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User-centric GUI Design Explained to All
TuringTest writes "The webzine User Instinct carries an article on Usable GUI Design showing that good user interfaces are not beyond the means of free and open software development: 'This article presents five key points of user interface design [...] that any software developer should be able to use.' In related news, The Economist writes against software complexity in an interview to MIT's John Maeda, PhD in interface design. See also OpenUsability, a project for testing user interfaces in a bazaar-like model. The specifics of UI design in Open Source projects has been previously debated on Slashdot."
... about User Interface research. My DVD, VCR, TV, CD, CD-writer, portable mindisc player are all laid out completely differently, and -- despite similarities -- behaved subtley differently from one another (If I hit Pause-record, what do I press to recommence recording? Is it Pause or REC?)
My car has a completely different set of layout for dash controls from my girlfriends. The gears are in different places on the stick, and the feel of the clutch is completely different.
And yet, after a short period of familarisation, I find I can cope pretty well with all of these things, as can everyone else I know.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I've said time to time again that a lot of free/open source software suffers from not having an ease to use interface. One can argue that functionality is more important than the presentation/interface layer, but seriously, users are more attracted to pretty pictures.
But it's not just the subject of pretty pictures. Professional software companies may actually spend several subsequent dollar signs into providing a consistent, easy-to-navigate user interface. The trick isn't to show all functionality. The trick is to present the functionality the user needs, in a logical grouping as the users expect it.
Hi, I'm the guy who wrote the article.
Yes, it's hosted on my 256k upstream ADSL line, which is why I said "Use the Coral cache" in all the story postings!
Slashdot would also choose the day when I switch to my back up server (K6-2 233), in order to fix my main server, to post this on the front page. I was wondering why it was making that funny noise when I loaded the Slashdot front page...
Please use the Coral Cache!
Some people love GUIs for the same reason (ease & hand-holding) that others hate them. Some people love CLIs for the same reason (succinct power) that others hate them . Although people like to think there are universal design principles, and there are some, most real world designs require compromises based on the needs and proclivities of a diverse user population.
The challenge for OSS is that its developers tend create the kind of software that they themselves want. It does not have many developers creating software for a non-developing/non-geek user populations. Thus, OSS will invariably create software in its own image. This is not a "bad thing" unless the only true goal is universal adoption of OSS at the expense of OSS geek-usability.
The point: you can't please all of the people all of the time. And given the model underlying OSS, it is unlikely to focus on pleasing non-programmers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Why do iPod owners use every Slashdot story then can to let us know they own iPods?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.