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Software Usability As A Technical Problem
An anonymous reader writes "Let's face it. Poor user interface design is a big problem in software today, particularly in the Open Source world. A recent article on NewsForge addresses this problem from the perspective that software usability is a technical issue that Open Source developers can and should face and conquer, just as we have conquered other technical problems that have stood in our way." (Slashdot and NewsForge are both part of OSDN.)
Isn't this synonymous for saying that the market for computer software has grown so much that all sorts of people are using it?
I are winner
Software should be designed, not just coded. And interface must be part of the design.
Personally, i like to ask the users what they want to see. Let *them* draw the screens, then merely implement it. A three-tiered approach is best, where called for. The backend should be design and implemented according toi a decent set of guidelines and rules, and the frontend should be completely designed by the user. The middle teir is where the magic should happen, even using a nasty hack here and there.
Ultimately the disparity between those who code software, and those who use software is a big problem. Perhaps a recognition of the separate group will go a long way.
Have you read my journal today?
It's a collection of 20 or so stories about where human factors problems caused injuries and, in many cases, death. Poor documentation, unclear designs, and poor handling of expected user situations (for instance, the reactor technician being pinned to the ceiling by a control rod because there wasn't a safety stop to prevent supercriticallity) is serious business.
There's more to usabillity and human factors then just 'that guy is too stupid to use linux', it can literally be the difference between life and death.
Open Source stuff could leverage that familiarity by create exactly the same sort of interface with all the advantages and disadvantages it provides because that would at least be familiar to the Joe Average user.
So what you're saying is that because the Windows UI sucks, it is O.K. for anything else to suck as much, too?
/dale
Why is it that the first reaction of some people here is to make an excuse?
A UI that is intuitive to navigate is getting more and more important. The reason why Windows is and has been the way it has been since its conception is tha commercial companies don't like to rock the boat. I'm sure MS has come up with tons of ways to improve the Windows UI, but implementing these changes may in their eyes, upset too many customers who are used to it. I still remember certain people getting upitty when the taskbar and Start button were added in Windows 95.
Free software, OTOH, has quite a bit more maneuvering room in this area.
For GUI applications, the UI layout is can no-longer be considered by programmers as the sole kindom of the {Photoshop|GIMP} guy sitting over there and pass all worry of it on to him or her. Just as programmers want good APIs in their code, the Human -> Computer "API" is just as critical to good and satisfactory program and user function.
See KJofol/Winamp3, and Trillian among others. You've got dozens of very beautiful skins for your apps that are a bitch to actually use. Visual beauty while nice does not a usable app make.
What is needed is a consistent, predictable interface across all of a desktop's apps. In practice, this is a lot harder than just making it look pretty.
The author alludes to the real problem with usability and open source when he comment about egotistical mailings on the newsgroups.
Too many open source developpers think of themselves as GUI experts. Until developpers are prepared to give up their egos and admit that while they may be shit-hot kernel coders, they know jack-shit about GUI development, open source will be stuck with poor usability. Unfortunately everyone seems to have their opinion on GUI development, and somehow believe that their opinion is right, despite having no training whatsoever in usuability engineering (does this remind you of how everyone is a 'pop psychologist', and a 'pop computer language expert'? -- it should).
Until developpers understand that GUI development is hard, and that it's also a science with reputable metrics, and until GUI developpers are put on the same footing as other developpers in projects, open source will continue to have poor usability.
Apologies for being so harsh on the open source world, but that's the reality of it, and we need to face that fact.
I like this quote from the article:
Here's an example: Konqueror, KDE's file and web browser, has a menu entry called "smbUmount." I don't need a laboratory with video gear to figure out that this is nearly impossible for non-hacker users to understand.
Exactly. Submit it as a bug. This is the first thing. Many of the people who work on OSS projects realize that there is a usability problem. However, nobody wants to do anything about it. It seems that many developers do not consider usability issues to be a defect in the software. As a person who is *very* interested in usability of software (part of my degree), I have to disagree -- issues with usability is a MAJOR defect. It's the reason that many people will not turn to Linux/OSS options. They are scared by the command line. They don't like it when menus in one program do not match up with menus in others. I can't say I blame 'em! (Well, I like the command line, but that's a byproduct of me being a nerd.)
