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Advice for Developers: Make Common Usage Easy
Ken Hendrickson writes "Thomas Sowell has some fantastic common-sense advice for software developers from the viewpoint of an ordinary user: Make it easy to do what almost everybody wants to do. I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
<WHINE> All I want to do is forward an email! </WHINE>
Easier said than done. UI design sounds easy but it's not.
As far as Televisions go.. this really isn't the case anymore. With more and more high-end TVs taking over the market and as they continue to do so in the future, thanks in part to HDTV, there will be a brutal setup process just to turn it on and start watching any kind of TV.
The point is that these devices/programs are being made for just about everyone they need to adapt to everyone's skill level. In the case of software development, it doesn't make sense to create several different versions of software with different default options turned on or off. A lot of the times this software has to be scaled to many different types of users on both ends of the spectrum. As a software developer myself, I try to make things as easy as possible that once the program is loaded they can begin their intended task. However, this may not always be possible all of the time.
I do agree with the following though... Stupid bundled software.
Hmmm.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Make it easy to do what almost everybody wants to do."
Hey! Why's the power button on the back of the machine?
Like clicking on any of the advert around this article!
Omnis amans amens
This guy should have been telling folks at Sun back in the early days that almost everyone might just want to print something? I'm just asking.
Duh. Apple has made an entire market out of creating "easy to use" software and hardware. The trick is that it actually has to be designed and re-factored a few times before you have a cohesive product rather than a collection of features.
Case in point: iTunes vs. MusicMatch
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I've been saying we need to focus on software standards compliance for some time, and while my focus has been related to RPG games, it does apply to other software. Role Playing Games Standards Compliance (RPGSC) is something I think can help develop a core philosophy behind the way these games are developed, from paper, rough drafts, story boards, all the way to the final product. RPGSC is still in development, and we hope to encompass the possibilities for every RPG game, to get the final products performing the way the audience wants, and the developers hope for to save time and money.
Perhaps the answer is to set up a non-profit system for governing software standards? I think there are many archetypical rules that could be applied to any software package, without circumventing proprietary rights or stepping on any toes. But it takes teamwork, and the desire to produce quality at the industry level. This means side-stepping rigorous competition tendencies and focusing on the overall good of society -- something that hasn't happened quite yet. When corporations learn that this method leads to better profits and happier customers, we'll see a shift in that direction.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Sad thing that software developers tend to follow the opposite advise: "Make it easy to do what is easy to program". It's the biggest mistake in interface design, bar none.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
* I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
I don't really follow the logic in that statement. Someone help me out, why would Microsoft not satifying their customer base suddenly make free software easy to use? (and how come as a long time open source user I never noticed this?)
Oh this is slashdot, I'm just supposed to assume that Free Software is better in all respects.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
M$ products are really easy to use for the people that use them.
To make OS products more widely used they have to be easy and intuitive for your common non-geek user to use. This is an area we have failed in before. The products that are easy and intuitive to use from OS do well.
Note to developers... this is a very very very big deal if you want your product picked up. It's not just how good your product is at doing the technicalities but how easy you can do them with.
Evolution or ID?
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!
FUCK? You must be shrooming...I hope you're not a mathematician.
I've got a few for you... SoBig, Netsky, Beagle, Bagle...
read "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity" by Alan Cooper.
This book clearly and succintly states the difference between how programmers and engineers design (for the edge case), and how people really want things to work (make the common cases easy.) An excellent book, it could be used as a textbook but it's too short. Go read it.
Make common easy??
isn't that like:
Message to blonds.... Breathe in, breathe out?
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
... commercialization and commoditization, strike again.
Mr. Sowell complains that computer programs aren't as easy to use as an automobile. Well, the first person to design the steering wheel probably didn't think to patent it; nor did the first person who put the accelerator pedal to the right of the brake pedal and make them thus and so. The auto UI "jest grewed" and became standard through market forces. It became a commodity such that it can't be patented, yet nobody dares to go against it lest they not sell a car.
On the other hand, the designers of software are careful to put a lock on every little feature that they come up with, ensuring that they wring the maximum value from its implementation. Are we ever going to see a ubiquitous interface? Not while the Patent Office lives. (tongue planted semi-firmly in cheek)
And all the bells and whistles? That's simply more commercialization -- let's get more out of it by climbing into bed with the people whose offers we bundle. And make it glitzy, and make it shiny, and make it loud.
I despair of ever seeing an end to this in commercial software.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Linux might not be totally ready yet but it is improving fast. the ability to lock it down tight actually make it a better desktop for the enterprise, and now that novell opensourced the ximian connector we can even hook it up to exchange !
that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!
When "Free Software" has a sizable amount of the desktop market then I think we can say that. Until then, how many years has it been "this year for desktop linux!"???
I think it would be valueable if someone developed a chart of common tasks (saving files, opening programs, writing a resume, etc.) done in multiple operating environments (Windows, MacOS X, Gnome and KDE let's say).
Then the chart could show the number of steps required for each operation and maybe a difficulty level. I know this has been done before, but that other time it wasn't doing it based on tasks, it was looking at the design of the GUI more.
I found it a good read here
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
The FreeTTS guys does a good job in this regard - just a few lines of code gets some words going.
The Army reading list
This whole discussion has been said many time on /. but for all this time most of the Open Source products I have used have had no improvements in this area. Either they aren't listening, are ignoring or don't know how to do this.
Evolution or ID?
As for quiet, the new Scrabble comes on with loud noises that some may call music.
Um...turn the speakers off.
Easy, ain't it?
It must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
I do technology for a living, and I STILL pull what's left of my hair out just trying to figure out how to make word stop putting bullets and numbers in front of my "paragraphs" every time I indent (please, no advice -- I haven't used WORD for years -- it's an illustration).
Design your software from use case perspectives to get a clear idea of what the user is actually doing with the system. Seems to me programmer's don't tend to spend a lot of time getting a strong idea of how the client is actually using the product. Focus your energy on the paths that 80% of the product use follows.
fuck off, thomas sowell rules and liberals hate him because he speaks the truth.
"Those who design some computerized products or computer software seem to have no interest in making it easy to do simple things"
geez, i can't help but think of linux there. ever wanted to do something simple? sure, after spending 2 to 3 hours familiarizing yourself with all the options that you will never use.
a good example is a cd burner. in windows XP, i's as simple as dragging files to the CD drive, and clicking "write these files to CD"
i figured i'd give it a shot on linux. sure enough, i was presented with like 25 options concerning the low level details of how the CD was to be burnt. sure, someone, somewhere might want all that, but it should be hidden away somewhere under advanced options and use the most common ones by default. i eventually gave up and just burnt the CD under windows.
until linux is actually written with the USER in mind, rather than the PROGRAMMER, it will never fly.
oh yeah, and i'm a programmer by the way.
I'm not a programmer, but my job required me to learn some php/mysql to re-do a web enabled database because the people working on it couldn't get it done. So, I had a clear cut set of goals laid out. However, halfway through, someone called and needed another feature/field. Then another call. And another.
I ended up with an easy to use web GUI, but I had to fight to get the people to understand what they wanted wasn't parallel with what the database was designed for.
I'm not saying that all programs are great... there are a lot of junk ones out there. But I'm sure some people can agree, with changing goals and deadlines, finished products are often not what they started off being.
What is the saying, "You can have two of three... Cheap, Fast, Good..."?
"I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
Per-lease.
So now we've basically got a world of free software and Microsoft software and that's it? What the hell has this got to do with the freeness or otherwise of the software? Microsoft is not even mentioned in the article!
Convert that can to does, and you've got something. Fortunately Microsoft has been helping by shoveling new features into their Office products for many years. (Have to justify those updates prices somehow.) The only way they could help more would be to add a stupid animated paperclip to explain all those new features and changes to how to do simple things, but that would be stupid.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...and most probably have never talked to a customer in their professional lives. How do you even know how 90% of people use your project? Developers mostly write for an audience of one. Human interface issues are actually hard! People think in all kinds of strange ways that you would never realize without loads of resources directed in social areas that are not typically the expertise of developers.
I wonder if Thomas Sowell had heard about before you tell someone to remove a splinter from their eye, you should remove the big stick from your own.
'I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!'
Yet the article is him complaining about a new chess and scrabble game that he bought. No mention of Microsoft - or even Windows.
For all we know - he is running a Mac. Sheesh people - get over yourselves.
And Steve Jobs is clearly the George Eastman he talks about.
I'm not a Mac fanatic (I don't own one, but I do work with them regularly), but it seems to me that this guy is clearly elucidating what is Apple's strategy: make stuff easy to use. For everybody. Without any pain.
I mean, this guy would *love* the free chess app that comes with OS X.
-Shylock
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
1, ctrl-c, ctrl-v
2, repeat
3, ????
4, Profit
There is never, ever, any need for MS Comic Sans
Although I couldn't agree with you more, it's very commonly overlooked. It's an engineering problem in general. How many times have you picked up a product and after only using it for a short while found ways that it could have been made better. Sometimes it really feels as though the designers never bothered to even test the dumb thing out. Of course you see this in software all the time too. Users are made to input data when the program could just as easily do most or all of it for them. Maybe the user ends up navigating through menus just to do a frequent task. It all seems like these things are common sense, and most of the time they are, but an amazing number of products make it to consumers with stupid problems.
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
So don't buy a camera with features if you're not going to use the features? His point is just to make a camera with features that I don't have to worry about if I don't want to use them. If that means a lower quality picture fine - it should be at least the same quality as the disposable without the features though. It should not be complex to not use the complex features. That's all.
This author first off don't know much about computers if he needs someone else to install software. Now I do agree that some things turned on by default are bad such as Microsoft Word with all the autoformat stuff so when you number a line it will number everything above it and indent it when you didn't want that.
He seems to compare things that he knows little about such as computers, and cameras. He talks about cameras and how you don't have to go through all the features to take a picture. Well sure you don't and you can take bad pictures or you can go through all the steps and take amazing pictures.
Software needs to be setup just as a camera does. Companies a lot of times after word is installed they have a default setup that is used within that company that has all sorts of things that a person would need.
Also I have to ask what would a congress person do about sofware beign to complicated for a normal person to use? Its not like they can say stop adding more features or you have to sell 150 different versions.
"I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
I don't believe he uses the leading brand dishwasher powder either. By your logic, that's more user-friendly than Microsoft software too.
Really. Grow the fuck up.
The problem with software is that we try and make it do everything so we can satisfy everyone!
This is where modular development comes in and where Firefox excels..
I started an open source portal, with simplicity in mind. It was great for what "I" wanted, but not everyone else...
Some wanted a membership only, some wanted to sell items, some wanted this that, etc etc... You get the picture. Different web site, different needs.
Of course no one wanted to program something for themselves, so I tried to accomodate them as the versions went up. Well, by the end of the year, I had this bloated / complicated portal.
Now I'm on the modular path... I really no longer have time for it, so others have taken over.
---------
Sorry to make a short story long, but the point of this one should be:
Make it simple - Fast - Easy to Use, and then allow modular capabilities to add everything else under the sun.
Don't try and make one program do it all.... Not everyone needs it ALL.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
think about it, you want to open chess you type "chess" you want a web-browser you type "mozilla" no point an dlcik, no many things, no need to select options you don't use, but you still can (-h -v etc,) car argument: type "TurnKey" there we go. Text Forever!
