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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?"
I've had too much user friendly! Now I crave some Penny Arcade! Great tech comic sites. :)
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.