As a backup to my previous statement, I am constantly submitting usability bugs to projects when I find them. However, I am constantly ignored. WHY? There are so many things that could be improved upon and made easier so it's more appealing to the users. Why do you think Microsoft products do so well? People recognize them. They know where stuff is. There's no guesswork needed.
And, yes, some OSS projects do this very well. Mozilla products (Firefox, etc.) are very well designed. There are minor usability flaws, but nothing that isn't easy to figure out.
Personally, I would love to sit down with a team and work through usability issues. I would love to have someone actually show some interest in fixing these problems. However, it seems that, too many times, these issues are discarded for ones that are more technical. And, of course, the usability issues will come up again later. It's a pretty vicious cycle that needs to be stopped. If only someone were willing to do it.
(BTW - I realize I could code these changes myself, but I do not have the necessary skills to do this. Otherwise, I would.)
.... tit could use some useability...
If there is one thing in this world that doesn't need useability improvements, that would be it...
As the quote goes:
"The only intuitive interface is the nipple, after that, it's all learned."
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Your average linux-using developer thinks that everyone else is as smart as he is, and that command line interfaces are a good thing. The GUI is seen as a fisher-price interface for retards.
We need to get rid of this way of thinking. Software should be like a vending machine. You press a button, and it does exactly what its supposed to.
Linix and Windoze have set back the cause of usable software about 20 years!
Bollocks.
Skinning has done more to ruin usability of applications than anything else the last 10 years. Skinning has absolutely nothing to do with usability, it's purely visual customization.
Throwing out the menu/window paradigm is a very bad idea, as you get rid of the only thing the user will be able to re-use from other applications in yours.
I haven't read the article yet (on my way there now), but the parent poster has no idea what constitutes good UI, and shouldn't be modded up. I assume the article has more sane advice.
And yes, IAAID (I am an interaction designer).
This is the secret to open source stuff: drawing on the community skill. This method is just in a non 'programming-skill' oriented fashion
If you get a Chilean developer to have his grandpa, who has no stereo vision, have half a look at it, then there'll be lots more important feedback, at least after Babelfish has done its work.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Why? Because then to operate the machine, each of the users hands had to hold down a separate button making it nearly impossible for the user to inadvertently reach into the machine while it was running.
At first I thought it was a silly thing to do that would insult the operator's intelligence (who would be stupid enough to reach into a compactor while it was running?) But one of the operators confided that it was a great idea because after being burned out from working a couple of double shift days in a row, he didn't want to loose his hand from a simple operational oversight.
The operational interface was well recieved because we gave the users ownership in the design process. I think that the same should apply in designing software UIs.
No no no!
Artists give us interfaces like ATI's TV recording software. All flash and no function. The more artistic freedom an app gives to skin designers, the more time I have to spend squinting at the cryptic emblems and trying to click on the 3-pixel-wide "play" button. Look at an old version of Windows media player (before v6), and marvel at how much easier it is to use than WMP 9 or Winamp 5. It uses the same widgets as the rest of the desktop, so you don't have to spend any time at all trying to decide where to click to activate each button. Artists understand what looks good, but very few of them have a grasp of what's easy to use.
It's better to write everything for a standard set of GUI widgets, and provide a mechanism for theming those standard widgets to look cool. That way, all your apps look consistent, and you can change the look-and-feel without having to re-learn all the interfaces.
0 1 - just my two bits
No sir, I am not making an excuse. I am just pointing out, UI design is difficult for everyone, not just for OSS.
Finding an interface that will make all your users happy, is next to impossible. I would guess that SOMEONE likes the way each app looks, but not everyone. Linux actually is a step ahead of Microsoft in this regard, due to the fact that a lot of window managers (Kahakai is nice, and we are hard at work on Aegis) are now scriptable, not to mention the basic customizations that have been around forever. While average joe doesn't know how to script up a sweet desktop, distrobution makers can whip out several different setups, and let the user switch between them, rather than the windows way of forcing their interface down your throat.