Sometimes, the cost of developing incredible interfaces is not something a company wants to pay for. I'm a developer for my own company and I find that most of my clients want to get the task done (read "functionality"), with all options available, and would rather inform their staff and/or clients on how to use the software rather than spend double the cost to add ultra friendly interfaces.
That being said, of course I always try to develop the most user-friendly screens as possible, but sometimes business functions are just complex. Period.
...is that everybody defines obvious individually.
... Seriously, who takes usability into account when programming even desktop apps? Not nearly enough commercial app developers, let alone opensource developers.
There needs to be a bunch of aesthetes with free time who consider the woeful state of free desktop software usability a big itch, and who are ready to listen to the users instead of lecturing them on The Right Way Of Doing Things.
This goes directly to the geek factor. Certain types of people like to interact with technology, whether it be primitive or in front of the curve. Learning enough about the ins and outs of the technology and production leads to epihanies, eureka moments and generally groking the thing at hand.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
For that matter, if it took his guru that long to install, maybe he needs a replacement guru.
Now I'm for simplified interfaces as much as... say 80% of the other respondents here, but there's nothing wrong with juicing up the user experience at the same time with some eye and ear candy.
It sounds to me like what Thomas Sowell really needs to do is learn how to use the VOL and MUTE buttons on his laptop. If he's unlucky, it requires some FN-key combination. If not, he's too dumb to keep on living. -B
I agree... I posted something similar just above... :-)
I think the point Mr. Sowell was trying to make with the camera analogy was that for 90% of the pictures I take, the "automatic" defaults produce a good serviceable photo. The advanced features (Program and Manual modes) are available and easily accessable when conditions or desire call for them.
I think Mr. Sowell would compare various programs that he complains about to the camera I learned to shoot on - my father's old Nikkromat. Manual everything, with a SLR light meter. Every shot required evaluating the shutter speed, film speed, f-stop, focus, depth of field, flash/no flash, etc. This was not a camera I could hand to a novice and tell them to "just shoot".
Developers and designers have to make reasonable decisions about default settings, and make those settings easy to change.
They also need to resist the urge to add every feature into the product. Does a chess or scrabble game really need to play music?
Well the ASP.NET version 2.0 includes a lot of this sort of stuff, including controls for a login control, etc. with little or no code needed. Shame they keep delaying it, was originally due this Autumn, now due, in the rather vague sounding, H1 2005
Some say that the ancient art of listening to your users can make this controversial part of developing software much easier. Reports suggest that Microsoft has found these ancient teachings and is trying it out now, but these are still just rumors when you call tech support.
-Tim Louden
"can" being a very important qualifier. Whether it actually does or not is open for serious debate.
I use Linux as my main operating system, and I definitely agree that Free Software does perform better in some areas... but in ease of use, free software tends to provide you with way way more choices (that you don't want to make) than non-free software.
The abundance of choices/settings that you don't want to bothered with seems to be the columnist's main complaint about software. So, if he were using Free Software, I believe he would be complaining more, not less.
Free Software may have the potential to be better in the ease of use area... but that's a potential that is mostly untapped.
I think its clear that most Fedora users, for example, wish to use their audio tools to play mp3s (duh!) but the developers oppose the encumberance. I'm not claiming that their opposition isn't well-founded, but lets face it - when you adopt many open source projects you are adopting the philosophy first, and useability second.
yeah. much like optimization. optimize for the most frequently used path. wait, backtrack...
:)
first of all, don't optimize. after you've sufficiently not optimized then optimize for the most frequently used path
Google Vs. Microsoft Google set out to create a product (their search page) that was easy to use, and would do what everyone would like to do. - Microsoft set out to make money, and creates relatively user friendly software. Who has a better business model? Google has yet to go public so we aren't sure who will make more money in the long run, and they both offer different services, but other then that I think the comparison is relatively valid.
If every company set out to make a great product, then the companies that could do that the best would make the most money. Making money is about offering a superior product, not doing the least amount of work to create the cheapest product.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
Richard Gabriel's "The Rise of Worse is Better" is an excellent explanation of this methodology.
Sadly, Gabriel's analysis holds up even today (almost 20 years later).
That's odd, because I'm using Fedora Core 2, and it's just as easy as you describe for Windows XP. I drop in a blank CD, when the empty window appears, I drag files to it, then select a single menu option to record it. One dialog for sanity, and off it goes.
BTW, your comparison is invalid. It compares the best of what you like with the worst of what you dislike.
"Make the easy things easy, and the hard things possible." This applies to a lot more than just Perl scripts.
However, the "easy" thing is not always so cut-and-dried. Maybe he wants to remove red-eye from his digital photographs, and maybe he's using Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop can remove red-eye, but that's not its primary purpose. Removing red-eye in Photoshop is going to be a bit more complicated than a program dedicated to red-eye removal, but that is not a fault in Photoshop. In fact, an experienced Photoshop user could probably remove red-eye faster than an inexperienced user could remove red-eye in a dedicated program.
This is where usability testing is key--why spend time on a feature that only a tiny fraction of your user base is trying to do? Which would you rather see happen to The Gimp: a red-eye wizard, or a Windows version that doesn't spawn a new taskbar item for each new window?
It seems like a "duh" comment to say "make it easy to do common things!" but you have to know what the common things are, first!
Nathan
What about trying to learn from games, and for example; stop using menus? Those small labels on the upper part of the windows, there are a lot, but we seldom use a few of them.
Ergonomic interfaces don't present more than a few options at a time, if my memory es corerct there were studies about using more than 7 options as being confusing. If few options are presented, you don't need menus.
What's in a sig?
I think that ease of use is the single biggest problem with most, but not all open source software. I can recommend people use Firefox but I can't tell them to use Linux because I know that Joe Average will never be able to use it, as it is now. It's a better OS then any other OS out there but no one but geeks can get it up and running right. If we want to get bad software like windows out of use we need a version of Linux that, for normal basic usage, is as easy to use as windows. (PLEASE don't flame about better OS comment. I'm trying to make a point about ease of use)
As for quiet, the new Scrabble comes on with loud noises that some may call music. If you are awake in the middle of the night in a hotel room and your spouse is asleep, you would never dare to turn on the new Scrabble game. It would wake up your spouse and maybe people in the next room. - I hear his pain but of-course I have a technical suggestion to him - learn to adjust the sound level on your system and mute all sounds and you will not have to deal with this problem again. But seriously, I would have never guessed that this could be a problem for someone simply because I find it so obvious that the sound on your machine can be muted independently of the running software.
You can't handle the truth.
Since it seems he's used this camera analogy throughout the article I'll comment on this little blurb. I'm not so sure it's a very good analogy to use either. The fact is that if you want better pictures, you NEED to go through all of those "useless" features and change them. All of those values will change depending on the conditions, the lighting, and the activity your photographing. If there are those people that DONT care about those features, get the one-use ones. Hell, they even have digital one-time use camera now.
See, this is where you missed his point.
I have a fancy camera (analog), and a less fancy digital. With the fancy analog camera, if I want to take a family photo, I press the button. At most, I need to hit the clearly marked flash button to turn it on. Of course, if I'm feeling artistic, I may want to adjust the exposure, shutter speed, etc., and those features are all there. However, to simply to the most common operation, take a picture, I don't need to do anything.
Your attitude is elitist, "if you don't want the fancy features, get a disposable camera." Beyond the fact that disposables get expensive real fast, what if I want to have a single camera and be able to take real photos AND snapshots?
The point of the article is that the simple should be simple. If I want to take a picture, I press a button. When I install a dictionary program, instead of being interviewed by the program, let me quickly look up words.
The most common use for the references is a lookup mode, and the application vendor could certainly include a dictionary application AND a multi-media application.
I have an HDTV. Yes the DirecTV box required some settings (which are supposed to be done by the installer)... it asked for my zipcode for the guide. HOWEVER, if I just wanted to watch TV, I could have plugged in the box, turned on the TV, and let it auto-scan the antenna (this should happen on first use, instead of via menu, but it wasn't too bad).
I can adapt the colors, I can go into the service menu and tweak further, etc., for a reasonable picture I needed to calibrate the convergence, etc. However, if I just bought the TV and the HDTV box, on Sunday and set them up 15 minutes before kick-off, I could have been watching the game without problem.
The SIMPLE operation: watch a football game, is easy (could be easier, but pretty easy).
The COMLICATED operation: calibrate colors to the Avia disc, adjust convergence, etc., was complicated.
With MOST computer software, it wants me to go through a process to use the application. That is unacceptable.
Most SOFTWARE SHOULD run off the CD, or like MOST Mac software and be a draggable install (drag into Applications). Installers are bad (make them for unusual use), better search order for applications to it can be one Folder/Bundle is better.
If you have features that require libraries to be installed at boot-time, make them optional. If the library isn't there, no feature unless you run the installer.
Wouldn't it be great if simply RUNNING a computer program/game was as easy as playing a PS2/XBox/Gamecube game?
Sure the powerful functionality can be there for power users, but most people should be able to use your program without help. That sadly isn't the case.
Also don't forget that, most of the time, the way that an user thinks about the application (the user "mental model") is really different than the designer's mental model.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
This is hardly news. It's been said many times before, and will probably be said many time again.
A lot of his rant has to do with all the unnecessary glitz and flash that has been added to what used to be simple software. One of the problems with technology today is that it has become too easy to add stupid unrelated glitz to basic information. This simply obscures the information.
For example, many (most probably) DVDs have these complete stupid animations that have to play when moving from one menu to another. I recently rented a movie (can't remember which) where you had to sit through 15 seconds of animation before the Special Features menu was displayed. It wasn't impressive, it was just annoying.
There is more and more of this every day. It seems that media and product producers do not have any really new features to add to new releases, so they just add some unnecessary glitz and animations and sell it as a new version.
The producers of Scrabble should take a hint. The Scrabble board game hasn't changed in 50 years, and it's still popular. Some things just don't need new features.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
At this point I don't think you can strongly claim that OSX is any more useable than Windows or GNOME or KDE.
The Inmates is an excellent book for a non-techie. It's also very entertaining IMO. But for a textbook there's an alternative, also by Alan Cooper, About Face 2.0. It's actually quoted a number of times in The Inmates.
It's a lot more work to read, but time well spent for any developer.
I think he (the article) gets away from the real point of good UI and feature design -- keep it simple and straightforward. Your new whizbang app could have 32,000 features, but if the UI is designed properly and made so that it is easy to understand and is adaptable depending on the user (redefinable toolbars, for example) you can make a program that is powerful and presents itself to most users at a level they can comprehend. The idea that a user shouldn't have to "jump through hoops" to do the most basic of tasks is a good one, and something that designers should adhere to.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir here.
I do agree with his sentiment about bogging programs down with useless things, though. His example using the encyclopedia is something I would find particularly annoying, although I can see how small children might be amused by such nonsense (especially if that's who the product was designed for). People who design the UIs for these programs should be thinking of usability, not frills. If you want frills, fine, but at least allow us to turn them off.
I can't stand Disneyland. ;)
I read the article, and I was unimpressed with the author's pain. Perhaps he doesn't know what it USED to take to use a computer? Does he have any idea?! This is what Bill Gates really succeeded at: making computers easy enough for the masses to use. Why else would 90%+ of all PCs be running Windows? Why else does at least 50% of America have a computer? Personal computing as we know it today would not be nearly as ubiquitous as it is if Bill Gates had failed.
