it was like. I also know that I'm not particularly 'gifted'. Oh, and I can hold a meager conversation in Spanish.
My parents can barely surf the web, but they could program a for loop and understand object oriented priniples through my babbling about projects I'm doing.
And regarding your comments on computers remembering tasks... let me ask you this. You turn left in your car a lot, correct? When you barely turn the wheel to the left, should your car automatically make it a 90 degree turn? Of course not...
Computers are the same. A desktop can't know every move you're going to make. An ATM should... it doesn't need to be that powerful. An E-Machine possibly should, at least for some things. But a fully fledged desktop? This is why I don't use Word -- because it assumes to much.
ok..why should you HAVE to remember them ? think about it
It's argueable that walking through a door and locking it is as abstract and simple as copy and pasting. When was the last time a door held your hand through the process?
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.