A lot of times when I first lead people to Linux, I figure I might as well give them Gnome or KDE figuring it will be more intuitive for them. From what I've found though, people are actually much more excited about interfaces like *boxes, once I lead them in the direction of how they can edit the settings and etc. While the big windows-like interfaces may make the transition easier for some, I think a lot of people are very happy with the ability to set up their own, "new and different," UIs.
No matter how shity Windows is, one thing you can't argue is it's ease of use.
Anyone from a five-year-old to a WWI veteran can sit behing a Windows PC and be browsing the Internet and checking mails in no-time. (mind you, i'm not arguing the risks of this)That is what OSS should try to learn: simplicity. Average users like it simple and straight-forward, and IMHO that's *one* of the reasons for windows success.
--Just as important, the average user is by now used to the Windows interface, and it wouldn't be that bad of an idea to give them the power and strength of OSS with a windows-like interface which they are more comfortable with.
I am a developer myself, so this post is in no way meant to offend developers. However it's true that developers (generally) do not see things the same way that most users do.
When i ponder what makes Microsoft so successful (aside from the questionably legal business practices) is that their company is not ruled by the developers but by the PHB's of this world. Microsoft invest considerable effort into researching what people are actually doing with their computers. Say what you want about them, they are actually pretty good about listening to their customers when it comes to features. By contrast, Linux developers often concentrate on scratching thier own itches which ultimately only appeal to like minded individuals. I could list several things right now that are not easily possible in Linux right now.
I write software for a small company, and we are very blessed to have a very technically less-literate person on our staff. He is our functional expert and he gives us a lot of great feedback on our UI's. Open source projects should never underestimate the value of such a person.
Blender And Linux Fan
Is it just me or are video games way ahead of other apps on user interface? These days most people can pick up a game and given the general type (fps, driving, rts, rpg) have a pretty damn good guess at the interface. It's not that the game authors have agreed on a standard interface for each genre, it's that they've figured out the things that frustrate new gamers the least so they enjoy the game more with less manual reading. When was the last time you had to read a game's manual to actually jump in and play it? I mean just the basic playing around, not the detailed stuff.
Why haven't desktops and apps incorporated advances from here? Let's take an old RTS, say Command and Conquer. The designers figured out how to make a USEABLE virual desktop that DOESN'T SUCK! You can navigate around this huge screenspace and the radar keeps track of where you are. Also, how do they handle things similar to launching apps? Well there's a sidebar full of big easy to distinguish one click icons, and a set of tabs at the top that switches what set of icons is displayed by type (units, buildings, etc). Seems pretty easy to figure out to me. Want to quickly get back to the thing you were last working on? You can designate hotkeys with ctrl+number an then pressing the number jumps back to it. Some RTS's have seperate select and change focus but all seem to use a similar hotkey system.
One of the things that keeps me happier with windows than linux is the at least moderate effort at standardized interfaces. Most apps of simlar types have similar interfaces and I don't have to relearn all the terms that someone decided to use THEIR names for. Every time I see a custom media player or something with this horrible neo-future interface on windows I cringe, because it's such a bad idea. I don't want to spend time relearning how to use a media player just so it can look cool, I want to watch media with it. On linux it seems every app suffers from this "I want to look unique" urge, or a complete lack of asthetic design whatsoever. So your choices are pretty and confusing or ugly and confusing.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Apple's Human Interface Guidelines is a good place to start, and is online for free.
It represents many years' worth of HID research. It's not the end-all, be all of HID, but it's one helluvalot better than nothing.
-- Cerebus
Usable doesn't mean pretty. Pretty doesn't mean usable. Artists can add aesthetic polish, but if they don't know anything about usability, they'll just make the problem worse. Look at Kai's Power Tools or the various other applications that try to look happy or fun but end up being totally non-standard and difficult to use.