Maybe Mr. Sowell and his "guru" are right in that there is definitely room for improvement. But, I would prefer thankyouverymuch that ALL computers not be dumbed down any more than they are so a "guru" like the one Mr. Sowell employed can go home for dinner on time. How does he know that I do not use the features he considers useless? Why should I be stuck with a crippled product because other users get easily intimidated by the product's other features? If Mr. Sowell truly wants a simplified experience he should just go use Apple products, which are already dumbed down and streamlined. But he should be prepared to shell out the extra cash to support Apple's entirely proprietary architectures.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Either that, or you have a hobby horse of your own that you like to ride.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Thomas Sowell is referring to both Windows and OpenSource environments.
He's obviously talking about the Windows app bloat that has been building for 10 years and his lament is that you used to be able to install an application and then use it without any fuss or 30 hours of studying the user manual. If there is a user manual...
Unfortunately, OpenSource environments share that aspect. He touches on a good point about multimedia bloat too! Not every damn app has to be a multimedia bonanza of audio/video features. OpenSource environments are getting sucked into this maelstrom too.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
I've seen articles like this for years and it seems to always take issue with the things the writer doesn't know how to do compared with the things they do and seem intuitive to them.
I would pick holes in just about all his arguments - he seems to ignore the initial training and years of condition on how a car works. The same with a TV set. I'm sure I could find somebody that has horror stories trying to figure them out for the first time and could write an article on how counter-intuitive these items are (like, why do you need a key for a car ignition when you've unlocked the door?).
I've seen many articles like this on the VCR, not to mention ones complaining about more sophisticated cars, kitchen appliances, telephones, heating/air-conditioning systems, all of them wanting the systems to be simpler (and most, like this one, wanting to return to simpler times).
One of the things that infuriates me the most about this article is that the writer doesn't try to do anything himself; his "computer guru" doesn't seem bright enough to be able to load software without getting his mom angry because he is late for dinner.
In any case, if he really wants to play scrabble simply, why doesn't he drop twenty bucks (probably less than he paid for the CD) and buy a hand held scrabble game?
Sorry for the Rant - I would be a lot kinder if the writer had tried to load an application, got a GPF and ended up in phone support hell between the ISV and Microsoft with each blaming each other and the theme of the article is that he just wanted it to work.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
What I believe is that the target audience for most softwares is getting far much greater than what was there a decade ago and more people are computer literate than say 5-6 years ago and the number is increasing. Some features cater to the needs of a certain group of people and some may to that of another. One just needs to learn those features that matter to them.
This is something we've all known for a long time. What we haven't done, however, is take it to heart.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
I started using OpenOffice to do some business-related stuff (for the record, I don't have any M$ software installed, save for XP). I kept encountering situations where the software would second-guess me- capitalizing the first letter of every paragraph, for example, assuming I wanted an outline every time I indented a paragraph, etc. I kept asking myself, "How could the developers be so LAME as to assume they know what I want to accomplish more than I do?" Turns out, almost all of this stuff is under the user's control, it's just all set to "on" by default. Once I changed the settings, everything worked more like I'd expect from a piece of software that's designed reasonably well (though there's still room for improvement).
I'm not so sure it's a good idea to have all this enabled by default, but then again, when you get an M$ convert that has grown used to seeing all this "let me think for you, I know better" crap, maybe it makes some sense.
Though I don't think he's right to egg on us for using CD-ROMs instead of floppies (anachronistic sev!) I agree with his advice. I installed Fedora Core 2 recently, and before I could even go online, I had to modify 3c509x.c to support my onboard NIC (3Com 3C920B-EMB-ATI / Asus P4R800-VM) and recompile it (newer version is included in 2.6.7 with said modification) ! I just wanted to read my e-mail and I had to do this!
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
This is serious, people. I do not know of any other product where the designers/developers are so far removed from the end user. Something that makes perfect sense to a highly trained, technically capable person will make absolutely no sense to a person who has trouble remembering 2 passwords. Really.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
That works all good and well if chess or mozilla is in your path. If not, .......
> rub my eyes after looking at god-awful red-on-green text
Why are you still using the web page defined colors? That's practically the first thing I turn off in my browser preferences. That's why I never see ugly backgrounds and my text is always black.
Actually, they did patent it. See the Seldon Patent, which was a huge problem for early car makers. Similar patents encumbered early aircraft makers.
So the software is not written by developmentally delayed children?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I agree that a lot more needs to be done to make computers and their applications easier to use. And I know as a developer that that takes a lot of work. But the other problem is that it takes a whole different brain because, well, developers just aint like normal people...:-)
Yeah, you've all heard that before,but seriously, I don't know how many times my wife has had trouble with some device or application that neither of us has used before, and I'll just come in and make it work immediately. Then I'll joke that the guys who made it probably think just like me. Well, that probably isn't just a joke. What it means in the end is that we need designers who can think more like the end user. Unfortunately, there appear to be few designer/end user brained people involved with OSS. But I think that is changing in some of the more prominent projects like Firefox and OpenOffice which have seen great improvements in usability IMHO. So all is not lost!
As for me, I think Apple has done some great work in the areas of design and usability, so the next computer I add to my stable will very likely be a Mac.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
With cars, the situation is different. First, as you mention, the UI for automobiles has stabilized long ago. The last significant modification was the automatic transmission. Before that, the last mass-produced car with a different UI was the Ford model T, which had a separate throtle pedal for reverse. Besides, cars today are compared for marketing purposes with features like style, power and speed, not the raw number of options, like software is.
That's another great book for UI design. It talks about the UIs that are all around us. Ever encountered a glass door (shopping malls are bad at this) with a bar that goes all the way across it, mirrored on the other side? Do you push, or pull? On the left or on the right? Its not difficult, but it is an example of bad UI design. Contrast that to a door with a flat "Push" panel on one side, backed by a protruding handle on the other. You now whether you're pushing or pulling, and on which side of the door to perform the action. No documentation required, almost zero chance of failure - this door wants to be opened and makes it easy for you. A lot of computer software has exactly the same design mentality as the first door. Or worse, because the door has been "skinned" to look like a slice of pizza as well.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
This book was written in the 80's but the concepts are timeless. It's not software specific but it is an excellent primer for designers and engineers of all types.
The Design of Everyday thingsDear Symbolic,
If you want to use a word processor, you need to load a 200 MB office suite that badly imitates Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice can save files as PDF. It also uses XML. This is "innovation." If you don't like it, please innovate something and give it away for free.
Sincerely,
The Open Source Community
Everybody is talking about how difficult it is to do UI. Yup, it sure is. Just ask the guys who did the classic industrial designs- the Dreyfus telephones, etc etc. Lots of examples in addition to the Kodak Brownie.
:-)
The best designs become classics, and really change the way we work and live. And there really aren't all that many classics, vastly fewer than the number of designs that try and fail.
So why aren't there more really classic software designs? Part of it is that all of us programmers have drunk the koolaid about uniform interface designs. They simplify learning by creating references to things previously learned in other contexts. But a real "classic design" is easy to learn because it's *internally* coherent- its reference points are meaningful in terms of its own functionality. If there is complexity, it maps directly to the problem domain and not to the UI design. That makes it far easier to deal with, because it "just makes sense." The iPod is a very interesting recent example, but I can't think of something analogous in the realm of pure software.
Maybe if we break out of the box on UI design, then we might be able to stop complaining about how stupid our users are. After all someone who uses something I wrote is supposed to be *smart* not stupid
Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2004 and provide the ability to edit posts?
I sure hope not. Now being able to add an addendum, I could agree with. But, even that is risky.
Consider for a moment that there are always active trolls who repost previously 5 star posts just to get karma from unaware mods. Now take the case of an editable post. You can get the post modded to 5 then swap the contents out with a porn troll. Not pretty.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
So I suppose when he writes a book, he writes several different versions: one for the economist at his level, one for the software developer, one for the construction worker, etc. Probably not. He consults with his editors, publishers, and marketing people, Then they probably tweak the book into something that will hopefully appeal to a wide audience. I actually agree with his basic request to give us applications that are what we want and not a bunch of extra junk. However, he says the problem is "the mindset behind those who make such products". That almost sounds like a jab at software developers. I will guess that many of these applications start out pretty clean through the design and implementation phase (not all but many). Then by the time marketing and sales has there chance to tweak and request additions to the package, they are released as these multi-option, multi-application systems with all of these 'cool features' that no one really wants.
Ken Hendrickson
As an ideal, software should make simple things simple, and complex things possible. Both of these require talent, but the former is certainly the less glorious and more thankless. If you are highly skilled, and design your software meticulously with usability in mind, you can make a software task appear so simple that users wonder why it took you so long to write.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
You mean like setting up a printer through CUPS? Surely, such a case as common as setting up a printer is easy? Oh wait... stupid ESR.
Thomas Sowell isn't a geek by any stretch of the imagination, he's an economist, and an old one to boot (70 years or so). He makes a lot of sense when he talks about economics, but is terrible when he talks about non-economic social issues. This is one of his poorest articles I've ever read.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Now, we all understand just how unreasonable this is don't we? This is one of the things that bothers me about factoring out user interfaces from programmer interfaces.
Alan Kay is right. There hasn't really been any progress in computer interfaces in the last 20 years largely due to the failure of sofware engineering to get real about what "usability" really means to humans, not "programmers" or "users". (Although I would chalk it up to the stupid court rulings in the 1970s that declared programmers are not liable for the errors and omissions of their programs -- thereby destroying programming as a profession.)
Seastead this.
I don't know about everyone else but it seems to me whenever I see "easy to use" I also see "apply this patch immediately". And the patches keep coming.
My personality is like a coupon, it's 10% off.
My favorite metaphor for this problem is microwaves. On about half the (digital) microwaves out there, the common case--cooking something at high power for some amount of time--is a two-step process: enter time, press "start". On the other half, it's a three-step process: hit "cook", enter time, press "start". Guess which one represents better UI design?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
He's kidding about the complicated Scrabble install, right?
I generally agree with the principle that simple things should be easy to do. When you take your keys out of your car, your headlights should go off. That is what 99.9% of the users intend. It should be harder (require a special button or something) to make them go on if the keys are removed.
Mr. Sowell, however, seems pretty reactionary about software change.
He is upset that his scrabble vendor released their game on CD. He would rather have it on floppy disks, which are more expensive to produce. And, some machines now don't have floppy disks. This complait has no merit.
He is upset, that the scrabble game he has plays music. Probably because his old game didn't. What he doesn't consider is that most users of this product probably want the music. Products should ship exactly like this. Turn on all the options that the majority of the users want. Make those in the minority use the preferences.
Software is going to change, and make more use of increased hardware capabilities. There is no stopping that. Although there is some truth here, there is a lot of pointless ranting.
Your sig implies that your employer doesn't share your sound wisdom ;-)
In terms of UI and usabilty there are alot better ones out there.
>Too many other computerized products and computer programs, however, force you to get bogged down in so many options, functions, and modes that you may just give up before finding the simple thing you want to do.
In a windowed program, there are menus. Don't want the options, don't go hunting for it.
>Today, it takes a CD to hold all the bells and whistles that have been added
No the reason why they use CD is not because its complicated, its because it cheap to mass produce. A program is > 2 megs and If you are awake in the middle of the night in a hotel room and your spouse is asleep, you would never dare to turn on the new Scrabble game.
Its called a volume control. Either built in, on the OS level or the physical speakers has them. What would the user want?
