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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.
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?
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!"
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)
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.
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
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.
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
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???
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!
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.
Microsoft Bob
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.
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?
;-)
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.
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
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
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.
Ah yes ... the worst of the sort are media players.
Winamp, WMP, Real, and Quicktime - you can sum up everything wrong with computer UIs with those four programs alone.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The flaw in this classic argument is that all the things you mention are single purpose devices, they do one thing and one thing only (a car moves you from A to B, same for a plane, a phone makes a voice link with someone else, etc.) A computer on the other hand is a totaly different beast, it serves a multitude of functions. Everything from typing up a term paper to blowing up someone half way around the world in the latest first person shooter. Because of this a "computer" cannot magicaly do all the things it does and stay as user friendly as single purpose tools, it's a general purose machine and thus the user going to have to learn a at least a little about it to get it to do what he'she wants it to.
You obviously dont work with customers :) EVERY SINGLE ONE IS STUPID. At least the ones that call me are.
LOL! Actually, I don't think all of them are stupid (some are, don't get me wrong) - but most are what I'd like to call "Aggressively Ignorant".
They don't want to know how to do something - they don't want to learn how to do it - but yet, they still want to do it. They will go to great lengths to avoid learning how to do it. Even when presented with a simple sequence of steps that will accomplish what they want to do, they complain that "It shouldn't be hard", when it's not hard, it just takes time to learn.
These same people will buy into whatever marketing literature is put in front of them -- AOL is "the easiest", XP is "easy to use", Laundry detergent A is better than laundry detergent X. They do this because they don't want to think for themselves.
See, thinking takes effort, and they've been conditioned that effort is bad. It's sooo much better to pay a monthly fee to have something done for you, than to take a few minutes a week and do it yourself. It's better to let AOL handle your security and personal information, than to take matters into your own hands, and care about your own security. It's better to hate those dang Arab terrorists, then to take a critical view of your government, which is getting out of control. Thinking is bad. That's what these people believe - and they will fight for that belief to the death.
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?
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/
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.
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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.
Today's television sets are likely to be much more complicated. Knobs and switches cost money, so the penny-pinching engineers remove as many of them as possible. You can't do much of anything without the remote control, and then you have to figure out the user interface for your particular model of television set.
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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.
Further, there is absolutely no reason not to make technology as user friendly as possible. It seems a lot of geeks actually want technology to be massively complicated because it's an ego boost for them when they get something to work.
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 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.
They are just as complicated when you get down into the details of their inner workings though. Probably more so.
I thought people used Windows because it wasn't complicated and people are willing to forgive its stability and security problems, only because it is easy to use. So if Windows is just as complicated as Unix and maybe more so, why should I use it ?
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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?
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.
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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
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!
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,
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!"
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..
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."
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.
"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.
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?
But if you think about it, a computer is merely something that runs single-purpose programs. It's not that different from a car, a plane, or a phone. Yes, you can run multiple things on a computer, but you can have a phone, car, and fly in an airplane, too - one doesn't exclude the others.
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.
I have to agree with you completely on this one. I know a medical transcriptionist who still uses Wordperfect 5.1 because she is much more productive with it than with any version of Word. When you can type 200 WPM and have the WP5.1 command memorized, the mouse and menu are your worst enemies.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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
Exactly. They pay us to make it so they don't have to figure out how we intended it to work. We're paid to make it easy for them.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes. Being a "computer guy" is one part troubleshooting, one part figuring it out, and one part knowing the concepts and language involved. The hardest part of the life is motivating people to want to learn a bit about it, and to get them used to figuring things out. If you can do that, only then can you claim 'guru' status.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
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
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
Yes. and it even has a name: The ADA.
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.
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!
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..
But who was "everybody"?
I'm not familiar with Nautilus, but if it's the sort of tool that people on /. would use, you're far more likely to have people who'd find missing options irritating. The /. population is not a representative sample of the entire population, and most of them could and should probably just wack the settings up to "advanced" from step one.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
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.
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.
You Windows guys are funny. Do me a favor, find a Linux box, drop to a commandline and run ls on /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. Then come back and tell me again how Windows is "complicated enough underneath so that you can do useful stuff (like Unix.)".
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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?
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.
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?
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.
A: Yes. Next question.
Nathan's blog
Uhm, are these little people documented anywhere? :)
If you want to include libraries, better hit /lib, /usr/lib and /usr/X11R6/lib as well and while you are at it, look in /usr/X11R6/bin as well. Tell you what, I'll switch to Windows XP after Microsoft has solved its on going stability and security problems, when I can get XP, Visual Studio .NET Professional, Office Professional, BackOffice, Terminal Server, Internet Information Server and unlimited seats for all included software on a 6 CD set for $49.95, heck, I'd even pay $99.99 for it.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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?
> 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.
Or, to look at it from a different angle, people asking if it does "garbage in gospel out" are seeking further knowledge about this amazing thing they've just seen. The manual doesn't cover astonishment, so they have to ask.
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
Thanks.
Yeah, right.
I thought the bad idea with Nautilus was that it was a file manager. With $13 million in vc. I'm up to my ears in file managers that want to be browsers and vice- versa and someone liked the idea of a startup to produce a file manager? There's your bad idea. I don't care how good a file manager you can make, it's just silly.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.