Skins are not a solution to usability. Skins are a punt. To me, skins represent everything that's wrong: the software developers doesn't feel like spending the effort to time on design and doing usability testing, so they throw on a skin system and let the user deal with it.
How many users actually go create their own customized skins? And most skins out there usually cater more to aesthetics than utility.
Plus, there's the perpetual problem where every application has its own skin, and nothing is consistent with anything else. If necessary, global themes should be used for personalization; per-application skins are a mess.
Good lord, no. Please, please don't reinvent GUI widgets. Lack of consistency is one of the problems, especially in the OSS world where there are a zillion and one widget toolkits. Do you want a dozen different textboxes where some of them allow copy/paste and some of them inexplicably don't? Or maybe some of them can't handle Unicode, or maybe some of them don't have keyboard shortcuts to select text, or who knows what else.
Standardize. Stop bickering, stop wasting time reinventing things, and then everyone can focus on real usability issues.
In an open source world everyone can customize the software to suite their needs so you sacrifice Consistency and Usability for Flexibility. Advanced users are happy but novices loose out.
If you want to improve usability in Linux or other open source projects you need to put someone in charge of the UI. Linus is the de-facto gatekeeper of the kernel but the UI seems to be fair game for just about anyone.
(A Former MS UI Guy)
Remember Homer's car?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Most companies I work for as a contractor consider the UI design as an afterthought, an unwanted burden, or a mere exercise for the programmer who was assigned the interface screen. The development managers have been hardnosed pragmatic guys who see no sense in spending their budget on any 'needless' items like psychology and design of a proper UI. These clowns also see no sense in developing state diagrams for the control flow on interfaces. The result is often interfaces that have unlearnably convoluted navigation. This is just unforgivably bad design practice. Sometimes I have to state chart the UI to prove that the interface is broken and bad. I often see interfaces that dynamically change their functionality - same screen, but buttons and selectors come and go depending on the state, new navigational connectivities invisibly appear and disappear - all of which confuses the hell out of users.
See, a user first encountering an interface has to build a mental model of meanings of objects, control flow/states, and navigation. Your goal as a designer or programmer is make the UI design easily learnable and usable. That's both a science and an art.
I've also seen far too many UIs employing flashy objects that interfere with the readability. I don't care if a button looks like a 3D gem, if I can't read the friggin text label quickly and easily under the gloss, it's a failure. Yet I've seen $6 million corporate software with unreadable browser-based interfaces apparently designed by a 16 year old Web designer with attention-deficit disorder.
Visual readability, learnability, ease of understanding navigation, three major rules.
No, I assume what he means is that if MS, with all its resources, has a hard time in the only area where they seem to make a serious effort, then it must be a difficult task.
Another issue I think needs to be discussed is the way people's biases influence UI design. Some people, especially younger users, seem to think GUI==good automatically, and thus, the more eye candy a UI has, the better it must be. Conversely, they think that a less graphical interface is automatically primitive, and that anyone who criticizes excessively flashy interfaces must be an old fart pining for the days of punch cards. Such people will see lots of eye candy and get a warm fuzzy feeling, and will think that UI is "easier to use." Even though all the stuff just gets in the way, and he has to go down through 4 or 5 levels of menus and/or screens to do the simplest thing.
Unfortunately, such people seem to dominate UI surveys, and UI designers get the message. The result, for me, is endless frustration as the UI keeps trying to "do things for me" and I keep having to hunt some setting down in the dungeons of the preferences editor somewhere to turn off yet another annoying feature.
Speaking of which, does anyone know how to tell XP to stop rearranging menus and/or hiding half of the options? That's such a PITA -- who the hell thought of such a moronic thing?
"Personally, i like to ask the users what they want to see."
EXACTLY! Sometimes the users don't see the Big Picture and have old habits they want to keep around, but more often in my experience it's some boneheaded developer's choice to squander resources to "improve" an interface without ever actually investigating whether the users will get any improvement at all.
On my latest project (in-house application) I've actually had to go head-to-head with our senior developer (not a software engineer) over how the interface should look and work, me going to bat for the users.