>Since my old computer chess game will not work on the new computers, I had to get a new chess game
But when you bought the old chess game it didn't specify it would work on the new OS? And this is the programmers fault for not making things compatible with technology 10 years in the future?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This is something I think FireFox has gotten very right. Don't want to mess around with settings? Great. It works right out of the box.
I've installed FireFox for about a dozen people now. So far only two have even bothered to open the Options dialog. They don't care how the options are set, as long as they can browse. The two who have opened the Options dialog think the customizability is great but those two are not the majority of users.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Ease of use is in the eye of the beholder.
First, it's hard to believe that Sowell - usually such a total idiot in his own supposed areas of exerptise - could be so right about something in ours. Second, it's hard to believe that the OP tried to turn this into a "free software is better" message. As has been noted before, "option clutter" is a characteristic trait of much free software, as every disgruntled dev-team member is appeased by adding their favorite feature and every dispute over how some feature should work is "solved" by make it work seven ways and/or adding an option to control it. The people who most need to hear this message are in the free-software world, not the commercial world when there really is someome to put their foot down and impose a coherent vision on the other developers. That doesn't mean all proprietary software is more usable - just that this particular usability problem is not one that afflicts them the most.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
How the fuck did you get a reference to microsoft from this article???? There's shitload of programs out there (yes, including your beloved open source) that are ridiculously fucked up to use. I fucking hate microsoft, but I hate overzealous OSS fuckheads even more. This is the single most important reason why I don't use open source (well, that's a lie - I use it extensively, but still, I hate these overzealous OSS freaks).
If installing and playing a CD version of "Scrabble" is too much for this guy, there is no way he is ever going to be happy.
And Jesus, write my congressman? "My computer is hard to use, I want you to make it all better."
I've seen poorly designed software, with poorly thought out UI, but its a big step to go from that simple fact to some blanket article which just says what we all already know (User Interfaces should be intuitive and easy to use), and doesn't even address the issue of HOW to make an interface which is intuitive to everyone, including comptuer illiterate scrabble players.
It always pisses me off when someone jumps up and starts complaining because a lifetime spent doing things BESIDES using computers hasn't prepared them to be able to look at a screen and immediately understand what to do. Sorry folks, sometimes, even with the best interface, you have to RTFM.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Make easy usage common!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Case in point. I once taught someone to drive who had absolutely no idea what the function of the clutch was. He knew that he had to press it when shifting gears but didn't have a clue why. In fact he would at times forget to depress the clutch pedal especially when switching to neutral. He probably "discovered" that it was possible to do and seemingly no malfunction ocurred. It was only after I drew him a couple of napkin diagrams and explained that clutch was disengaging his engine to prevent the damage to the gearing system that he fully comprehended the gravity of his driving errors.
Cars (esp with manual gearboxes) are definitely not intuitive.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
My Tech Posts on Twitter
His arguments don't even make that much sense, and instead of being logical appeals, are meant really to 'blow off steam' and stir feelings of brotherhood among the other similarly non-technologically inclined folk.
He offers no real insight into UI design at all. He merely bitches and whines about how his chess program was too complicated (Why didn't he buy a simple one then?). He doesn't even make generalizations, all his cases are specific. If you were to ask him, "well, how would you design it?" he would be at a loss for never having thought about how to creatively include all the features everyone wants in a interface that won't confuse people.
Even worse, he'd create a complicated interface, and because he would then understand all the features, he'd call it simple and not understand why people were ranting about it and calling it complicated.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
I agree! It is the height of condescension for software (developers) to assume they know what I/you/we meant to do and override it for us as the default behavior. You're experience illustrates what happens to others and costs them (and me) time when they have to "learn" how to make the software behave neutrally. The default behaviour SHOULD be neutral -- if the "extras" are that cool, and that good, and that necessary, use of those features will catch on by word of mouth. (an example of uncool "extras" is the entire obtuse suite of MS keyboard shortcuts... while they qualify as shortcuts, they certainly fail the usability test -- I've been using them for over 10 years, and I still haven't come up with a mnemonic system to make them common everyday experience -- let alone trying to make them understood by others -- could you imaging a world where the default behavior of windows was to be able to navigate ONLY by keyboard??? and point and click was something you had to activate?)
Can and will are two different things. Given the common OSS attitude of "you haven't read the docs, fuck you", I can't see ease of use being a priority very soon, except in certain niches.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
It's a very dark ride.
The idea that open source can fill this bill is laughable. Not that I am against open source. And I encourage them to give it a try, which I am sure they are, but I have not seen a single truely innovative UI out of an open source product yet.
The fact is, UI design is not easy and it should not be left up to amatuers. And yes, most software engineers are amatuers when it comes to UI design. In fact most of the top developer's I know admit that they suck at UI design and look forward to input from someone with that particular skill. That is not to say that engineers are incapable of good UI design, they just need a completely different set of skills from what they use in thier normal design and programming duties.
A good UI designer would need programming skills, creative skills, a knowledge of ergonomics, and an understaning of how people want to use the product. This is best discovered through a process at least similar to the Use Case process.
"...a good example is a cd burner. in windows XP, i's as simple as dragging files to the CD drive, and clicking "write these files to CD"..." I think that is a bad example. The CD utility k3b in KDE is just as easy. It is virtually a two-click operation to burn an ISO image, for example.
Ever watch someone try to turn on a Mac for the first time? Truly humorous.
Bill Gates is as responsible for UI design as Lee Iacocca was responsible for car design. They're corporate executives bent on making a profit, not visionary artists.
Iacocca may have decided to go with the "cab-forward" design but he sure didn't come up with it. Similarly, the Windows 95 UI revamp wasn't originated by Gates, but he did hire smart UI designers.
Still have a LONG way to go for that to happen!
This is the one area that Apple/Microsoft/etc really kill OSS apps, in general.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
To date, "Free Software" (which I interpret as OSS) is woefully behind MS and Apple in terms of ease of use for the end user. Microsoft is *very* good in that area (as is Apple); that more than anything else is the reason for their success. OSS is *very* bad at that (IMNSHO), and it the primary reason why people aren't as willing to use alternative OS/software choices as we think they should be.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
You know, lately I find myself evaluating how I use the software I write much more carefully. During this sort of evaluation, I think about what things work well, what things are a PITA to do, what are the common special cases, etc.
Version one typically has all the functionality it needs in order to do the job, but a lot of things are hardcoded and not configurable; many assumptions are made. Version two usually takes all of the things I've learned that people want to change and moves that into a config file or maybe a _few_ command line options. Version three then adds some features for handling the common special cases that arise.
In general, I find that my programs developed with such a process are much simpler and easier to use on a day to day basis.
It seems he liked to use programs for these purposes back in the day before they made noise at him.
I'd have to say I agree when it comes to background music in games - it usally conflicts with my mp3s that are playing. However, I usually like sound effects on by default.
That's complete bull-shit that OpenSource (that's what I think you're referring to when you say "free") is easier to use than Microsoft stuff, in general.
I'm a tech guy (hey, I've been on-line in one form or another for over 20 years), and I _choose_ not to use Linux/UNIX at home because it's such a bag of useability shit.
Make software easy to use for the _average person_, not the average computer programmer.
The problem (still) is, "nobody" in open-source world really gives a snot about useability.
How is it that a small outfit in Cupertino, California can make arguably the most easy to use OS (a UNIX-ish one no less) and the GNOME/KDE guys aren't even close....?
I _still_ get comments like "Read the man pages!" or "If you don't like it, go code it up yourself".
Even for developers, gcc/gdb is back in the dark ages for useability compared with any of MS' development tools for Windows. (Quality arguments aside).
At level one, do what 90% of all users would do.
: :
: :
At the next level, allow the remaining 10% to perform more complex tasks.
Maybe have one more super-tech level where the elite 1 or 2% can delve in and tweak.
Example 1
Web browser app like Firefox
level 1 : It installs itself, all plugins and figures out how to handle almost any mime type.
level 2 : Extensions & more
level 3 : about:config, etc
Example 2
Web Design Software like Quanta Plus
level 1 : WYSIWYG interface that produces nice clean W3C compliant code and maybe buttons called "text effects" for stuff like mouse-overs that allows the user to see what will happen to the text.
level 2 : Code View, CSS Editor, etc
Level 3 : Javascript debugger, PHP debugger, MySQL queries, etc..
Basically, you should never be forced to descend to levels 2 or 3 to be able to accomplish a basic task.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The reason I want control over things like my webserver, right down to the most basic level, is so I can keep an eye on it, make sure the security configs are okay, and kill it if it gets compromised.
I don't WANT that taken out of my hands. I've spent enough time using Windows that I don't TRUST the developers to know what the hell I need, and not treat me like someones grandma.
For the same reason, I don't throw in a lot of "notes" fields when I'm putting together a database. Sure users love it; it never tells them when they're making an error. If I NEED data, then they ARE putting it in correctly. If I don't need it, they can do whatever gives them the most pleasure.
If people ask for functionality that is complex, sometimes you have to sacrifice simplicity to do what they want done. Thats a simple reality.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
How the hell can you come to the conclusion that Thomas Sowell is using Microsoft's products, furthermore, that he thinks that they aren't useable?
Ken Hendrickson says "I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
After reading to the article I noticed that Thomas refers to "computer programs", not "Operating systems, office applications, e-mail, or web browsers." The only particular type of program that he specifically mentions are a "dictionary, an atlas, and an encyclopedia". There are a number of manufacturers of these types software. Crap like this is usually found in the $5 bin and comes with a beautiful VB installer, and accompanying VB application used to browse the content on 100 cd roms of uncompressed video (in the case of a multimedia encyclopedia). Though given all of Thomas information on what is rubbing him the wrong way, there is no way to deduce which particular products Thomas has been using given the words in the article.
I'm not going to jump to any conclusions as to what he uses, becuase I can't. The point regarding usability is well taken, and should always followed when building an application.
Although, with people with Ken's superior power of reasoning and logic, it's a wonder more products don't turn out better.
Make it easy to do what almost everybody wants to do. So, he's advocating one-click downloading of porn, then?
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!
No it doesn't. That means he loves the principles behind open source enough, or is enough of a tech geek himself, to put up with the god-awful usability and complexity in most open-source software. That's true of an overwhelming majority of people who use Linux or *BSD for their desktops.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Why must people insist that it's just as easy to make a graphical interface as intuitive as a hardware interface?
Let's take a step back here. What's the difference between a computer and a hammer (from an interface perspective)?
They're both tools, used by people, to accomplish various tasks. Why can't a computer be as easy to use as a hammer (or any other elegant physical tool)?
Because we can't touch them.
It's that simple. In the hardware world we have hammers, to cars, to ipods, to... let your imagination go wild. It's entirely easier to make a hardware interface user friendly because a hardware interface designer can use their own intuition, and the intuition of others to make it easy.
Anyone ever ask themselves why hammers have a handle and a head? Anyone ever ask themselves why a walkman's volume is controlled by a dial? Do you commonly wonder why turning the steering wheel on your car turns your car?
Physical things can be made an order of magnitude easier than programs merely because they are physical things. The human mind easily pierces most facets of a physical object within seconds of its observation. The option to handle it makes it even easier.
Computers have a very serious handicap. We can't interact directly with our computer! Under most circumstances we have a keyboard and monitor as standard input and output. So we have our hardware interface. But this interface doesn't directly control the computer. We have to use this hardware interface to work with a software interface.
It's this simple little factor that trips people up: Interfacing with an interface.
