Donald Norman On Software And Other Things

small but... writes "New Scientist has published an interview with Donald Norman in which Norman comments on open source (disparagingly), usability (of course), machine 'emotion' (Ha!), and security (Breaking news: social engineering still #1 risk)."

Comments

disparagingly?

[djradon]

I don't know if I'd call Don's assertion that UI design is best done by a "tyrant" disparaging. Maybe he's on to something that open-source needs to adopt?

IMO, ideally, open-source will allow any user to be his own tyrant, by separating content from implementation via open data standards (file and interchange formats) and distributed data storage and synchronization.

Eg. Newton versus Palm

[cwernli]

One of the best examples to explain "usability" is the comparison of the Newton and Palm "graffitis": whilst Newton required the machine to learn from the user, the Palm handled it the other way round.

Not surprisingly man is better at learning stuff than a machine - therefore even grandmothers can cope with the Palm input method after ten minutes, whilst a lot of experienced users simply gave it up with the Newton.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[Kaiwen]

the only people that I've seen that haven't been able to comprehend ...

You haven't seen too many people, have you? There are plenty of folks who neither fear nor oppose technology -- not a few, in fact, who recognize its value -- yet who, nonetheless, are hopelessly confused by it.

This is a "Mouse". See? It's got a little mousey tail! When you move it, that thing on the screen (it's called a cursor) moves.

Ignoring for a moment the condescending tone of your remarks, in fact, recognizing the correlation between the movements of a mouse and an onscreen cursor is not as automatic for many people are you assume. Like learning to throw a ball, it's actually a quite complex physiological-mental process which can break down at many points. Sure most folks -- especially those of us who have been using computers for any length of time -- think of it as the simplest of tasks, but easy does not mean automatic, and we must not lose sight of that fact.

If you click it twice real fast, it's called (You still with me?) "Double Clicking".

Don't get me started on double-clicking -- one of the stupidest GUI design decisions in Microsoft's less-than-illustrious career. I can't count the number of users I've worked with who just can't -- for whatever reason -- complete a double-click. Some are unable to hold the mouse steady enough between clicks. Others can't complete two clicks fast enough for the computer to recognize the "double" in "double-click" (yes, you and I know both of these settings are configurable; how many Joe Technophobes would?).

And why the left mouse button? Why not the right? Did you know many people have difficulty distinguishing between left and right? Did you know men are better at it than women?

Apple got at least this much right -- give them one button, and don't make them push it more than once. But, for my money, a touch-screen is still the most intuitive interface.

Double Clicking opens up this program. This program is called [foo]. It does [bar].

You mean if I want this computer to do something I have to open a "program"? Why? Why can't it just do what I want it to do?

And suddenly my grandmother can check her e-mail.

Yeah, sure. All she has to do is learn what a mouse is, figure out how to coordinate its movements with an onscreen cursor she may or may not be able to see, remember which button to click and how many times to click it, remember to hold it real steady while she's clicking it, figure out what an icon is and which blasted one represents e-mail (whatever that is).... And that all assumes she even understands why she should care. "If I want to talk with someone", she might say, "what's wrong with the phone?"

Lee Kaiwen
Taiwan, ROC

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[evilviper]

Apple got at least this much right -- give them one button, and don't make them push it more than once.

Well, I can tell you've never used a Mac. Double-clicking is required on the mac desktop, and the file manager. That is, until you change that setting. Of course, that same type of change can be made in Windows as well.

Besides that, the Mac equivalent of a right-click is just holding CTRL+Clicking, or clicking and holding the mouse button. Would you like to say that is somehow better than the way Windows does it?

And, that method didn't even start until Win 95. Win 3.1 would give you a menu if you just single-clicked on an icon... So I guess that means Microsoft had it right all along (according to you).

Tyranny of the stupid

[Beautyon]

I don't see how that could come about from open source software

I cant imagine it, so it cannot be done. Riiight.

Design by comitee, by definition, should work better than design by a dictator because it will satisfy the problems that many people percieve, and not just the solve the pet peeves of a single deranged man.

The problem so far has been that the interface designers have a total understanding of the systems that they are trying to interface to people that have zero understanding. What is needed are many, many, focus group sessions to create an OSS interface guidlines document that everyone can refer to (or not) when they build thier applications. Arent Gnome doing something approaching this?

What has been lacking so far is the will to adress this problem. If it were suddenly to become the central focus, OSS would more than likely leap past the other solutions, because it can freely experiment with the tools, test with hundreds of thousands of volunteers until something really usable, in the broadest sense, is created.

Re:"Why can't it just do what I want it to do?"

[Pogue Mahone]

...turn knobs to open the doors in your house...