The users of the new application want it to look and function in a manner that suits the way in which they need to operate day in/day out. Simple, straightforward. I prototyped it for them and they loved it.
Our senior developer then told me no, we're going to do it using MegaSuperKewl WizBang crap, something the users were fundamentally opposed to (it would actually tangibly interfere with the way they use the data in production).
I'm hardly junior myself - 11 years fulltime S.E. - and figured screw it, I'm not going to watch this abomination progress unchallenged. I arranged a meeting between the users, the senior developer and myself. The conversation was hilarious. I asked him to explain to the users how his design would improve their productivity. Let your imagination run wild and you'll come close. The users won in the end, but it was hard fought
But then the same week I had to argue, yes ARGUE, to store constants to be shared across applications in a common header file. The same fellow argued it would be much easier to hardcode it in each application separately. A heated 20-minute meeting later, I get to store the constants in a common header file.
I *WISH* I was making this stuff up. My life is a Dilbert strip.
It doesn't. I'm an architect and I regularly observe UIs that have no sense to them whatsoever. Open Source acts usually as a meritocracy and I've never found a coder who was willing to redesign his entire application because the UI sucked. It's not a chicken and egg problem (as other posts around seem to indicate) since the UI always comes last.
I once considered starting a project that designed application interfaces for tasks that were needed in hopes that some coder would come along behind and actually write them. (I had a great idea for a clock that doubled as a date/location/world time zone applet.) But we have no influence. UI is considered like the body molding tacked on to American cars half way through a model's life to re-energize sales. It's never considered as an integral part of the design the way someone Porsche does.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I have to use XP at work, and what I found made it much more usable is TweakUI from the Windows XP Power Toys. It exposes a lot of interface options that are hard to adjust otherwise.
r toys/xppowertoys.mspx/
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powe
[OT:] I also really, really like the desktop manager. Virtual desktops are one of my favorite features of Linux and it's really nice to have at work.
"Seek first to understand." - Socrates
What apps and OSes need is scalable UIs - UIs that scale as the knowledge level of the user grows. A total novice, non-technical, casual users should be just as comfortable and productive as a hard-core, 80-hour-per-week developer. This has not happened yet because there are two distinct camps in UI development. Profits in the mass market drove closed source, mass-market software to create useability on the low-end. The natural interests and abilities of its contributors drove open-source to create useability at the high end.
The biggest challenge to scalability is creating inuitive metaphors or abstractions between the human interface (i/o modalities) and underlying digital constructs that does not get in the way of the power-user. Apple's early OS effort were great for the novice, but derided by more experienced users - the UI was not scalable in the upward direction. In contrast, Unix/DOS/CPM was fine for power-users, but it arcane command interface made it not scalable in the downward direction.
I suspect that the answer will be concepts like Mac OS X that combine GUI and CLI elements. But even OS X is not as scalable as one might like because it is really an intuitive Apple GUI grafted on to a separate powerful *nix CLI core. Although novice Mac users can "graduate" to the command line, the transition is not smooth -- using Finder does not teach one how to use ls, cd, mv, cp, rm, etc. Rather than being scalable in a continuous sense, Mac OS X offers interfaces at two different scales - the intuitive GUI and a separate power-user CLI.
Perhaps future OS/app UIs will be truely scalable -- early GUI use will seamlessly teach the user and help them slowly become more powerful users. Developign scalable UIs will require contributions from both novice-oriented usability experts and power-oriented developers. It will require forethought and coordination so that the disparate elements of the system are "consistent" without being inflexible.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Ten things you can do to make your program at least tolerable for end users:
Most likely a flawed "usability study" which said people want less complexity. But taking something complex and leaving it complex while hiding the options to be "discovered" at some random future time is not really reducing the complexity: it's increasing it.
To speak practically, here's what I do every time I install XP (I'll be thorough since I've already done it, so I'll just list the options the way I like them which shows the most information):
Right-click on taskbar, Properties.
Right-click on background, Properties.