To get a real life analogy of operating a program, use a hammer (and only a hammer, no hands) to operate your vehicle. No hands, no feet, use the hammer to accelerate and steer. Hell, I'll make it easy, you can use a hammer in each hand.
This being said, we've still got SO MUCH left to do in the graphical interface world. There's so much experimenting left to do, so many advances we've yet to make. Expecting the relatively young computer industry to produce interfaces that are as easy as interfaces that have been around since the stone-age is insane!
If you are awake in the middle of the night in a hotel room and your spouse is asleep, you would never dare to turn on the new Scrabble game. It would wake up your spouse and maybe people in the next room. Only if you don't know how the volume control on your laptop works! The same could be said for the television or radio in that hotel room, couldn't it? "Gee, if you run this a full volume it could disturb someone!" doesn't sound like a fault in the software; it sounds more like a problem with a loose nut on the keyboard...
The problem is not only in learning how to use a new kind of product. Most current software is terrible even when you already are trained to use it. Think of a car which needed to go through a "next->next->accept" wizard every time you wanted to shift gears, and maybe you will get what is the problem.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
Huh? I'm a bit confused. How does Free Software magically have higher usability than Microsoft all of the sudden? Just because the submitter thinks he doesn't use Free Software? It's common knowledge we're all working very hard to make the Linux desktop better in usability, because we all know it...well, sucks.
Seems like a rather silly Microsoft jab to me.
I love his "Barbarians inside the Gates" book. But he is wrong on this one. It is not the geeks that design the stuff it is the sales and marketing people that FORCE us to add more "colorful" shit so it helps push sales. If it was all up to geeks I think software apps would be more stable and more usable.
This is no joke. Once when I was covering my old boss's office, I thought I would try to play around with the iMac in the corner, see how it was. Literally 30 minutes later, I had the thing booting!
"Intuitive" is not the same than "easy to use", althought this is an error frequently done. Intuitive is synonym with "familiar", and no entirely new product can be familiar; this is especially true with new technologies. The problem with most software interfaces is that they're bad even when you get familiar with them.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Actually, I generally like Sowell's writings. Even when I disagree with him I admire his sense of logic and reason.
I was just making fun of the fact that he tends to rant quite often about how his children were misdiagnosed by our nation's liberal school system.
My wife works in the public school system, so from her stories I know they are far from perfect. But come on Sowell, give it a rest. Your children are adults. Get over it!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!"
Leapin' Logic Batman! I have NO idea how "Microsoft is not satisfying their customers" in any way implies "Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!".
I'd rather see a panel with a few different blind deconvolution algorithms to try out. At least for photo editing :-) That and reduced load time. BTW, Most people don't demand BD because they don't know it's possible - not entirely well defined, but some things are possible.
See, this is where you missed his point.
I have a fancy camera (analog), and a less fancy digital. With the fancy analog camera, if I want to take a family photo, I press the button. At most, I need to hit the clearly marked flash button to turn it on. Of course, if I'm feeling artistic, I may want to adjust the exposure, shutter speed, etc., and those features are all there. However, to simply to the most common operation, take a picture, I don't need to do anything.
Your attitude is elitist, "if you don't want the fancy features, get a disposable camera." Beyond the fact that disposables get expensive real fast, what if I want to have a single camera and be able to take real photos AND snapshots?
The point of the article is that the simple should be simple. If I want to take a picture, I press a button.
Last I checked, one shot picture taking *was* just that simple, on every digital camera. You don't have to set all the options. On my Canon Powershot G2, for example, if you have it in the Auto mode (the default mode) you press the button and it takes a picture. Even the flash is in automatic mode by default. Done and done.
You might get poor pictures if you don't mess with the options, but that's true with even film type cameras (more true with film type cameras, in fact, since digital cameras have a lot more auto-correction capabilities, not to mention all the software auto-correction that exists).
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It does not, but that's not what he said. What he said was that Microsoft had not satisfied Thomas Sowell, who's typical of Microsoft's customers. I'll be the one to tell you that free software does exactly what Sowell wants in most cases.
Mr. Sowell is typical. I've been doing computer retail repair and sales on and off since 1989 and his plight is common. Microsoft interfaces have become more complex and periodic shifting of the elements has been more confusing than simplifying. Additional complication comes from Microsoft's attempts to quash competitors and proprietary practices in general. Each device, such as cameras, comes with it's own complete and unique interface. AOL has to pack everything it's users might want onto a whole CD and use the lowest level calls possible to avoid breakage. The user is left with no choice but to use a horribly fragmented interface that changes completely every two years. Believe me, half of Stowell's grief is that his old applications don't work anymore.
It does not matter how well educated or patient the user is, feature creep has made Microsoft difficult to use. Just recently, Slashdot ran this a developer article on M$ Money. No matter how much you know about computers or accounting, M$ Money is more difficult than it needs to be. I've seen Engineers pull their hair out over issues like this. Most people have simply given up and come to expect less of their computers or thrown them away.
Now, that does not make free software easier to use, but free software developers never had the same problems their commercial peers have and there are great success stories. Complex software can be difficult to use, like Blender. It can also be easy and powerful, like GNU Cash is. GNU cash, though it has currency conversion, mortgage accounts, stock accounts and just about every thing you can think of, has a simple checking account that works. The other stuff does not get in the way, though the user is tempted to try it out. KDE is another success story and studdies have shown it's as easy to use as XP. That's fantastic because the KDE interface comes with many more possible customizations and features. Camera usage under KDE through digikam, puts commercial software to shame. Sound recording and play, despite terrific resistance from hardware makers, is now as easy as loading up Knoppix and following the menus and double clicking. No further CDs or installs are required. I expect the difference between free software and commercial cruft will be more and more like the current success stories.
The person who said that "free software can't make an easy to use interface" was just as wrong as the person who said the same thing about kernels, operating systems and user programs and "business" software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I can't believe I no one has commented about user testing yet. It's so simple to do...
http://www.hcibib.org/tcuid/
The camera analog is valid. Keep in mind that software is a virtual tool, where a camera is a physical tool.
When the operator of a camera wants a something simple, they purchase a 'point and click' camera. When the pro wants a portrait camera, they purchase lights, kick lights, meters, lens', camera, different types of film, etc etc etc.
In the software world, M$ and Open Source both, tend to give everyone the same 'pro setup'. But lots of users just want 'point and click'.
In our virtural tool of software we could have different menus/user interface based on somekind of user selectable complexity setting. Take a look at 1stPage html editor from Evrsoft:
http://www.evrsoft.com/1stpage/
They have 'Easy', 'Expert', 'Hardcore', 'Normal' selectable via the shortcut. Each has a different set of menus.
Now we can argue over the choices of what's on 'Expert' vs. 'Easy' blah blah - the point is the author tried to make his product work for more than one level of user.
The virtual tool allows this. The physical tool does not - once you buy the 'point and click' camera, it can't be upgraded to that 'pro setup'.
Why is this concept so difficult for software professionals, like many of you, to understand? Some people, lots of them, just want to use the computer to do stuff. They don't care how/why/who/when/what/where they just want to write a memo.
If the configuration of the tool could be changed to suit the user (and maybe his mood today) - wouldn't that be great?
Append some extra data to a CD...
./source && cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 -v image.iso && rm image.iso
mkisofs -C `cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 -msinfo` -M -dev=0,0,0 -J -r -o image.iso
So exceptionally intuitive...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
In defense of PC, let me point out that he trying to compare machines with a specific purpose to those with a general purpose and is upset that the level of complexity is higher. With all due respect, No Shit Sherlock! Even something as "advanced" as a digital camera has, in essence, one goal in life: to take photos. Toasters, televisions, even cars are designed for very specific tasks -- any extra features are an added "complexity".
Computers and Operating Systems have no such luck. They must act as their own human-machine interpreters to an infinite number of possibile inputs and commands. Some of these commands are simple and can be optimized for -- eg, run program. Most, however, have their own set of additional complexities -- functions such as printing a document, manipulating data, and searching for files all have so many possible outcomes that more specific instructions than one-button "Do This" interfaces are required.
Not to mention that every user will have their own opinion about how their interface should optimized. The "complex" interface is a good thing because it gives the users complete freedom over their interactions with the system.
But what about users who don't want that freedom? They want machines with a big "Do this" button -- cameras have one, cars have one, toasters have one. Computers, by their very nature, can *not* have one -- the set of all correct answers to "Do this" is infinite. How? Where?
The bottom line is that the computer cannot read your mind. It cannot perfectly and accurately translate simplistic commands into complex functions. The best it can do is try to predict what you mean and give feeble human-to-machine translation function to the rest.
See, the problem here is that iTunes works well if and only if you want to stick within its paradigm. If you want to use an iPod, buy from the iTMS, not play music with any other programs, rip CD's using iTunes ripper and encoder, and let only iTunes control and manage your music library, then it works great.
But:
-If you have a different MP3 player (not an iPod), iTunes doesn't work with it.
-If you buy from any other music store, iTunes won't read those files (allofmp3.com being an exception).
-If you want to play music with any other programs, then you can't use the iTMS files because they have DRM (unless you work around this problem).
-If you rip and encode using another program, iTunes CDDB (Gracenote) lookup features will not work on those songs. That only works when you use iTunes to rip the CD's.
-If you move or rename songs using some other organization program, iTunes can't automatically scan for and find the new files, and if you manually scan a directory after you change it, you're left with duplicate entries in the iTunes library.
In other words, as long as you do what Apple thinks you want to do, it's great and easy. But different people do different things, and only supporting a very small subset of those things seems like a piss poor strategy. Yes, this may mean that you have to do some configuration in a program with support for more ways of working, but it also means you can work in the way you want to work instead of working in the way some company tells you that you should be working.
It's my computer, and I'll use it how I want to use it. For all Microsoft's flaws, they at least have some pretty vast configurability in their systems, even if it is hard to find and poorly described a lot of the time. Open source often tends to go a notch further and give you more or less complete control, but the cost for that is lots of configuration.
The RIGHT way to do this is to get the best of both worlds by separating the functionality from the interface. You write your program to support every configuration known to man, much the way open source tends to do. Then you build one more more interfaces on top of that, which abstracts it down to a much simpler set of configurations abilities, setting up defaults. The problem is that generally the interface and functionality are tied together very tightly, but if you separate them, you enable other programmers to develop their own interfaces to the actual guts of the program and thus simplify it for other users, if they want to do so. The only problem with this is that interface development tends to suck, so not a lot of people are doing it much.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This Thomas Sowell, a conservative, was against the government's antitrust action against Microsoft, right?
As such he has no right to complain about inferior products made by monopolists.
This is what Bill Gates really succeeded at: making computers easy enough for the masses to use.
I'm going to assume that you're talking about Apple BASIC here... only a fool or a Microserf would give Gates and Windows the credit for making computers usable by regular people.
The connection with free software is that free software can and is doing better. Commercial software is stuck with the results of their feature wars, licensing issues and Microsoft's own tendency to break competitor's software. They can't escape and their resources are dwindling. Free software is free of all of the above and has a far larger developer base making better software. The difference is starting to show in most areas that count.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Try reading the article again and look at the analogies he used, k?
See it never said all programs need to be dumbed down but rather that if you want the dumbed down version it should be very easy to access it. IE: If you don't want to deal with all the extra complicated crap you don't have to.