And on the subject of doorknobs - anyone who has ever tried to open a door with both arms full of sleeping toddler, or who has arthritis and cannot grip very well, will tell you all about the usability of the doorknobs that Mr. Norman seems to advocate over the "british" door handle that he always seems to catch his sleeves on.

Re:learn to think

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that although the GUI was a brilliant invention back when the problem was "How do we create a computer that can be used and understood by people?"; the GUI took a common situation (The workplace) and put it on a computer. Look, instant metaphor!

The problem we have now, though, is that the metaphor has become the reality, and it isn't a metaphor any more. Keep documents in a filling cabinet? Thats like saving a file to the network drive. People don't think in terms of the metaphor any more, they think in terms of the computer.

So theres the problem (As I see it). Computer designers no longer have a metaphor to base their designs on. Its self referential (Where do you place a file if you want to keep it? Uh, on the file server. Darn!).

What we need now is a way to go beyond metaphors. Yeah, should be easy....

this is a dead end

[g4dget]

Norman rightfully complains about the poor usability of current systems. He diagnoses a lot of microscopic problems and admonishes companies to spend more time on fixing their products. But that's no real solutions: companies don't have the time or money.

Just look at the stuff coming out of Apple (where Norman used to work): sure, Aqua is a little nicer than Windows and has somewhat fewer blunders, but, believe me, it's not intuitive to the uninitiated.

The problem is that making usable programs is too much work and is too rigid and centralized a process. That's a technological problem, not an HCI problem, and until it is addressed, HCI design of the kind Norman prescribes is just like flailing in the water: it may keep you alive for a little while, but it is enormously exhausting and largely ineffective.

Door Handles?!

[the bluebrain]

From the article:

• But in Cambridge I became so frustrated with British water taps and switches and door handles - those awful sideways handles on many British doors that catch your sleeves

Everything else aside, including the silly taps often found in the UK: round door handles ....

I figure that any way to implement a user interface requires thought, many many decisions, and yes, chucking a lot of stuff out. In the end there is one, maybe two ways to do something, which should be "intuitive", based upon what the designer figures the user's background is. However, this also implies that there are tons of ways the user can't do something (obviously), and (not so obviously) a bunch of stuff which can't be done at all - or rather, combinations of things.
But now to the case in point:

In the UK (and most of Europe), I simply can't "slide" by a door without running the risk of getting my sleeve caught. This is quite true. People get by this "bug" by habitually opening the door just a little bit further than absolutely necessary.
In the US, however ... (this is where I start telling a story) I'm sitting in the dining room and realize that there's nothing to drink on the table. I improvise a poll as to what Anne, Bob, and Carla want to drink, go into the kitchen, and fill four glasses with beverages-of-choice. I grab the glasses (two in each hand - assume that the glasses are well-designed enough to allow this mode of interaction - perhaps they even have handles), turn around, and am confronted with a closed kitchen door - either because a draught slammed it, or it's spring-loaded (to avoid having kitchen smells wafting throughout the house). I extend my hand, already containing two glasses, toward the handle, and ... aaaaargh! Elbows, man, these yanks need some fusking door handles that can be operated with an elbow!

[end rant] - 'course, this would never happen to a USian, because they would unconsciously take it into account before even grabbing the glasses.

sigh. (Same rant goes for separate "cold" and "hot" faucets in the UK. Anyone want to suggest implementing a separate "warm" facet between the two? :)

(Karma is here to be used). More on-topic: one thing I was missing in this interview was the fact ("postulate"?) that in any user-interaction-system, the human is by far the most flexible, adaptable element. History is littered with atrocious design decisions, which don't even make it into the consciousness of user's minds anymore, because the users have learned to use them, and have got completely used to them. For instance:

• Does anyone else remember the first couple of minutes of using a steering wheel in a car, after several years of riding a bicycle? I, for one, remember steering a bicycle to be intuitive, but having to consciously learn how far to turn the wheel of a car in order to make it turn at the desired raduius
• Computer mouse, as discussed further up in the thread. Here, just watch an uninitiated user, the first time they use it. It's only simple once you've got used to it
• Rotary phones. These have been superceded by touch-tones, and it was a mechanically elegant design at the time they were invented - but the UI still sucks
• Basically anything you had to learn how to use, rather than: if you know what it can do, it is obvious how to make it do it. Old MS interfaces, rather a lot of today's open source interfaces, some old tape decks (hold down "record" and "play" at the same time to make it record), keyboards (who wouldn't prefer a really good voice interface?), and so on ...

My point is merely that considering the above, I have as much appreciation for good UI design as the next person, but that humans were practically "built" to be able to handle a wide range of "UIs", and if what a device does sucks, then no amount of UI-candy with "un-suck" it. A bit like music: I'm happy to allow other people to make it, I appreciate it immensly, but it the artist has nothing to say, then no good voice, good producer, or ultimate fidelity will make up for that.