Hit WindowsKey+E (to start Windows Explorer).
That's all I can remember, but then there are also settings within applications that you'll want to remove, such as in Outlook XP, select menu item Tools, Customize, Options tab: check "Always show full menus". Other applications will have similar settings.
I hope this helps. I would bet that these are all Registry entries somewhere; perhaps if I have some downtime (ha!) I'll make a .REG file out of these so the next time I set up a machine or VM I can just double-click the .REG file and be done with it. Enjoy!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Perhaps there is an unspoken rule in the community that "easy user interfaces" = "simplistic programming" and perhaps that causes one to lose points in the open source "meritocracy"?
I really like your idea of designing interfaces for tasks and then developing the code to support the interface next. It implies that the user's need is defined first by the design of the interface. This locks the programmer into coding in a way that meets the user's need exactly as specified by the UI. It's a shame that didn't take off . . . But perhaps that doesn't leave enough creative freedom for the programmers to feel the project is "fun" enough to work on.
Open source is full of people that are completely out of touch with reality. The people who are involved in OSS have outright contempt for those who 'merely' use the software
This is insightful? It's pure crap. There are certainly people who wrote OSS who do have contempt for the "mere" users, just as there are plenty of people who write commercial software who have contempt for the users. In general, though, developers of end-user applications, whether OSS or commercial, feel no such thing. They want their apps to be usable, because it's really cool to have lots of people using your stuff. That doesn't mean they know how to make software usable, of course. Wanting to and knowing how are different things.
Very bad example, though. The above is fantastically usable... find me a GUI app that can accomplish the same purpose as quickly and easily. The above is an excellent demonstration of the difference between ease of learning and ease of use. The UNIX command shell is extremely powerful and easy to use, but it is not necessarily easy to learn.
An easy to use interface is one which makes it possible to accomplish the desired tasks quickly and easily, without unnecessary steps or wasted motion.
An easy to learn interface is one which allows the user to accomplish the desired tasks without training (or significant effort to figure out how). Note that this concept is fundamentally different from ease of use in that while ease of use is an absolute (for a given task set), ease of learning depends heavily upon the user's other experiences and is achieved mostly through similarity.
These two axes of ease are nearly orthogonal, although they often seem to be somewhat opposed to one another. There are plenty of examples of apps (particularly in the Windows world) that are easy to learn but hard to use, and lots (particularly in the UNIX world) that are hard to learn but easy to use, but there are also a precious few that are both easy to learn and easy to use (many of them in the Mac world, actually). And there are an unfortunate number that are both hard to learn _and_ hard to use (Easily found on any platform). I'm sure if you think about it for a moment, you can come up with examples in all four categories.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's not that Macs are more effective; Windows users can probably be very effective after enough repetition. The difference is that Apple tries to take out the need for additional movement and memorization.
For instance, Microsoft puts icons on the left, directly behind where most Windows open, so you have to minimize or hide those windows to access your icons. Apple puts icons on the right and in the dock, so when you have a window open, you can still double-click on your icons.
Microsoft maximizes windows to full-screen. Apple maximizes windows just large enough so that you can see everything in the window, so that you can still get to things behind the window.
Microsoft doesn't have a standard for keyboard shortcuts(alt-f4/tab to quit/switch apps, ctrl-x/c/v/z for cut/copy/paste).
Apple does have a standard for keyboard shortcuts(apple-q/x/c/v/z/,/h/tab for quit/cut/copy/paste/undo/preferences/hide/switch apps).
Microsoft has application preferences in some weird menu generally named "Options" somewhere off to the right, and Preferences isn't generally named anything. Apple has application preferences in the exact same place on the screen regardless of application:
You're probably very effective on Windows, but(and I know I'll get flamed for this), Using a Mac requires less thinking. With the Mac OS, Apple has always tried to make an operating system that gets out of your way and lets you do your work, and they've done a pretty good job.
Albuquerque PC
Graphic designers generally suck at user interface design.
User interface design is wildly different from graphic design. As a matter of fact, there are probably more industrial designers that would do a better job of doing software user interface design than graphic designers.
I'd say that a lot of awful websites out there were due to people with traditional publishing and graphic design experience trying to apply old knowledge to the Web and failing.
May we never see th
It exposes a lot of interface options that are hard to adjust otherwise.
This reminds of a critique I read in a recent Slashdot story a day or so ago. The argument went that editing "arcane config files" (not my quotes) is somehow less superior than neato dialog boxes with checkboxes. Your comment illustrates the often overlooked fact that even an average Windows user has probably discovered that most Windows settings (or name-your-favourite-program's settings) are deliberately obscured from view or otherwise inaccessible, and short of spending inordinate amounts of time burying one's nose in the registry and rebooting, or depending on a utility/shareware program to offer bits and pieces of what's missing, there's not much one can do.
Yes, plain ascii is accessible as the nose on your face, and is as easy to edit as a letter to grandma, but more to the point, when considering "usability" I think it's entirely fair to factor in how much effort is expended by a user trying to figure WTF the program is doing (or worrying about what was done or wasn't done to that user's system) given that the source isn't available, the developer is definitely not available, and the "nice looking" documentation was written by committee so as to not confuse the user with too much information. Equally fair, are questions along the line of "Isn't there something I can type on a command-line that will allow me to skip this Start Menu and multiple property sheet click-throughs so I can get on with it?"
Most of would have trouble using up all our fingers trying to count those applications we consider to be "slick" or "professional". That said, trading borked or confused menus and odd aesthetic choices on a program we downloaded for something more slick but strips the user of control is a false economy. It's also a royal pain in the ass. Considering that Microsoft is often viewed as the standard bearer, I wonder what the usability experts hired by them to come up with the endless procession of such winners as "personalised menus" would say if confronted in person with the unwashed masses shouting cries of "How do I turn this sh*t off?!!"
Adobe, I've always believed, can do no wrong when designing their apps. Yet at the same time, I find myself turning to ImageMagick where possible to accomplish what I need and saying "No, but thanks!" to their emininently usable interface. Goes to show you can't please everybody all the time. Myself included, if that's not obvious enough.
I started working at a company a few years back. When I got there, the developer had written an application to replace the users 'green screen' interface.
;)
The user where data entry where they never looked at the screen, much less the keyboard. we're talking about 100's of pages a day of entry.
This software engineer had created an application that was almost completly mouse driven. The tabbing wasn't in any order, you had to use the ouse to drop down to any option, to select were the document is sent to, etc...
They went from 100's of docs a day to dozens.
The software engineer always blamed the users, and said what he did was 'standard'.
I went in, fixed the tab order, and assigned keystrokes to all the options. The same keystrokes that had been used on the previous app.
It took me a week, when the engineer found out, he blew a gasket. Screamed at me, mostly at my back, since I don't tolorate that behaviour, then up to the Sr. Managment team.
When I got thir, he had them all convinced that I had broke the app, made it unusable, and it would takes "years" to fix it.
So there I am, looking at a Sr.VP, a Jr VP, and an HR person. I'm not stupid, I know what they had in mind.
The converstaion went like this:
VP: "Did you make all these changes to the application?"
Me: "yes"
VP: "did you consult the engineer?"
Me: "yes, he said that the mothod they were using was a 'standard'"
VP: "I think you may have stepped out of bounds"
Me: "excuse me, I need to use your phone."
[Calls the data entry manager]
"hi brenda, I'm here with some VP's, can I put you on speaker phone?"-"Great"
ME: "Brenda, what was the user average per day for document input before the new system"
Brenda: "About 700"
ME:"And what was it last month?"
Brenda: "about 80"
Me: "I see, and what was it last week after the new changes went in?"
Brenda: "I haven't finished the report, but I'd guess about 700"
Me: "Thanks Branda, that what I needed."
The VP excused me. later i the week I got a promotion to fill the former engineers position.
The point of this story? User interface is for the user. Give them what they need, to do what they want.
You should hire me, we could fight the good fight together.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on