As the camera example illustrated: your camera may have 20 million options however usually there is an easy to access "auto" mode if all you need is to take a quick picture. If I want to snap a picture of the blackboard because I came late to my review section I sure as hell don't want to spend 5 minutes setting the camera for "indoor" use.
you want a web-browser you type "mozilla" no point an dlcik
...three years later
...one week later
My mother trying to use your system:
>interweb
command not found
>internet
command not found
>web
command not found
>browser
command not found
>www
command not found
>a
command not found
>b
command not found
>mam
command not found
>man
>mozilla
gee that sure is easy.
Text does not make a program easy and uncluttered for the majority of users. A good GUI design is, realistically, probably the easiest to use, but one with a default minimalistic interface and good default settings. Something that just works until you want to do something more complex, then provides you with the settings to go and enable the options you want.
If I just want to plot a simple graph using a C++ API I shouldn't have to write dozens of lines of code to specify what icon and cursor I want, to install an event handler, to actually write an event handler, to specify in gory detail exactly what format my pixels should be in and so on. On the other hand, I do want to be able to do all of the things I've just described if the need arises.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
How should we go about doing that? ... ... ... ...
Any ideas?
No?
Just useless complaints?
Ok, well, thanks for doing your part.
Those, like Mr. Stowell, who simply want their old computer to work and do all the things it used to might give free software a spin. Most people are pleasantly surprised to see their old computer come alive again with Knoppix. Windoze PCs that won't boot anymore are great for such demonstrations. Mepis is the easiest of the Debian based free beer distribution I know of to install. Sarge is not much more difficult and is cleaner as well as more free as liberty. People on a budget will be happy that their old PC once again plays games they love with sound they can turn off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
"The fact is if you want better pictures ..."
Stop right there.
I don't want better pictures. I want to pick up my camera, point it at something, press the clicky button.
Then I want to plug the camera into my computer and have all the pictures pop up on my screen.
Then I want to email Mom and attach a few pictures.
There's actually a profession of people to figure out how many customers are like you ("want better pictures") and how many are like me ("want simplicity of operation"). It's called "marketing".
You don't get it do you. Ranting without stopping to understand the problem just gives the world more poorly thought out software. Just because you have expertise in computers or some other area does not mean everyone does.
For instance, in MSWord-97, I type file/new and it asks me if I want a blank document or blank template. Duh!!
Try to load your old Netscape or Mozilla mail files to your new computer so you can continue seamlessly. Same for the bookmarks.
Think ahead, not behind. Programs do not need bells and whistles to be good, but they do need to do the things people need done.
... or or out source it. He's a big advocate turning software into a cheap foreign labor thing. If he's got any complaints about software he should go to them to get the work done. Better yet, Thomas, why don't you move to India?
I am unimpressed with people who complain about being beaten brutally once a week. Perhaps they don't know about people who are beaten brutally every day?
Coincidentally, over at the American Specator, home base for the vast right wing conspiracy, there is an article about Sowell.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft.
What? You don't think they're talking about free software, so it must be anti-Microsoft, so it must be pro-free-software? I think what's being said is that software as a whole is sometimes not laid out with usability in mind. It's not saying Free Software is better. It's not saying it's worse.
Am I completely misinterpreting what was said? Or is this the most ridiculous comment ever made?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
If there is complexity, it maps directly to the problem domain and not to the UI design. That makes it far easier to deal with, because it "just makes sense."
Nicely said.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I would pick holes in just about all his arguments - he seems to ignore the initial training and years of condition on how a car works. The same with a TV set. I'm sure I could find somebody that has horror stories trying to figure them out for the first time and could write an article on how counter-intuitive these items are (like, why do you need a key for a car ignition when you've unlocked the door?).
The car designers agree with you. That's why newer cars, such as some MBs and, IIRC, the Toyota Prius (and probably others) don't require you to do so. The Prius is the best example - you get in, you touch the power button to let the car know that you want to move (since activating the car when you just want to get something from inside it is potentially hazardous), and you go. So while your comment was tongue-in-cheek, its being addressed even so.
I've seen many articles like this on the VCR, not to mention ones complaining about more sophisticated cars, kitchen appliances, telephones, heating/air-conditioning systems, all of them wanting the systems to be simpler (and most, like this one, wanting to return to simpler times).
And why not? Look at the PVR - isn't that a VCR made simpler, addressing the problem domain ("I want to watch Buffy later") rather than the system domain ("I want to make tape insertion smoother")? Or an A/C system - my thermostat lets me set an upper/lower bound. It does everything else - even switching from furnace to A/C as needed. After all, its not like the problem domain of wanting a stable house temperature has changed, so why should the interfaces get more complicated?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
extremist conservative agenda.
Hey, man. You used the word 'extreme' as a pejorative. Lots of people do, and I want to know why, so help a brother out and give me a clue.
Would you rather date an EXTREMELY pretty girl, or a MODERATLY pretty girl?
Is it better for a polititian to be EXTREMELY honest, or just MODERATLY honest?
Is it better to be EXTREMELY healthy, or MODERATLY healthy?
See what I'm saying?
Why is EXTREMIST a pejorative? I guess it is used by people who disagree with the subject, and have no hope of finding a middle ground. Personally, I hope I NEVER become 'moderatly' anything, for that indicates mediocrity and a lack of principles to me.
People who can't stand a person who has actual principles and lives a credo will call him 'EXTREME'. People who hurl that 'slur' tend to be wishy-washy, in my observation.
Personally, I advocate extremism, or nothing at all, because any belief worth having is worth having EXTREMELY.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Without Bill, we would all be using Macs, Amiga's, Atari's, and who knows what else. All of these are/were perfectly fine, highly useable machines. Not like the stinking pile of annoyance that is Windows...
.. and it absolutely was easy to do the most important simple thing:
I cut immediately start typing text.
And I can do the most important tasks by pressing easy to find buttons. From my experiences with beginners: they all could that within 1 minute. Learning how to move around with the mouse usually took more time.
Now try explaing a novice how to use LaTeX.
PS: "that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers," - The Scrabble mentioned was probably not produced by Microsoft!
PPS: I would never use anything but LaTeX for a text with more than one formula.
WTF are you talking about? You quoted:
I don't believe he uses Free Software; that means that Microsoft is not satisfying their customers, and Free Software can perform better than Microsoft even in the ease of use area!
And from it concluded that he (the author of the linked article) loves open source software's principles? What in the quoted sentence implies that love? Was it the part that said "I don't believe he uses Free Software"?
Then you group the author in with people who use Linux/BSD as their desktops. What exactly puts him into this group?
Come on! I know RTFA gets tiresome around here, expecially when the FA is slashdotted (this one is handling the load very nicely), but at least read what you're quoting!
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
My university library replaced all the photocopiers with some fancy shrink/enlarge/collate/digitize/duplex models. In my mind, the one feature a photocopier should present is the ability to lay down a page, press a button, and get a copy. But no, these machines required you to enter the paper size, number of copies, and cropping options first. And then, once you copied one page, you had to do it all again for the next. I'm sure these machines are very efficient for a person who has some complex copy jobs and is trained properly, but they are inappropriate in a library where most people have simple tasks and will never use the same machine again.
In programming, I try to follow the theme of keeping simple things simple. In my C++ class for a random number generator, you can initialize and seed the generator with no parameters. The code gets a seed from /dev/urandom or time() on its own, since that's what most people would do anyways. If someone wants to be more careful, they can do the seeding themselves, but software should always allow simple tasks to be performed easily.
AlpineR
As a consumer, I really don't care how hard it was for you to make a product. Saying that 'oh it's hard to do that' doesn't matter a damn to me. Besides, it's your job! So do a good one.
Or I'll buy someone else's product.
50% of americans have a computer cause an engineer called steve wozniak came up with a mass proucable computer for the masses.
90%+ of people use windows because its the cheapest solution for someone not technically inclined.
if a feature isnt useful to 51% of people out there, it should be something you have to hunt for to use, not something you have to use to do anything. a prime example of this is the windows installer. 99% of windows programs are a ten step process to install, if your know what your doing you hit "next" nine times and then "finish". if you dont know what your doing, you hit next till something scares you, then you phone up a friend to find out what to do next.
sane defaults and smart features dont mean that the technologically savvy miss out. the role of the plugin for example is a great solution for features for a few people who need them. every feature in a product that i dont need is not only overhead, but it is clutter that increases the time it takes me to find the ones that i do need. how is this helpful to the so called "power users" out there?
one final point, good design is not the same as dumbed down. do you consider photoshop dumbed down? or maybe flash? both of those were designed as mac programs.....
2 Words: Educate [Your GOD-DAMNed] Users!
Stop with spreading "make it easy" crap!
I mean, if you consider the target market as "people who want to do things simply and don't do a lot of advanced stuff" then sure, I'd agree.
:)
However, if you consider the target market as "people with portable digital music players and who want to buy music online" then I disagree. I'm certainly in that target market, but it doesn't fill all my needs and frankly I hate the design of iTunes in general. For me, personally, it makes the things I commonly want to do hard or impossible, and the things I nearly never do easy.
Or, if you want to define your target market as "people who like iTunes", which a lot of Apple users/defenders tend to do in a roundabout manner, then you have a bit of a useless definition, don't you?
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Hundreds or people tell him that he was wrong and post there suggestions
I also talk to people and try things out with novices, far more so than I do in the 'commercial' world, after all if I'm develping an OS app I want develope an application for everyone and not just myself.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What about EXTREME moderation?
for maximum effect, the preceding post should be read monotone and at a steady cadence
I'm running into something like this issue right now. I want a zipping program that can span disks for a file I need to transfer. I think that's the second most common task for a zipping program (or at least in the top 5). Winzip would do it, but it's shareware that disables itself after 30 days. I want something I can continue to use. I go to Sourceforge, and there's a program called 7-zip. It's high up in the active projects list, it's rated "5-Production/stable" and runs on Windows, so it should do exactly what I need, right? No. It doesn't span disks--that's on the to-do list for the program, even though the feature requests section shows several people asking for it. How can this be rated Production/Stable when it's missing a basic function that all the shareware programs have?
They decided to put in a bunch of other obscure features instead of one that's really important (and easy to implement). It even has 41 language sets in it! Don't just say "No one uses floppies anymore." because it applies to any removable media. Many of the shareware programs will let you set the chunk size, so that you can span CD-Rs with big zip files.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Easly like installing CUPS?
Make Easy Things Easy and Hard Things Possible... sound familiar? Now just apply it to the UI!
> Also make sure to tell your newspaper editors
> that they should carry your favorite
> conservative columnists!
Oh, I see why--nevermind.
You may have actually stumbled on an example where the "ui expert" makes things worse. Now it is no big deal, but some kind of "automatic less of the output of all programs" would probably make things FAR worse and harder to use than the default behavior. Here are reasons why the user would want the current behavior:
1. They are only interested in a side-effect of running the program.
2. The program prints a lot of crap the user is uninterested in, and the only interesting stuff is at the end.
3. The user has a graphics terminal with a scrollbar, or other more advanced method of scrolling back. Often a thing like "less" so mangles the output such that these more advanced interfaces are useless. Even if such bugs are avoided, it will require them to hit the spacebar many useless times before they get their desired result.
4. The program has bugs and fails to detect that it is piping to something other than a screen and disabling this, making the pipe unusable.
5. The program has bugs where even if it does turn off the "less" behaivor, it was never tested, and the no-less output is useless or wrong. With the "|less" design such bugs are far less likely.