Re:Hooray for Gross Generalizations

[aluminumcube]

Double Clicking opens up this program. This program is called [foo]. It does [bar].

You mean if I want this computer to do something I have to open a "program"? Why? Why can't it just do what I want it to do?

Actually, as an open source noob, I have to say that the whole 'program Foo' that does 'Bar' is probably the most danuting aspect of the whole community to me.

So many Open Source programs have the dumbest, most unintuitive names ever. Gnome? What the hell is that supposed to do with a GUI? Evolution? Evolution of what? Even Apache... what does a famous tribe of indiginous American peoples have to do with serving web pages?

At least if you call your shiny new advanced ground attack helecopter "Apache", you can draw some comparative to the native tribe's famous warfighting abilities.

I think the whole silly OSS naming problem is indicative of the community's general lack of concern for making useable software. For the most part, OSS fosters a community of like minded individuals who have a passion for tinkering, which is a great thing. Unfortunatly, this same passion and focuse tends to alienate those of us who aren't quite as talented with the command line or aren't willing to invest a huge chunk of time in trying to figure out lots of technical minusha to simply get our computers to work.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[schnell]

The thing is, there isn't a thing that can't be done, *now*, in free software.

Riiiiight. Don't you *really* mean, "there isn't a thing that I do that can't be done?" You seem like a smart person ... you can't really be ignorant enough to think that there's a free software solution right now for everything?

As an example (the esoteric and tiny niche market of "desktop publishing"), let's take the graphic designers I support and replace their regular coffee with GNU/Folger's Crystals:

DESIGNERS: Hey, where's Photoshop?
ME: You have something better now, called the Gimp. It's Free.
DESIGNER #1: That's great. Why can't I work on this image with a embedded CMYK color profile? Professional printers require CMYK separations.
DESIGNER #2: And why don't I have pro-level color correction and matching across the entire system?
DESIGNER #3: And where are my multiple master fonts, or fonts with professional ligatures and weighting?
ME: But you don't understand, you don't need those things! Your software is Free now! You can look at the source code!
DESIGNERS: Oooh. (they look at it for a minute) So what? Is that, like, weird poetry? Their punctuation is all wrong.
ME: So you can modify it if you want to do all those things!
DESIGNERS: So how do we do that?
ME: You just need to learn C++ and programming with a GUI toolkit, plus a few other things.
DESIGNERS: I thought the idea was that people pay us to design things because we're good at that, and we pay other people to make software that does the things we need, because they're good at that?
ME: (sigh) What, do you people just not get it?

Look, I love free software and I am a great proponent of it where it is suitable ... but claiming free software is suitable everywhere is just as wrong as claiming that MS software is suitable everywhere.

Open source != design by committee

[jimfrost]

I think he has a big misconception as to how design work happens with open source. It isn't the whole internet getting together to decide what is the best way to do things. If that were the case nothing would ever get done at all. Rather, open source is more of a democracy deciding which of many dictatorships should win.

In other words, we have many independent developers who each exercise complete control over whatever they're building, many of whom are building things that compete with other versions of the same thing. The version most people use wins.

Whether or not this is going to result in more usable software is debatable, but one way to become popular is to be easier to use than the next guy.

Re:Tsk tsk tsk

[MoneyT]

I think the main issue that he's trying to get at here is, despite it's short commings, proprietary systems have one thing that OSS for the most part does not. A simple all in one package. The solutions you're providing are workarrounds and more effort than is required to just install the original application natively.

As techies, we often forget that the end users, the ones we are trying to educate and free, are lazy people. They have no desire to install an OS, install a work arround and then install the application and hope and pray that it works. They would rather take the easy way out. It's the same argument that was used often against macs, they didn't have the software people wanted in a commercial easy to find form.

Let me try to put it into another analogy. You have 2 cars. In one, the engine uses completely standard parts, runs as well or better than any other engine out there, and can be serviced by any person who takes the time to sit down with the included manual and read it. The only downside to this engine is that in order to start it, you need to turn a crank to build a charge in the battery, you need to prime the engine and then you need you pull the rip cord to get it started. Once it's started it runs beautifuly though.

The second car uses completely proprietary parts and if anything ever goes wrong, it has to be taken into the shop and serviced by trained professionals. Yet to get this engine going, all you need to do is insert the key and twist.

People into machines and the nuts and bolts of how things work will choose the car with the first engine a proclaim it's superiority from the tops of mountains. But, everyone else, the people that just want to get from point A to point B will choose the card with the second engine. Because to them, the amount of freedom they gain from having engine 1 does not outweigh the added hassle. ANd so it will be with OSS. Untill the hassle of using the software is insignificant compared to freedom, the people will not care. It's sad, it hurts some people in the long run, but unfortunately it's life.