6. It is a lot easier and clearer to add this behavior with "| less" than to remove it with some switch to the program.
Or APIs that are so super-powerful they can encompass just about any new feature that might be added - except the one feature that was added with the next release that completely broke its architecture meaning that all that awesome power you thought you had acquired by learning the previous API has just been made completely redundant. But that's OK, the new API is also super-powerful...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
tab completion
two more
man pages
three more
redundant free documentation
how the fuck is anyone supposed to use a windows terminal for more than five seconds without tab completion? it's like someone cut off my right hand.
It would be REALLY nice if I could find a decent keyboard without all the multimedia/internet/whizbang buttons above the function keys.
Why does Excel have such easy to use list-making functionality when it is supposed to be a spreadsheet? Microsoft did a lot of user testing and found that an awful lot of customers just used it to make lists. So they made it really easy to do so. That's just one example.
In short, the view that you should make the common tasks easy is completely on target. The idea that Microsoft is unaware of this and doesn't follow these ideas themselves is completely wrong and has no basis in reality.
There certainly has been advancement, but saying "Bill Gates did it" makes you look like an idiot. There has been some common argument by Microsoft apologists that basically assummes that there would have been zero changes in computers without Microsoft, that without it we would be using 1980's computers unchanged. That is such a fallacious argument that it makes you look like a real idiot.
Now I suspect that without Bill Gates there would have been another monopolist that would have risen, and this new one would have popularized and pushed a similar, but not identical, set of computer developments, plus a similar set of both good and evil things. Both the claim that things would be worse without Bill Gates, or better without him, are equally fallacious.
In my mind this is one of the problems with the C++ standard template library. It's too hard to do figure out how do do some simple things.
These two came to mind, as I've used them recently. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that one is easier to use without having to learn much:
.mpg's that you want to use. I was amazed at how easy it was.
1. Sudo: This works well; I've been using it for a couple years; but I use it so infrequentyly that I forget about it. Typically, I just want to let user X run program P as superuser without having to type a password. Although this ends up as just a one-liner in the config. file, you have to read through a whole lot of details to figure out what you need to put.
2. Vcdimager: This has several options, and it even accepts an XML description of the image you want to build. But you don't need to know much of anything other than the list of
No word processor is complete without MS Word pinball!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"No, I don't want to understand it, I just want to use it!"
Of course, he's a Windows user...
Your analogy fails: Being beaten takes effort on the part of others. Not being beaten takes no effort on the part of others. This is the inverse of the case for having easy user interfaces. This guy isn't complaining that people stop doing something detrimental to him - he's complaining that they spend MORE time doing something beneficial than they already are. That's why the 'being beaten' analogy is completely inappropriate.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Oy... I am not an idiot. The very same things you're claiming about Bill Gate's interchangeability could probably be as easily said about George Eastman. Or did you think that Mr. Eastman was such a genius that photography was destined to remain difficult forever?
"Difficult" industries are often simplified by an iconic figure. The identity of that figure is going to be almost irrelevant. If Bill Gates had not served as the catalyst for making PCs easier to use and, as a result, much more ubiquitous, then someone else would have. You're thinking that I'm trying to claim Bill is some glorious figure in the PC industry because of his role in its development. I don't claim that, and I don't even care about that question.
Other than slamming me and calling me an idiot (gee, using that word must mean you automatically win the argument because it OBVIOUSLY makes you the bright one right?) you have said nothing.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Wow! That makes my day. An article by Thomas Sowell featured on slashdot! He's a great writer, and he happens to be a conservative black too. Please read some of his other articles too while you're at it.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
I do wish you hadn't posted as AC, it's a well stated point of view. Anyway, you are right of course. I made an overly broad statement by claiming what I did. Only indirectly is the statement correct. Bill would seem to be a very competitive guy and he merely did what he had to do in order to "win" by monopolizing the market. And he could only win by improving usability enough to make Windows a product everyone could stand enough to let it spread. That's all I meant.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Religion? Yeah, whatever. You seem to forget that Slashdot is primarily concerned with free, open software and user rights. No, I'll bet you just want to tweak people.
Editors who won't edit? You'd be angry if they put in their two cents, right?
In any case, this is a good article. It's the kind of thing everyone who writes software or deals with customers who use software or even simply uses software should read. It's about bad practices and comes from a genuinely frustrated, typical but articulate user. While Microsoft won't and can't fix the problem, free software can and has. Prbably because free software developers have the sense to admit such problems and to try to fix them and the numbers needed to do it right.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Last time I checked, Microsoft wasn't the only non-Free Softwaresoftware maker. Many programs have only a limited selection of options, not just Microsoft stuff. Actually, for tweakers, Microsoft usually has more user-changable options than most other software out there.
My friend tried to use a demo iPod in a store the other day. It totally perplexed him. All he wanted to do was skip to the next song. He tried the buttons, but couldn't get it to work.
I'm not saying to iPod design is bad. I'm pointing out that even the best designs aren't easy for everyone--even for relatively simple devices that aren't overburdened with unreleated features.
Now that I think about it, iPod wheel thing was confusing to me, too. I thought it was just a visual feature, meant to look like a retro speaker grill. There's nothing about it that indicates it is a control. No affordance. No tactile feedback.
But how would you like to be terminated with EXTREME predjudice?
The reason why extremists are looked down upon is because they don't consider the other side. They don't look at the issue, consider the points of the opposition, and find points where their points could be wrong, or common ground where comprimise is possible. Comprimise is necessary in this world, due to the 6 billion other people all with their own sets of opinions.
And no, not all positions are worth having extremely. I believe that murderers should be killed. If we held that view extremely, I would have to kill even those who commited accidental murder (car accidents) or in self defence. Welcome to the real world- there's always special circumstances, there's always situations that don't fit a black and white code.
As for your 3 examples- I'd rather be moderately healthy and not worry about my diet and exercise than extremely healthy, I'd like my politicians to know when a minor lie is needed for political comprimise and international relations (you want the right wing president to tell a left wing foreign president what he REALLY thinks about his politics?), and I'll take a 6 with a brain over a bimbo who's a 10 any day of the week. Extremes aren't always good. Going to an extreme in one direction usually means a lack in others (fitness vs time to do other stuff, looks vs other attributes, honesty vs diplomacy).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Someone once said "unix is very simple, but you have to be a genius to appreciate its simplicity." The point is, sometimes interfaces that are "easy to use" become less functional as you become more and more proficient in using the device that the interface allows access to. I think the entire linux console UI is one of the greatest interfaces ever made. I can quickly configure everything, recompile my kernel, browse the web, and so on using one consistent interface. A truly well-designed interface, no matter how complex it is, is always easy to use if you have the sufficient skills to use it. This is why that dude who designed Metacity is dead wrong in saying that preferences are the root of all evil: interface usefulness is dependent on the user's experience.
/etc folder is, and an interface hides that, it's made my life easier. If I do know what it is, it has made it harder. There is no absolute "easiness" in any interface because it's all dependent on the user's skill.
...e.g. he won't know what he's looking for even if he's right on top of it. There should be a wizard for every aspect of configuring a computer that a newbie would need to do. Windows knows this, and that's why newbies consider it easier than linux in some situations. Wizards are frustrating to the user that knows what he's doing because this represents a tradeoff...it's easier to accomplish a certain task as the designer conceived it, but it's more time-consuming to tweak things down to the letter. Windows abuses the wizard, forcing me to use them when I'd rather just tweak a text file.
Think of it this way. If I don't know what the
Really, it's really confusing to lump so many things under "ease of use." There are three distinct levels of UI, really:
1) The wizard. This means a user wants to have the computer hold his hand through the whole thing.
2) The GUI. If you've moved off the wizard, you've progressed to the point where you know what you're looking for when you see it. The problem with the GUI is that most of the time it gets abused, turning into a "go find it yourself" mentality. A good GUI should
3) The Command-line. At this point, you know what you want, and you just need a simple, fast way to tell the computer that. If this is the case, nothing beats a command line. Can you imagine how insanely fast you could get using microsoft word if you could print at different qualities, load files off the web, etc without ever resorting to any kind of gui?
Really, in order to be truly "easy to use" a program has to allow all of these different modes of input. Furthermore, the wizards have to be bulletproof and co-incide exactly with what the user needs to do. GUI's have to be reasonably helpful, but try to avoid the complexities associated with the command line. Command lines need to have good documentation so the user can start to figure out the commands if they want to.
IMO, there's no way to create a successful interface that suits everyone. If you don't give your varying users all of the interfaces, they're going to just look somewhere else.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Are they like "here documents" in perl?
This is more than just a "computer" problem. Consider the good old "washing machine".
...
There are "Regular", "Permanent Press" and "Delicate" cycles. There are "hot", "warm" and "cold" wash temperatures and similar options for _rinse_ temperatures. There are orifices for detergent, fabric softener, stain remover,
All you want to do was wash your clothes.
Select the wrong settings and you might ruin your clothes. The questions have to be answered correctly.
We _want_ things to do our particular bidding. The reason that the options for doing so is frustrating is nothing more complicated than wishing that everybody else were just like us.
Referring to one specific example from the author:
The Scrabble game plays music because many people _like_that_feature_. Some probably even threw away their previous version of their Scrabble game just so that they could have that feature. I guarantee that if most people did not like the feature it would not have made to commercial production. What the author dislikes is merely that there are so many other people with a taste in Scrabble different from his own that his own preference is in the minority.
-R
Nothing new in this article we havne't heard before.
:)
Simply put, more features doesn't equal a better experience.
I'd have to say though the author should have been more clear. It is not so much that there are too many options, as that the ones used 90% of the time aren't easy to scout out. His Scrabble example is excellent. I just bought another new version since my old one won't work right on XP. The new one requires the CD in the drive, has grahpics, music and sound effects all on by default, and prompts you to setup online before you can even get the game to start. If you don't want to setup for online, then you have to exit out and it basically behaves like your setup is broken after that.
To make matters worse, there isn't any easy to get to place to change all those options.
I'm not saying all software is that way, but sure as shootin a lot of new stuff I bought is.
More menus should behave like the ones MS has. They display only the most common functions unless you hit the expand button. Or perhaps they should just have a common preferences menu.
BUT, and I say BUT, he needs to get used to the fact that multimedia is in and some of us actually would like our dictionary to have pictures.
And our encyclopedia to have sounds!
And our Doom to have booms and blasts and...
and our favorite horror game the screams...and
and....ahhh, I'm going to go play Silent Hill!
Later and be well,
Tojosan
Since when?
... have to put my foot down!
Sure, having driven for a number of years now, I don't have to think about how it all works anymore. But so too can I use vi without having to scratch my head and think about it.
When I was learning, on the other hand, there was that whole bizarre clutch point thing, all these levers and knobs to turn and press and lift and such, usually in conjuction with other things happening too. And speak of bizarre - if I want to go faster, I have to put my foot down. if I want to go slower, I
In short, cars have very odd and nonintuitive interfaces. But the vast majority of us have had so much exposure to them that we see nothing wrong with them.
Pay for your teenage daughter's driving lessons and then disagree, go on.
Dude, it's 100% free. Mac OSX comes with Xboard connected to GNUChess. Can get the source code too.
Qxe4
" ...to use, two things will happen:
... and the OSS programmer will tell them that since it's free they can just like it or lump it. Come on, read this forum. And in a way that's not surprising. A person works for free on something, it becomes like art i.e. a deeply personal creation. Then some blunt critic comes along unaware of the pain or challenge of the process ... it's probably hard to be polite. Still, it doesn't lead to a better product.
1. People will complain. Long and loud."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Of course! How could we all have been so blind? All we need to do to make software better is to make the most popular features easier to use. I feel like I've wasted years of my life writing crappy UI's without this incredibly valuable nugget of wisdom.
Now all we need is someone who can both see into the future and read our user's minds to tell us which features will be the most popular.
Maybe we can ask the jackass who wrote this article to figure this out for us. Or maybe he's only smart enough to whine about the software after it's already done.
Come on folks, saying that making the common cases easy is a dumb thing to do is like saying the Win32 API is better than a clean API because of the cruft. A chunk of you sound like you measure you manhood by the complexity you can handle. That's being counterproductive and wasting your own time.
If you think that all cases are edge (tough) cases then you haven't done enough analysis or you don't understand who you are targeting your app to. A common case made easy for iPhoto won't be the same common case for a Photoshop or power Gimp-user. Let the computer do the simple shit for you so that you can focus your brain power on the tougher cases.
No, it isn't easy to build simplicity into an app to make the common cases easy. It requires the ruthlessness of someone willing to toss out good code/interfaces that almost, but doesn't quite work. It also requires placing your end-user (of whatever skill level you've targeted) ahead of your own desires for the app. Tough to do, but well worth it in the end.
You just have to ask yourself do you really want to take 27 steps (hypothetically) to configure a printer *every* time? Wouldn't you prefer to just have to do 3 steps 98% of the time and save the brain power for that difficult 2%?
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
Webserver gig is a fucking post-dot-bomb day job. Really, can you do web development and not know how to security config a webserver? Thats a pretty necessary skill.
I find that, in many cases, if I don't program a UI to be almost intrusively annoying (i.e a pop up every time they try to leave a required field blank, and then a second pop-up that tells them that 1^%TRGC is an invalid entry), I get useless data.
Example: I was working with an organization who has to monitor child abuse cases. I went in to rework their abuse database. I found that the previous developer hadn't made the child's name a required field, and that the WHOLE FUCKING DATABASE HAD NO NAMES FOR THESE GODDAMN ABUSED KIDS. Unacceptable!!! People would go to a foster home and have to ask around by type of abuse to find the fucking kids!
So I changed that, and do you think they complained? Jesus yes they complained, but fuck 'em. The people who used the data didn't complain, and the kids sure as hell didn't.
In my experience, with sloppy low-skill data entry people, you make EVERYTHING that you absolutely have to have a required field, and then you just leave the rest off, because they're not doing a damn bit more work than they have to.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I still don't understand why some programs receive the Aqua treatment and some the Brushed Metal. I don't think you do either.
People who have so many issues installing a commercial Scrabble (I have the last commercial release of Scrabble AFAIK, and it wasn't complex to install at all), should be playing Scrabble on web sites where they don't have to think about how to get it running.
And FFS, bitching about an old chess program not working? Chess is one of those programs where someone write a new computerised version once a week. I'm sure that enough searching would have eventually found one which didn't install a bunch of crap. Or again, use the damn web version.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
anyone remember the old geoworks ensemble/geos windows clone way back in the day? their office suite had an interesting way of dealing with this problem- have multiple user interface levels. one could choose the beginner, intermediate, or advanced level interface, and it would vary the amount of options available accordingly.
i don't know about you, but I don't want any LESS options, just cuz some newbie can't find his way around. let's make the software easier for dumb people without making the software dumb, ok?
Aqua iCal would look hideous. There's too much white space. Same with iTunes.
Apple violates their rules when they don't make sense. Hell, they aren't even rules, they're called "guidelines," which means they aren't meant to be followed as law.
Although I think the article has a point, I do not agree with always comparing a modern computer with a car, a TV-set or a camera. Computers are capable of so much more, and that makes it diffcult to do a certain thing easily.
The author is right when he says, that sometimes it is too difficult. But software engineering is a quite young discipline. Give us a few more decades, and software will be easy to use like a toaster. *g*
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
KISS !
Keep It Simple Stupid !
Mundus Vult Decipi
Surely that's the whole point: users shouldn't have to give us ideas; we should make stuff that people can just use. If I had to call Ford every time I wanted to take my car in a different direction, I'd use public transport instead.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Is there some convention that requires a PC or MAC typist to capitalize acronyms? The reason I ask, is that every time I see the acronym IMHO screaming in caps in a post, all I can think of is that whoever wrote it is either a blithering idiot or self-righteous fool in denial. My eyes then go into Evelyn Woods mode seeking a string of characters worth slowing down for and thinking about. In my exceptionally well-educated and highly experienced opinion, I sincerely believe that if you've got an opinion, don't try to temper it with a pretense of humility, especially when giving an opinion without supporting citations. Go for the gusto! I have an opinion, about 'blank' and think you should believe it because I am wonderful and a brilliant thinker despite the fact that my mother is my father's daughter and I have to disconnect the hose and unplug my house so I can drive it to my job as a fry cook at KFC. Kinky Friedman for Texas Governor in 2006! Kinky's Platform:"Read My Lips: I do not know!" Go Jew Boy! We're behind you all the way! An honestly ignorant politician. Maybe the world would be a better place if we had fewer opinions and more Rock-A-Billy Klez bands.
and anyone who can't use them even after reading the manual should just give up. His car required months of training to learn to use - and years of experience to use well. Computers are a trivial joke by comparison. They cost lots, they are very powerful, they should be hard to use and very hard to use well.
Schools should only let students use the command line or any GUI they can write themselves. Computers should not be allowed to be sold with operating systems. Dumbing down is killing the computer. Better that 5% of people use powerful, difficult monsters than 50% of people use drool-proof macintrash imitations.
This space intentionally left blank.
As far as I see it, the main problem under MS-Windows is that software manufacturers want to "own" your computer.
Each time I interact with an MS-Windows machine, I am simply amazed by the number of splash screens which dont want to leave, of browsers which want to become my browser of choice, of ISP installation packages who just ignore the standard procedure and comes with some silly one, usually accompanied by an ugly non-standard interface with a "high-tech" look.
It really feels like they fight for a share of the PC. This is extremely annoying.
More generally I would say that non-Open-Source lead to sub-optimal softwares, result of the optimization of a cost function which includes not only the user interest but also the company's one. This has an impact not only in term of stupid DRM schemes, activation keys, forced update or striped features, but also in term of "invasion" of your desktop.
But all this, in fact, is not directly due to MS, but to the specificity of the Windows software-sphere I would say (which includes freewares, usually as annoying as commercial ones)
Cheers,
--
Go Debian!
Ahh, you must be a Sowell groupie. That would explain your flame-on attitude.
I suggest before you sound off about writing software you try it - it's harder than you think. The users usually don't know what they want, they just know how to complain about what they don't like. And if you don't already have a user community then it's even harder. You have to guess which features will be the most popular and design your GUI around that.
Maybe you were thinking of ancient software domains like email, word processors, etc. It doesn't take a genius to look at existing software and say "this works, this sucks..." Hindsight is 20/20. It is quite a bit more difficult to make the same observations about software domains that are new or don't even exist yet. Or domains where there aren't as many examples to compare.
Even well-understood domains like word processors are still the subject of user debate. Many people prefer very specific versions of different products. I've used a number of word processors and in the end they all boil down to a common set of features. But those features are more or less accessible in different products, hence the difference in opinion.
So the basic problem is that different people think different things are "simple". I personally think changing my browser proxy settings is very simple, and should be an easily accessible browser control. Apparently the various browser development teams disagree with me, because they always hide that control in a sub-sub-menu. Instead they feature buttons for useless features like "Search" (who needs this with Googlebar?). So I end up downloading an extension for my browser to get this feature.
All Sowell did was play the roll of Captain Obvious: GUI design is hard, and most people screw it up. And it will stay screwed up until software learns to read minds, despite your simple assertations.
I just KNEW I had something forgotten!
./source && cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 -v -multi image.iso && rm image.iso
mkisofs -C `cdrecord -dev=0,0,0 -msinfo` -M -dev=0,0,0 -J -r -o image.iso
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Which software are you talking about?
Most of what I use (on OS X) is well designed!
The problem with Linux software is probably less with the individual developer and more with the lack of one GUI framework to rule them all and one set of detailed human interface guidelines which all developers should follow.
When I meet bad interfaces on OS X, they are mostly bad because they do not act like the rest of the interfaces I use, i.e. it is that interfaces act the same which gives them "high usability" -- I recall the same from when I used AmigaOS (which also had detailed guidelines for UI design which 90% of the programs would follow).
Jakob Nielsen has a good point about web design, namely that users spent most of their time on other peoples site, so conform to the standard rather than do it your own way, even if you think it's better.
On Linux there really is very little of a standard to follow, and that makes it all look so inconsistent -- also, there are no overall rules which are enforced by the framework, i.e. on OS X when I write a Cocoa application, even the simplest document based application will get dozen of features for free, like naming unnamed documents for 'untitled', show a proxy icon in the titlebar, maintan a "Open Recently" menu, provide a list of open windows in the Windows menu, provide a standard about window, provide filetype bindings with the declared document types, use standard load and save panels for document I/O etc. etc.
All this means that even though I only have one hour to come up with a prototype for an application, the usability will be very high -- this is untrue of Linux, here I must add all these things manually, and I'd probably be too lazy to do so in 9 out of 10 projects, if I were just to scratch my own personal itch (not to forget that there really are no common standard for e.g. managing recent documents, there are no standard for drag'n'drop between applications etc. etc.).
This is so true. I speak from personal experience.
A few years ago, I was developing a research application to explore ancient documents. It had to be really flexible, as the data kept changing, so I made this whizzy configurable system, which was worth it.
But the interface... the target users were medieval historians. To say they weren't technically literate would be an understatement. After much resistance on my part to sacrificing my super configurable interface, I dumbed the whole thing down, and immediately lost about 90% of the true power of the system, although the engine was still there underneath, waiting to be used.
But the users loved it. Real work was done. Reviews praised it's ease of use. Now we're working on version 2, and I can now see ways of exposing a lot of this power to the rarer advanced users without *in any way* burdening the non technical user.
Make it configurable and powerful, but always choose sensible defaults (for the novice user). It's a myth that people want choice as a desirable thing in itself (geeks aside). They put up with choice when circumstance forces them to make a decision.
The only time people really want choice is when they aren't being satisfied by what's in front of them...
...'we' have invented "personalized menus" ! :)
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
ok, how about this command that is also very commonly used (though spoken) by the technophobes and illiterate. "help" I know on all text interfaces I have used help was generally useless, but perhapse if it was made to list commands like this: Mozilla - browse the internet, Chess - play a game of chess, etc. or perhapse help taskToDo that would then in my plan do a keyword search in man pages to list possible options and give descriptions of each (like a google for commands)
I know a lot of developers who also have to get down and dirty with UI design. I myself have had to do it as well. A lot of times, we actually have really good usability ideas, but it's hard to do right.
GUI programming is obnoxious in all but the best of frameworks. Making the intuitive interface, like something that's drag'n'drop, does what you expect no matter what you actually did, and interacts neatly with the OS is such a monumental coding effort that many times, it's a harder problem than what the program is actually supposed to do!
You'll notice that in Mac OS X apps written in Cocoa, you tend to see lots more whizbang features than in an app written in MFC. This is because the toolkit makes it easier for the developers to express these clever ideas.
UI designers get props, they know lots of tricks to make over a decent UI as an outstanding one, but if the developers can't live up to the design in a reasonable amount of time and effort, you're going to continue to see crappily interfaced software.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense