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Are More Choices Really Better?
A. Bosch writes to mention that Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek software has a commentary that examines the need for choices in software. From the article: "This highlights a style of software design shared by Microsoft and the open source movement, in both cases driven by a desire for consensus and for 'Making Everybody Happy,' but it's based on the misconceived notion that lots of choices make people happy, which we really need to rethink." With software steadily becoming more sophisticated, are more choices really necessarily better?
Next question?
Seriously though, yes, more choices are always better. However, the additional choices don't have to be easy to get to.
For example, practically everything in Windows is configurable. However, in most cases the configuration is not exposed via a GUI. It's set to some default and you need to tweak the registry.
The same is true of Unix, of course; you often need to go to the config file directly to accomplish something, even where a GUI is available. You can accomplish all kinds of wacky things editing Xresources files.
But in both of these cases the full complexity is not directly exposed, so the user doesn't have to deal with it. On one hand this makes the software more complex and typically leads to bloat. On the other hand, this lets one tool accomplish many tasks without bothering people who don't use the functionality with its presence.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Each different software is like a branch of the evolutionary tree. The more branches, the more options. The good software flourishes and encourages imitators, the bad software dies off.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Fewer choices are not necessarily better.
That said, let's take the average American. Their head would explode if you started explaining all they could do with Linux. They'd probably rather be trapped in the movie Deliverance than be faced with building and configuring Linux from scratch.
So don't ask me if more options are better because it depends on the case. I don't want my text editor to have all the bells and whistles known to man although I expect my process management suite that I use at my company to be able to interface with web services. Even though I prefer Emacs over MS Word, the next person my prefer them flipped.
To recap, ask your customer. Ask your end user. Ask your mother if she'd be able to user your software (provided it's meant for the general public). But the last people you should be asking are members of the Slashdot community.
My work here is dung.
YES. More choices is always better. Competition is always better than no competition. Unless of course you are talking about operating systems, which we all know Micr$oft is the only solution. For everything else, competition/choices is good.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
Joel is a smart guy. Scratch that. Joel is an incredibly smart guy. But must every single post he makes on his own web site be headlined on /.? It's not like his ego isn't big enough already. No need to stoke the flames of that fire.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
That said, the KDE and GNOME guys can return to ranting at each other...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...click...whirrr...whirrr..."I'm sure glad I don't have to solve all those hard problems like alphas and betas do..."
The problem - if any really exists - is not the number of choices, it is the manner in which the choices are presented to the user. ( For an example of good presentation, look at the average browser's bookmark function. You can have a well organized database of thousands of URLs, all of which are easy to find. Yet if they were one long list, it would be incomprehensible. )
The solution is not to obsess about the number of choices, but to think about the best way of presenting choices.
Seriously though, yes, more choices are always better
False. It has been shown in numerous studies that more choices often cause information overload, and result in poor choices being made. I will cite two examples:
1) Gov't Health Care - During the Clinton years, the idea of nationalized health care was bandied about. A majority of Americans agreed with the notion. How did the Republicans get it mired down and defeat. Besides Hillary leading the effort, the way it got shot down was brining three or four different models into the picture. Americans got overwhelmed, and opted for (f) None of the above.
2) 401(k) plans. Want to reduce your participation rates? Add more investment options. Sure, your sophisticated investors might like it, but Joe Sixpack gets eyes like saucers when he sees forty-five options that he must pick from. Study after study has shown more options = lower participation.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
That this isn't a poll with a lame Cowboy Neil reference attached.
If companies could work together developing cool apps then that would be cool, because then they could share ideas and integrate software. really is there a need to have thousands of different CMS tools out there that all do pretty much the same thing? And if they're using a standardised language like PHP, or Java then the platform support is wider. I think the reality is that while some companies are looking after their own interests this probably not going to happen. But they are starting to realise the user matters. But how can we design software that fits every ones needs? We just possibly can't? Its about writing good, clear documentation that users understand and they just bite the bullet in terms of adhering to the software... cheers
http://www.webexperts.co.nz
In my first year ecconomics class (years ago) my professor when into a rant on the comparison between Capatalism and Communism; this usually went on for 10-15 minutes (depending on the class) and one section of the rant was about choice.
Essentially, his example in the difference in choice was the breakfast isle in most shopping markets; in a Communist country you'll have one choice "Communist O's" regardles of whether you like them or not whereas in a capatalist society there will be boxes of every shape colour and size. The end result is that the choice capatalism provides makes it very difficult to find what you like, but unlike communism you can actually find what you like.
Personally, I would rather have confusing choice rather than have to eat a bunch of bland tasting Communist O's that have a picture of Stalin on the box.
"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without." -- Merv
Choice is only good for those who CARE to have a choice. Unfortunately, most people don't really want choice -- it takes too much time, thought, and effort to weigh choices. Most people would rather have someone else decide for them. This much is true in the software industry. They'll usually use what is given to them (by OEMs, usually, or if they're lucky, well-informed friends).
After a while, choice blends into competition, and that's usually a good thing. Everyone else tries to emulate virtues/features of the most popular products. Those that don't tend to go by the wayside.
In the end, choice is good...even though only a few people really take the time to choose.
I have multiple user accounts on this machine that I'm on now. One for my wife, one for me, and the admin account. Having different user accounts makes it much easier for keeping our documents, mail, and other progams that we use separate. It makes both of our lives easier if all she has to do is logon into her account and her email and other stuff is right there without having to dig around my shit.
And, thanks to /. users for posting the importance of having user accounts for general use, this machine hasn't had any viruses in a couple of years.
Of course we need choices.
Just like a rachet set has every size from 1/8" to 2", every situation in life is different and requires a different size tool.
Why should we have choices in clothing sizes? It would be so much better if all shoes were size 12 and all clothes had 38" waists.
And we only have *two* software choices apparently? Microsoft and Open source? There are a LOT more choices than that.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'll take this away from software and say that it really depends on the situation. Must I really decide between 15 different types of bran cereal, 20 types of toilet paper, 5 bathroom cleansers or 25 versions Office? Okay, the last one was back to software again.
Just because we can produce multiple types of this-or-that doesn't mean we must.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
While Microsoft has some esoteric choices that they've added into their software for various reasons (White on Blue mode,) isn't the thing they keep getting in trouble for is the inability to choose? Isn't that why search engines, anti-virus companies and browser developers are constantly complaining and initiating anti-trust lawsuits? Wasn't it not too long ago that people were up in arms about the inability to turn off the Vista startup sound? Furthermore, JWZ's opinion aside, the ability to theme your desktop is a huge deal to many users. Even though Microsoft locked this down, partly due to it being encapsulated in a dll, the number of users that frequent theme sites is overwhelming.
The real issue here is, are you providing so much functionality as to be confusing or to cause a glut of misuse in your software? This is what wizards, defaults, and advanced settings are meant to tackle, and I think they work relatively well.
What kind of a question is this? Yes, having more choices is better! The real problem comes down to how proprietary each choice is!
In my many years of IT, I can't tell you how many times the place that I worked at was effectively forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade to the newest version of Microsoft Office because the other companies with which we dealt all upgraded to the newest version of Microsoft Office. Why? Because Microsoft's proprietary format prevented us from reading the newer Office files and there was no incentive for the other companies to save their files as previous versions. In fact, if they were going to do that anyway, why would they have bothered with a new version of Office?
I'm certain that there are lots of other examples of this type of scenario where, yes, other choices were available, but they all ended up with some kind of proprietary mechanism that locked the users into that application. Only recently has the ability for people to choose and still be compatible with other applications (e.g.: OpenOffice.org) really come into the forefront. But what that will do (hopefully) is then put an emphasiss on useability and functionality. After all, if there is no longer any locking of users into a proprietary format, the ability to use the application efficiently will be the major, competitive factor.
So, hell, yes! Bring on the choice! Just leave the proprietary sh!t at the door, thankyouverymuch.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Having many choice of a few good solutions is better than having many choices of a lot of bad solutions.
I'm still waiting for the computer with one button: "Do What I Mean"
Everything else is an abject design failure.
Choices play into one's sense of individuality, be it choice of car, clothing, phone, wallpaper, whatever. To the extent that the choice makes a fashion statement relevant to the individual, it is good to have these choices available.
Standardization makes things functional. We expect a phone to work more or less a certain way, regardless of any fashion statement it might make, because every phone we've used before it was worked more or less that same certain way. When fashion choices start impacting the functionality of an established standard, they are bad.
So when a user, new to linux, is presented with a thousand different distros, 4 different window managers skinned 30 different ways each, and is informed that there can be no correct choice because no matter what, they will end up with some piece of software that cannot be convinced to play nicely on some particular setup, it is bad. Very, very bad.
I suggest, for a moment, the community step back from "FOSS as a way of life", and consider how such a product from a corporation would be received because this is how people outside of your community view your product.
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
4 reasons:
- Services that might decide to wake up (this can mess up power management)
- "Sleeping" still draws more power than no power; grab a "Kill-o-Watt" or similar device to try it yourself.
- Heat. If you have any sort of ventilation problem (i.e., you're a home user), the excess heat can be noticable in the summer.
- It's a laptop. Enough said?
Software such as MS Word exemplifies the one-choice-for-all model of software. The result is bloatware when a single piece of software must support a diversity of users.
We all agree that Word is 90% bloatware, but we can't agree on which 10% of functionality to keep.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Are more choices necessarily bad?
I think the answer is dependent on the variety and differences between the choice. If there is little difference between the choices, they are likely superfluous and only confuse the matter. On the other hand, if there are clear differences (take KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, XfCE, Fluxbox, etc.), then choice is a Good Thing. I know if my only choice for a desktop GUI in Linux was KDE, I would still be on Windows right now.
And to those who say "how would you like to die" is bad, well, most people would appreciate being given the choice (though upset to have to have to make the decision), rather than have it made for them. I bet Socrates was glad he was allowed to pick hemlock rather than forced to drink a cup of boiling gold.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
There's your answer. What if that was all there was? Of course more choices are better.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No one is (I hope) arguing that lots of different software is good to have. The article was about the fact that the UI presented 15 different ways to turn your laptop off, and made the argument that this is a bad thing.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
If you choose the "wrong" health plan, you may not be covered for a critical operation. Too bad. You die.
If you choose the wrong investment you may be broke when you retire. Too bad. You eat dog food and live in a box.
If you make the wrong choice (and the more choices there are, the more likely that you'll choose one that is not the "best").
If you choose the wrong pair of jeans, you take them back and get a different pair.
If you choose the wrong pizza place, you complain and get your money back and go to a different pizza place.
But none of that is applicable to TFA which just discusses the many ways you can tell your computer that you no longer need its services for the time being. Should it "sleep" or "hibernate" or "shutdown" or "lock"? Who cares as long as it is ready to operate when I come back?
So... people should be given a choice when it comes to the question of how much choice they should get.
My brain hurts now.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Just enough time to post about it. :) Harvard Business Review carried an article within the last year which talked about the difficulty of designing simple products for consumers. One of the problems they found was that consumers always SAY that they want more features, but then IN PRACTICE are happier with products that are simple to use and do a few features well.
This may seem common sense, but there was actually a study done to confirm this bias, and, frankly, common sense isn't always so common. That goes a long way to explaining why Apple is doing well again - Jobs is basically dictating how you use the computer, and although that does not seem like a good thing, most users actually appreciate the elimination of the extra complexity they don't need.
Only when one of them is "Cowboy Neil".
I'm surprised that Joel does not reference one of his earlier rants about people wanting to feel in control. When the results of each decision is unknown then people start to feel like they are losing control and seek happier pastures elsewhere. When people fully understand the implications of a choice, they feel in control and are happier.
A choice between "sleep" and "hibernate" is great when the person making the choice knows what each option does. Most people do not care and do not want to care. This choice is useless to them and even lowers their sense of control over their computer and thus their satisfaction with it.
The trick is not taking away all the choices, like Joel is suggesting, but giving users control over what they want to control. Those that care can select their options, those that don't care get a fairly basic guess at what they want. Joel's guess for the power-off problem with laptops is fine but does not always work for me and probably lots of geeks. Hell, I want my laptop to suspend but keep the 3G network connection and there is no way to do that.
Microsoft isnt around to "make people happy". They are in it to make money, period.
Case in point- Vista Utimate edition is $400. Thats $100 more than the whole base system Dell was selling a while back, with XP installed. Granted, most Slashdot readers arent buying those base systems. But I bet a lot of them are running Linux systems they built for less than Vista Ultimate.
From the end user perspective, no. More choices are not better. The fewer the better. In fact, you will notice that an application that "just works" is highly sought after, instead of one that gives the user a never ending parade of choices.
From a middle tier perspective, more choices are good; Let me, the admin, make the choices for my end users. Give me all the options in the world. Just hide them from the end user so they aren't confused by them.
In a non-corporate environment, the vendors themselves have to play this role. But really, I don't see a problem with that.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I like choice. As an admin I appreciate that I can customize what my users have access to and that I can coerce these machines to be treated the way I want them treated. Keep the choice!
This scientic American Mind (an off shoot of scientific American Magazine) had an article by the Barry Schwartz, the man who's book if referenced in the article.
0 56941-1933-1196-906983414B7F0000&pageNumber=1
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The Tyranny of Choice
Logic suggests that having options allows people to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery
http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=00
---
Actually, more choice isn't always better. Sheena S. Iyengar is a professor at Columbia University who studies choice and in particular, challenges the notion that more choice is always better. A list of her publications is available on her site. For those who believe more choice is always better, I recommend you read a few. In fact, I recommend you start here (pdf).
Having a single choice is better. Far more stable and people will be happier.
In fact making linux,Unix,BSD and OSX illegal is a good step in the right direction to making the world a better place.
NExt step after that is making any Open office and productivity suites that are not Microsoft Office illegal.
Yours truly,
Steve Ballmer CEO Microsoft Corporation.
One of the most successful pieces of software (in my opinion) out there is the Eclipse project. It's all about "meta" choices--that is, the choice to have more choices. Out of the box Eclipse is great for your average Java developer. I recommend it to novice freshman developers. Now, if you want it to do more or integrate it with a server, that requires a plug-in. In fact, you can make it work for any language with the right plug-in. You don't get that functionality right off the bat but if you know what you're doing, you can plug it in. The problem is that a lot of development must be done to satisfy the unique choices your end user might have--that is, it requires a lot of support unless you let your community do it for you like Eclipse has.
My work here is dung.
Ironic, given that the screenshot he is showing has exactly two easily accessible options (lock and power down) and hides the rest away. Most users may or may not take a look at the other tucked away options in the drop-down/pop-up-box, and probably not worry about it again if they feel scared. So, for users who want less complexity there is already a very reduced choice of options. Is he then suggesting taking away options from power users? Really? B the same logic shouldn't notepad bet better than any IDE for doing programming, because it has less choice? And we probably want to do away with the command line for good, because there's clearly waaay to many options there. And the large majority of people already favoured the one-button mouse from apple very strongle, so much in fact, that apple never was asked for mice with more buttons, and most pc-users today buy and use one-button mouses.
Now, clearly Joel (and me here) have oversimplified the topic so much, that the dogma "less is more" has led to absurd suggestions. The key for successfully applying "less is more", is to properly look at the context. For a computer that is used as an internetkiosk, "log off" is the only button you need, there reducing choice is helpful. For a laptop user it would be extremely annoying not being able to choose sleep or hibernate, because it is going to waste energy and reduce the time I'll be able to work on it. Automatic powermanagement is not an option, because it can't read my mind. The computer will always be in hibernate when I just don't have the time to wait for it to power back on, or it will waste energy in sleep, when I know I'll be away.
I like to compare those options with my clothing options as a human. How would you like it, if somebody wanted to simplify things for you, and you only had two choices: naked (for sleeping), and fully dressed (for work). Want to take of the sweater because you have a shirt underneath? Tough luck, it was "optimized" away so you wouldn't have to worry about choices. Want to take off your shoes on the plane? Nope, either naked or fully dressed are your only options. Pretty silly - for most people, now of course there will be some people (those you are stressed out by clothing choices) that may feel a binary choice is progress, and good for them, yet that doesn't justify taking away the options from those who feel very comfortable partially taking some clothes off.
The funny thing is, that Joel even acknowledges tht there are good reasons why people who are comfortable with the choices, and why they are necessary for some, yet he somehow implicitly argues that those people are overridden by the ones that get scared by the options. He never explains why, though. Which IMHO makes his argument/position look very weak.
...on the situation. In keeping on topic with the article, in regards to software the same answer stands.
I LOVE having my choice of operating system. Do I want a fully customizable experience? Linux. Do I want something that looks slick and polished and runs smoothly? OSX. Do I want something that has out of the box functionality and a large amount of commercial software available for it? Windows.
The above applies to office software, database software, games, everything. By having more choices, I can get not only what I want, but what I NEED. The only time more choices become a BAD thing is when the uninformed/technophobe/technomoron makes a decision in what to go with..."I'm going to buy a mac because it looks slick!" Now he can't get the software or games that he wants. "I'm going to get Linux because it's free! Crap, why won't my wireless thingy work?" Now he doesn't know about Linux-specific drivers or even how to access his old data. "I'll get windows because it is readily available! Wait...whats this spyware thing..." Now he loses his bank account.
The problem isn't so much that there are too many choices, it's that people don't know what they are choosing, why they are choosing it, and what to do after they have chosen.
Living With a Nerd
This is an unanswerable question, like "is more production really better?" Like every other rational question, it becomes a matter of marginal costs and benefits.
Additional options are always better until the marginal cost (in researching/comprehending the option) becomes greater than the marginal benefit provided by the option. Thus, options with low marginal benefits and/or high research costs are not better, and other options are. For example:
This is an example where more options are probably bad, because each additional option has huge research costs associated with them - that is, it takes a lot of effort to find out exactly why a person would prefer one or the other.Here, more options is probably still not better because while the research costs are low, the marginal benefit to being able to choose a slightly different shade of gray are so tiny as to be outweighed by the effort of having to even answer the question.Here is an example or more options are better. It's clear what the differences are, making research costs low, and the benefits to choosing the correct keyboard layout are huge.If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
When you think about it, there are truly some times when there are too much choices. Barry Schwartz's talk on IT Conversation really nails it. http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail252.htm l
When you have many options, it will inevitably make your decision more complex. Less choice can be better because it simplifies the decision making process for someone who isn't necessarly qualified to make the call in the first place.
They say "the customer is always right" but I disagree. I think the customer is most likely clueless. In software, it's up to you to simplify the choices for them. Google is a prime example, they made searching simple and it worked.
More standrds compliant choices are better than fewer standards compiant choices. But if there are many competeing standard then we all lose. The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD nonsense is indicative of how standards are all but compulsory in modern technolgies.
Most decisions involve only a few choices.
Hundreds of options exist, but in the end, 2-3 realistic options exist and that is what is decided on.
The rest fit a niche. When you need to fill a niche, that is when those extra thousand options are handy, but until then they are irrelevant for major decisions.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
The question is, "Who here prefers a manual transmission car to an automatic?" I have been in probably a half dozen classes of programmers when he did this, and every time he gets about 50% of the audience to raise their hands. Privately he tells me that it's almost always 50%, give or take a couple of percentage points.
After he gets the count of hands and shows that it's about half of the audience, he points out that the public as a whole (at least in the U.S.) prefers automatics to standards by a margin of at least 9:1.
His point in doing this is to show that the kinds of interfaces that programmers like (lots of knobs for extra control) are not necessarily the kinds of interfaces that most people -- which is to say "the people who buy your software" -- want. The vast majority would prefer simplicity; in fact, they will pay extra for simplicity.
Building in a lot of options makes about one tenth of the audience happy, but annoys or confuses the heck out of the other ninety percent. It is not good software design; it makes for more difficult training and much more difficult technical support. If you feel you must do it, it's best to hide these knobs in an expert mode ... but by and large you're better off by not providing a lot of knobs in the first place. Spend your time carefully designing your software so that you make the right choices so that your users don't have to figure out how to fix what you did wrong.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Having choices and having a bad design are two completely different things. Use a layered approach to require intent in order to change minor or potentially dangerous options.
In the words of Edina from the great BBC show Absolutely Fabulous:
"I don't want more bloody choice... I just want nicer things!"
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
But it's not just a software question. Sure maybe I can flip a setting in my config file so all my text is ROT13'd, including the config file... but then do I help them when they call for support? Software is not just a product put out by engineers, it's also a product which must be supported by someone, sold by someone, packaged, run on a computer (obviously infinite choices wouldn't run very quickly).
Extra choices can add significant complexity, both to the code and sometimes to the usability... consistency across machines is often important for example, the last thing you want to do in such a program is to provide so many choices that the interface doesn't even look familiar any more.
Why was this modded flamebait? He is a smart guy, but he's an aggressive self-promoter, too. It's not like the world doesn't already have too many of those. These postings amount to advertisting for him. (I understand that others already get the same treatment on Slashd0t.)
This is not about choices but about poor OS and UI design.
:)
WTF you need a "Restart" button for? You usually do not restart your machine from your own will. In Windows software updates, instalations and other stuff forces restart on you. Get rid of the need of restarting and you don't have need for Restart button. One choice left.
Also the items are poorly organized. Loging out and switching to login screen are not POWER related, these are LOGIN related. The structure should be organised in other way (order does matter):
LOGIN group (with f.e. key icon)
- Login screen (i.e. switch to login screen - lock the session and allow others to login)
- Logout (closes the session)
POWER group (with f.e. plug icon)
- Sleep (put the machine to sleep)
- Hibernate (hibernate the machine)
- Shutdown (shutdown the machine)
You have to be retarded to not get it right in UI. Really.
Absolutely not. Introducing choice is the easy way out. It indicates the developer has no connection to the end user and his/her needs.
A software product cannot be everything to everyone. Users love software that feels as if it anticipates their needs. Choices clearly show to a user that the developer has no clue and does not care about them.
On top of that choice increases complexity, the number of bugs and the QA time required.
Yes, more choices are generally better, but not when all the choices are fairly similar. If you had a choice of three piles of dogshit to step in would it better if you could choose between seven piles of dogshit? Or since nobody really wants to choose to step in dogshit would it be better if there were only two piles to choose from? Maybe it would if some were smaller or drier or browner or whatever, but if they were all pretty much the same, having more choices would not be better.
If I choose not to decide, will I have still made a choice?
-- Mace only makes me hornier.
Oh, sorry...the article's about Microsoft. No, choices are bad. More choices makes the OS more confusing and bloated.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
So the conclusion of the article is that non-geeks want to use computers, and Windows' UI isn't very suitable for such people.
This is news? We already know, just from looking at the size of the anti-virus market, that non-geeks shouldn't be using MS Windows. If your Uncle is a casual computer user, a non-geek, non-rocket-scientist, then why the fuck is he using MS Windows?!
Anyone who is actually capable of safely using MS Windows, is not going to be intimidated or confused by Windows 9 different shutdown options, because they're a computer expert anyway. If they have legacy requirements that make them need Windows, then they have been using computers for many years and have accumulated some expertise. If they need Windows because they play games, then they obviously have plenty of free time in which to learn things and waste time with Windows' clumsiness.
If your uncle doesn't fit into any of these groups, then your uncle is probably the kind of person who should be using a different OS. If you are your uncle's computer advisor, then instead of spending lots of time training him on how to use Windows, spend your time more efficiently by nipping the problem in the bud: advise him on what OS to get. If you screwed up your job as the family computer advisor, then quit bitching about the consequences of your mistake.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Once again a universal answer is sought for, this time on the idea of choice. Sort of ironic. Or not.
One place where choice has become Real Stoopid is with watch-type batteries. Why are there, like, 9000 types of watch battery? Some of them you need to take out a pair of calipers to measure a difference. Can't they standardize like their bigger cousins (AAA, AA, C, D)?
And car headlight bulbs. I bought a 2005 Mustang last year, and went out to get a couple bulbs to have on hand. The specific bulb for the car was not in the auto parts stores yet. When it did come out, it was visually indistinguishable from many of the older bulb models, but different enough that the older one would not fit in the socket. WTF is that? Is that extra 2 mm of plastic performing some critical function? Meanwhile I can screw a 2006 compact fluorescent bulb into a lamp from 1960.
The need for less choice/more standardization is dependent on the individual situation.
And example of too little choice? Political candidates. It's either candidate from the Big Two Idiot Parties or one from a smattering of folks from little Parties even further from the realm of rational thought.
Example of just right: cars. There's something for everyone.
1 Menu for everything feature
2 Keyboard shortcuts for frequent tasks I would die without Ctrl A Ctrl C and Ctrl V
3 Function key Did you know F12 brings up Save As dialog in most all MS apps
4 Right click context sensitive menu
By the way can you move a window if your mouse locks up? Alt SpaceBar
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
While this argument is valid, more choices are still better for the users... though they might make the developers cry.
This has nothing to do with anything. Having the application look the same across platforms doesn't have anything to do with the amount of functionality you're providing, unless you don't provide it on all platforms, in which case, you have bigger problems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're saying that because most people are stupid that having choices available is bad? You can't run society so that it's easy for idiots.
I like having choices and investigating them to see which is best. What I don't like is choices that are supposed to be different but when you investigate they are really pretty much the same. Examples range from politics where I usually feel my vote doesn't matter because both canidates are creeps who are just out for their own benefit to the M$ Office vrs OpenOffice comparison where OpenOffice has been designed to be almost as buggy and bloated as M$ Office just so idiots don't have to think about the differences.
Making all the choices similar is a trick done to confuse stupid people and make it easier for them to be pushed from one choice to another. Sure it works but it leaves us with all our choices being worthless to us. I ask not only for more choices but also for better choices. I want options that will make a difference.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Essentially, his example in the difference in choice was the breakfast isle in most shopping markets; in a Communist country you'll have one choice "Communist O's"
Sadly, this demonstrates that your economics professor really ought to have been sacked for incompetence. The Soviet system he was ranting against was a "command economy" not a "communist economy".
In economics terms, you could easily have a communist country with a large number of competing enterprises with a large number of competing products -- communism merely dictates how the surplus value (profits) is distributed amongst the workers, taxed and spent (distributed amongst society). Very disappointing your economics prof didn't know the difference.
Devo - "Freedom of Choice"
A victim of collision on the open sea
Nobody ever said that life was free
Sank, swam, go down with the ship
But use your freedom of choice
Ill say it again in the land of the free
Use your freedom of choice
Your freedom of choice
In ancient Rome there was a poem
About a dog who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom of choice!
Then if you got it you dont want it
Seems to be the rule of thumb
Dont be tricked by what you see
You got two ways to go
Ill say it again in the land of the free
Use your freedom of choice
Freedom of choice
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom of choice!
In ancient Rome
There was a poem
About a dog
Who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead
Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want
(repeat)
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Notice the confusion in the comments between market choice and *economy* in its most general sense: the system of differential value that drives decision-making and theories of semantic relationship. Each share qualities with games of partial information. Neither is sufficient to fully inform resilient HCI decisions.
For information theory less is often more. For market decisions, more is more, given a metastasized domain of perfect information efficiency and ideal, rational actors. For real, interaction-driven computing, the order an application intends brings to a domain should drive the interface.
illegitimii non ingravare
C'mon. This place is full of engineer-types who LOVE choices, even when they make their lives more cumbersome, inefficient and frustrating. It's about tinkering. My father has two VHS players, two DVD players, cable and a Tivo all interconnected with a handful of A/B switches so you can watch a DVD while recording Cable, copy VHS tapes, etc., all at the same time.
1) Only he can make sense of all the switches swinging back behind the TV, so nobody else can figure out how to just watch a damn movie!
2) His memory is crap, so even HE can't readily remember what switches do what.
And, thanks to /. users for posting the importance of having user accounts for general use, this machine hasn't had any viruses in a couple of years.
You misunderstand the security benefits of multiple users. It doesn't stop the machine from getting any viruses. What it does do is to stop viruses spreading from one user to another, and more importantly it stops a virus from corrupting the entire operating system.
If you have never been infected by a virus with multiple user accounts, you probably wouldn't have using a single, shared administrator account either.
This was a bit off-topic... sorry.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
So if my (presumably technology-ignorant) uncle is using a laptop, a single "off" button may be appropriate. But I know the difference between sleep, hibernation and full shutdown, and I want to be able to choose between them as appropriate. Like a friend of mine said, I don't want to hit the "general turn-off" button and put my laptop in its bag, only to have it whir back into life as it tries to commit a gig of RAM to the hard drive.
As much as I typically despise Microsoft and all of its doings, the screenshot in the article looks like exactly the right design decision: two simple buttons, and a menu to get more options if you want them. The new user can just hit the power button, and I can go into the popup menu for a more specific choice. Everyone wins. The Mac OS X strategy of having an "Easy Mode" for menus would work too.
- Sleep
- Restart
- Shutdown
- Log Out
That's apparently 5 less choices of action than Vista's. So go get a Mac and call it a day, Joel. Microsoft will never get a UI like Apple does. There's your choice.Can barely choose between two political candidates, and people think offering more choices in software is somehow a good thing?
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
...than when you have more choices in sexual partners. To that end, use Linux. That is all.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
So, it appears to have taken Joel 5 years to discover that the "80% rule" of software design wasn't what he thought it was: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000000 20.html
Actually, take that back: there is not at all clear he has realised it yet.
The point is to focus on the functionality which satisfies 80% of your users. That's very different from saying that you only need 20% of the features to get 80% sales!
I hate installation procedures that have the attitude "guess wrong, and we'll make your system unbootable, and no you can't get a hint".
You might want to pay more attention in class. It's spelled economics, you know...
Roman Slave Master: "OK, slave scum. You have a choice. Carry that big rock, or two smaller ones."
One option which you totally approve of is better than a million options that all require you to make sacrifices. That's why business contracts that involve players that can exert more "influence" than others are unfair; the line is simple. Does this contract involve terms that require the less influential partner to make unnecessary sacrifices? The fact that a particular option may impart some benefit for those who take advantage of it does not necessarily prove that it is a fair option to choose. Requiring unnecessary sacrifices of others in these situations is probably a sign of greed.
At first blush, FOSS may seem to promote choice. Choice is definitely good when it comes to vendor accountability, in a marketplace created when only a few vendors can create software. But choice and //freedom// are different ideas. Choice is a series of selections on a menu; freedom is a pen and paper. FOSS doesn't always operate within a market context, despite what proprietary vendors would like you to believe.
//ask// the user which way they want to do it every time. If there's a mouseclick, and a keyboard shorcut to perform an operation, that's not a bad choice; I just use the mouseclick as the most obvious route, and I can discover the keyboard shortcut if I decide I want to investigate it. Reasonable defaults is the name of the game.
A mishmash of different communications protocols is not good; it works out better if we get together and negotiate just a few standard protocols. This narrows freedom into choices for those who cannot or choose not to participate in the negotiations, but the freedom to depart from the standard is what keeps it accountable to users.
Too much choice can well frustrate users (more than confuse them), but it's the UI design aspects of the choice that are most critical here. Having many ways to skin the cat isn't the problem; it's having to
well played...
Google Video has nice lecture by Barry Schwartz
The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less really entertaining.
There's a pretty well-established concept in economics called the "Paradox of choice."
In one experiment, as I recall they set up a display of different flavors of jam in a supermarket.
First they set up a display of 6 types of jam. They sold a certain number.
Then they set up a display with 24 types of jam. They sold far fewer. People were confused so they skipped it.
More choices might seem better, but it's not better if the greater choice is more difficult to make than the smaller choice.
Herbert Simon, the Nobel laureate economist, said that it's inefficient to make the very best decision, because the effort of making the perfect decision is greater than the resources gained by the decision. It's better to make a reasonably good decision.
A reasonably good decision is made by considering a few choices, not an infinite nubmer of choices. qed.
more choices are great for certain things. and competition makes everything better. however, there shouldn't be "choices" for data. there should be standardized formats and they should be open. we're all familiar with the .doc issue. however, my schosl district has been using Novell Groupwise for email for a few years. what if we wanted to migrate to another platform, or Novell crashes, or whatever. What are we going to do with the 1 billion emails stored there. or what if we wanted to use a different email client (group wise isn't the best). of course, who needs choices, vim rules and emacs sucks.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I think Joel and most or all of the responses here miss the real issue.
As a person, I don't want a ton of choices for different ways to do the same task. I want the system to work in the most intuitive way for me. If I never use hibernate, then I don't need to see it in a menu or on a button or whatever. I want the things I do most often to be easy to get to, the things I do less often to be easy to find, and the things I never do to be non-existent. And I don't want to have to go through some huge app like Word (or Emacs, for that matter) and customize every menu.
The problem is that you likely have a completely different set of desires and habits from me. So the choices in an app or Windows or Emacs are not to allow a user to do something in multiple different ways, they're to allow multiple different users to choose the one way they like to do it.
I was about to say that a good solution might be an app that "learns" my preferences and eliminates what I don't need, but then I remembered that this has been done to some extent in Windows and/or Office (sorry, I don't use Windows all that often to remember exactly). I find that I really hate that little arrow there saying, "hey, I've got a secret that I'm not showing you".
In the end, I think most users (the set of users that are not highly technically savvy) just want simple apps that do what they need them to do without having to think too much. On that I agree with Joel.
I could give a crap how many things there are to choose from. I am only interested in the one I want. I always want the one I want to be an option, and if everyone else is pretty much the same as me, only their preferred choice is different from mine, that's how we get to having a shitload of choices. But really, just guarantee that my choice is available, that's all I want. Then go make everyone else happy. Then you get a shitload of choices to choose from. But as long as I can still find mine, I'm good. If there's "too many" choices, and you reduce and my favorite gets cut, that's just going to make me unhappy.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Synopsis:
How does the very American activity of considering as many different choices as possible affect our satisfaction when we finally make a decision? Does more choice make us happier? Columbia University professor Sheena Iyengar is challenging the assumption that more is better; she argues that the more choices we have, the less happy we are.
There's a big difference between starvation and not buying overprice pomegrante jam.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The whole point of software is to automate tedious things, so if choice becomes tedious we should really try to automate that as well. Joel's approach is entirely correct: figure out what your users are trying to do, and try to offer options which relate to them. Exporting all functionality and leaving the user to figure out what all the options mean exemplifies design failure. It is essentially "no design". Slightly better is to provide sensible defaults, but the best designs focus on things the user thinks a computer ought to do and things the user wants to do (disregarding, sometimes, what the computer really does do). The whole situation reminds me of command line interfaces, where the user had to memorize a bunch of commands and options and put them all together in order to accomplish a goal. We have somehow recreated that mess in graphical form, with the added inefficiencies of navigating menus using a mouse. It's almost like a cruel joke has been played on the public. Just when computers look like they might become simple enough for anyone to use and are widely adopted - BAM! Take that suckers! Whenever this topic comes up I think of my Grandma. She is a smart lady and she uses computers, but she is also old. She has been around for a while, and she's not about to tolerate any more nonsense. Contrary to the stereotype she is not intimidated by technology, but she avoids a lot of it because her impression is that most of this stuff is designed by idiots who don't have a clue what they are doing. I hate to say it, but she's right. I think that when we talk about software that grandmas can use, it should be in this sense. Old people are not going to put up with this crazy crap the way younger people seem to do. It has to make sense, and it has to work.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
The video game saints row lets players customize their character with great detail. The problem was there were too many stupid choices for things I could care less about on the face and that really didn't seem to make too much of a difference. Plus once you started the game your character always had his back to you and was small enough that those details didn't matter.
Choices are good as long as their is a good selection to chose from. Picking between a turd and crap isn't too exciting.
Can I bum a sig?
You just made the very point that you were trying to contradict.
My definition of success is accomplishing your goals. One of Joels goals is obviously to have fun and make money building a successful, sustainable software company that's a place where developers like to work.
And you admit yourself, everything he does is about "generating business." That is, everything he's done is about accomplishing his goal.
The problem is that, according to your post, you define success and intelligence as creating soemthing "truly unique" and "inspiring." I don't think joel cares a lick about creating inspiring software. He's developing a company, not a product.
I suppose the black-hat, basement-hacker, slashdot mentality doesn't consider business development to be difficult or important, but the rest of the world values it pretty highly.
Questions like "are more choices really better" are too big for an easy answer. I don't think TFA even really attempts to address this question though, the guy seems to be talking more about UI design and how to present choices to users than anything else.I think on this issue the answer is pretty obvious, only present the choices the user really wants.... of course how do you determine that, and for what value of user, that's the real question.
What I will say on the issue of choice is that choices are never the same thing as freedom. Politicians and capitalists love to tout how many "choices" they can give people. How much choice the youth of today have, and to an extent it's true. However they are the ones deciding what you get to choose from. 417 Brands of Toothpaste with identical ingredients. 2809 subtly different types Hi-Def Plasma TV's all serving up the same Hollywood crap. 48 different state schools each teaching the same curriculum. etc etc ad naueseum.
I think this is why we have studies coming out with seemingly nonsensical results like "choice doesn't make people any happier", well, no, not if you're choosing between 500 identical things, none of which you really want. That makes you miserable.
Freedom is the ability to define your own choices, most choices in todays world are really just giving you the freedom to do anything you're told.
for consensus and making everybody happy and for 'Making Everybody Happy,' but it's based on the misconceived notion that lots of choices make people happy.
BEEEEP!
consensus--lots of choices.
This article needs a rethink
A lot of my coworkers complain that there are too many options when configuring a computer on Dell's website, that they like Apple's approach much better. Frankly I tend to agree with them.
But it's not that there are too many options. It's that there are too many options that I just don't give a rip about. Like printers, or advanced warrenties, or internet services, or virus scanning, blah blah blah. I want more HARDWARE options, and more options on how to have it configured. I want to be able to have four 320GB SATA 10K drives striped, but you can't do that on Dell's website. Apple allows you to select four hard drives, but you can't get them in any capacity (500+ only on the last three) and you can't get the 10K drives from them.
And neither online store gives you the option to configure a 3x30" display rig, though it is technically possible with either system.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
terminals and green CICS screens. Every application looked and worked exactly the same. Users did not have to think much, just type and press SEND. HTML/XML, Server-side J2EE,etc. are taking us back to those glory days. I for one welcome the return of our time-sharing masters.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
Gee let's just have one choice that way the company selling it can charge outrageous prices for it. Oh wait, that's happening now with Microsoft....
I would say that your example is actually one of lack of choice. If the content providers would give you the choice between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, then there would be no detriment to the consumer for having the choice of of hardware. The fear that consumers have about choosing the wrong hardware is that they fear that they will have their choices limited in the future.
"but it's based on the misconceived notion that lots of choices make people happy"
people don't want a lot of choices, they want their choice. Unfortunatly it's not the same for everybody. So having the choice you want makes you happy. Not having lots of choices. Hell there could be only 1 choice, but if it's what you want, your happy.
Come to terms with saying "these people over here aren't going to get the choice they want" is what it boils down to.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This immediately brought to my mind a portion of the Essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The part I am referring to is:
13. "Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away."
Seems like a pretty reasonable answer to me.
You could do what most of us do, Tell your uncle to close the laptop.
Teach the simplest explanation as the only explanation. As time goes by you can then recommend new ways of doing these same tasks. For example: Choose File->Exit to quit. BTW you can use AltF4 to quit or just X-it. Can be confusing to users.
I tell my Students Exit the application. If they ask how I say choose File->exit.
If they see me using the application and notice I never move the mouse and ask. I will take the time to show them more ways to accomplish the same task.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I think it's far more important to design something that's aesthetically pleasing, intuitive and simple. There is really no practical reason to allow the end user to customize something to the nth degree. Applications with customizable interfaces inevitably are cluttered and difficult to navigate. And those that allow for changing skins are even worse. If it wasn't created by the original developer it almost always looks unfinished and amateurish.
I don't think many people have a grasp of what constitutes good interface design. They get too wrapped up in overloading the application with features and don't really consider how someone will use that applications. Customizable interfaces to me are a convenient way of dodging the issue. They're basically dumping the interface in the end user's lap and having them deal with it.
I think Apple has the right approach. Compare iTunes to Windows Media Player or Winamp.
iTunes is simple, basically all you can do with it is play music, rip music off CDs, burn CDs and buy music online. That's pretty much it and when it comes down to it that's pretty much all most will ever need. A few minor things can be customized here and there. Because the core of the application is so simple the interface is straightforward and easy to use.
Look at Windows Media Player; it's a bloated, convoluted mess. Options are scattered all over the place, I have to hunt to find controls for basic functions. The skins are inconsistent in layout and nearly all are terrible. It gives me more functionality than iTunes, but what's the point if the experience is so bad? Winamp isn't much better. In general it's better designed, but it goes too far, in my opinion with all the customization.
A good interface shouldn't require much customization.
That's why there are so many distributions and a free market would deliver the best for each customer. The question, "Are choices bad?" is one that only makes sense where people really don't have choices. As you noticed, it's not about telling people what they have no use for, it's a mater of understanding what your customer wants to get done and what tools do the job for them.
Slashdot is the perfect place to make that clear. People here know about the choices and who they are good for.
I don't want my text editor to have all the bells and whistles ... I prefer Emacs over MS Word, the next person my prefer them flipped. ... Ask your mother if she'd be able to user your software (provided it's meant for the general public). But the last people you should be asking are members of the Slashdot community.
Who else but a Slashdot user would be familiar with a spectrum of text editors and which is right for a given purpose and user?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Few years ago I visited the USA and was taken to a hamburger place that sold only hamburgers, fries and a soft drink -- nothing else. You could order big or small. It was cheap, the food was fresh (very low shelf latency!) and they had people lining up for half a block to get in.
I guess if you actually do zero in on what people want, you can succeed by narrowing your offering a bit and focusing in on what's needed.
Utilities like Beyond Compare (I'm using that this morning) do one thing very well -- in this case directory synch across platforms. It would suck as a word processor, so there's none of that functionality in it -- but I really appreciate the one job it does very well. And I think I would distrust a word processor that had directory synch technology built into it...
Yep, poster is right, simpler remains better. Very good systems can be constructed by combining well-ordered simplicities.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I've got two "offtopic" mods on this comment, which is clearly on-topic. Those people should really be banned from moderating ever again. I've had several comments which were obviously ontopic marked as offtopic lately; it looks like I've got a serial downvoter on my hands. Proof that the moderation system does not work.
I realize this is offtopic, but I've got to share this with the slashdotting public somewhere and no one at slashdot gives a fuck about abused moderation any more (there used to be an email address to report abusive moderation in the moderation FAQ, but it seems to have gone away.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the color example that you gave, consider the relevance of precise color selection for company branding. My company spent $200,000 two years ago to create a color scheme to be used for all company publications (including software products). This was after spending even more money assessing the potential impact of the change (which was determined to be significant). A similar importance exists in many other industries such as interior design (wallpaper, carpet, etc.).
My point being, more choice is always best. The simple act of you trying to impose a judgement on which categories of choice are valuable is a bad thing because, depending on your ability to effect what is produced, you could potentially eliminate choices of great value to others, based on your own needs and experience. This is why more choice is always better.
This is why a free system is ultimately superior to a restricted one, no matter how well thought out. A free system is one of constant choice motivated by the immediate needs of the situation. A restricted system, no matter how wisely designed, immediately creates the possibility of no longer matching the current situation and is thus immediately less inefficient than a free system. Children rebel, empires fall.
Look at the analogs in the United States. Increasing restrictions on freedom. Ever-growing quantities of legislation (there is a reason we call convoluted and elaborate creations "Byzantine"--that empire collapsed on itself). Simultaneously, the world is moving faster and faster. When knights faced each other with melee weapons (slow), knights ruled the day. When the bow (fast) was created, knights knew fear. When the gun (faster) was created, knights were no more. The weight of their arms became a fatal liability because it limited their choices (mobility).
So there are several seemingly unrelated examples, but they all have the same message. Choice wins. Freedom wins. You can never have too much choice, so long as there is no closure (e.g. "You can choose anything, but that."). Last example: the apple in the Garden of Eden. Why was that choice present? Freedom to choose is the selective process that drives the entire Universe, a Universe of unlimited choices.
Ok, I sort of went off there. I'll come back to Earth shortly. Phew.
More choice makes software more difficult to write, test, maintain, and support. On top of that, options that are rarely used generally become buggy, this is often called "bit rot" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot. The point is that you can be better off with fewer properly working options than with a lot of partially-working stuff.
yes. I choose, therefore I am.
I'm pleased to offer you this position here at
Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, You're Fired! Get the fuck out of my office.
This has been a big issue for me ever since GNOME's goal became removing all useful features, and in fact, cloning the particularly bad features of Windows (okay, maybe I'm a little bitter; that's another story anyway).
What's always been great to me for the Unix world is having lots of choices and lots of customization. What I didn't like was being forced to go through the configuration process if I didn't want to. So of course, having "reasonable" defaults makes sense. Back in the early days of Linux and especially before Linux, there was lots of software and each generation became more configurable. And of course there was usually a separation between user configurations and system configurations. This made it possible for system administrators to determine the "reasonable defaults" for the organization, while also allowing users to make changes if they so desired.
Then Linux came on the scene and the landscape changed a little. We didn't necessarily have system administrators tied to networks of Unix systems. Instead we had lots of individuals who may not have had much experience with system adminitration, and may not have cared to serve that role. But, with Linux came Linux distributions. And the makers of these distributions offered various "reasonable defaults" catered to different audiences. From novice to advanced, they just had to pick their distribution.
Of course advanced users were still always allowed to tailor their choices. But what made all of this possible was the fact that the original software developers had in mind, keep the software flexible and don't assume the user will use the software the way you intended. If all the software was made in GNOME's or Windows' "one-size-fits all" strategy, then none of these distributions would be possible and you end up going after the least common denominator.
How does this all relate to the real world? Well, how many choices for soap do you have when you go to the supermarket? Does anyone get particularly confused about that? If you've lived in a democratic/capitalist society all your life, then the answer is probably no. You probably just get used to a particular brand, and start equating that brand with the type of quality/cost/etc. that you like. If you really did care about the ingredients of the soap and exactly want to know that you're getting the best cleaning power per ounce, of course you can figure that out. And if that were a big enough market, a company would probably start a brand that focuses on people like you. Or even if it wasn't a big enough market... maybe there's just a market for people interested a "distribution list" of sorts, showing what the best value for your money for a wide range of products (think Consumer Reports). Sound familiar? Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu/etc. are just that sort of distribution list... they just happen to be able to give away their final decisions in the form of usable products.
However, if you grew up in a communist society with little or no choices, then suddenly get exposed to this new world, of course you're going to feel a little overwelmed. There's a culture shock there that takes time to get used to. In fact, you may even feel like you don't want to make choices anymore, even if you end up with a worse solution than you could have otherwise had. But in that case, just choose the one with the prettier box or the lowest price tag.
Personally, I think more choices is better. But of course maybe I like choose my tradeoffs more than others.
I understand that Joel has great views and a deep understanding of design (I've read and love his books) but to bring links to what he says in his "blog" as news in /. IMHO is just wrong.
In this day and age where anyone can have a blog, no matter how smart or how stupid they are, we really need to indemnify articles a lot better. Joel is a good writer and has interesting points of view but that is just what they are, points of view. I don't see years of research being used to backup his theory. I don't see pain staking user-centric studies performed to analyze what works and what doesn't. His ideas are good and they are drawn from experience. However, experience does not make a scientific researcher. After all, this is Computer Science people.
Any quack can find a proposed problem and brainstorm some solutions (just read some of the master's thesis coming out of universities these days). Firstly, THAT ISN'T NEWS! And two, the scientific method must be respected. If you make a statement about a problem and propose a solution, PROVE IT!
So in conclusion, I invite the dear moderators to be more vigilant with posts. If you read it, look for studies, research...whatever it may be, there must be proof for without it, we just become another "Fox News".
P.S. And no, writing 3 books on UI design does not make you an expert. It makes you well known if they sell, it may even make you rich. But it does not make you an expert. Ask Nielson.
Look up "The Paradox of Choice" on Amazon. Good book.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I just want to keep things simple and let Microsoft and Apple tell me what to do.
no. I think they are confusing the differentce between the everyday idiots and the ones capable of adapting and figuring out their circumstances. they have made the mistake of catering to the average. very short term and disastrous thinking.
Can a Windows user leap into Linux and print photos within 5 minutes? Can a Mac user leap into Windows and setup a private wireless network in 5 minutes? Etc.
The problem is not a choice between more capable and less capable or more choices and less choices, it's one of making common things more easy to find and do than less common things. Microsoft makes formatting tools appear right on the office toolbar, but atypical functions like "mail merge" buried in a menu.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
From winehq.com [quote]Supply diversification Diversifying your supply is universally considered to be an important aspect of risk management. Yet, The US Department of Justice has "found" that Microsoft Windows is run by more than 95% of personal computers. Even taking Apple's Mac OS into account, Microsoft Windows is still present on more than 80% of computers, and this is likely also true in most other countries, not just in the US. Thus governments, companies and home users all over the world ultimately depend on a single provider: Microsoft. The question is not whether Microsoft has evil intents, or whether it may go out of business, but whether its plans match yours. A company may want to deploy thin clients to simplify administration and save money on per-client Windows licenses. But is Microsoft going to make it viable and undercut its Windows market? Where is the alternative if Microsoft implements its software subscription model? If Microsoft is not interested in catering to your market, then you have no other provider to turn to.[/quote] Its important that we have several choices and healthy competition. We dont want software companies not improving their products because they have no reason to do so.
Dude, I'm so with you on this. I go to Subway every now and then, and the cheese choices alone just make me want to cry. There should be a preset option for people who can't be bothered describing how they want their sauce layered between each ingredient, or just plain don't care, like me. Half the time I just ask the person behind the counter to "surprise me."
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
What's more important than having the right number of choices, is having the right choices. Base your configuration on a model that serves 99% of everybody's needs without a hundred "advanced options". But that said, there's a simple explanation for the way things are, and that's that you catch a whole lot more flak for lacking the one option that Important Customer X deems important (spellcheck!) than for having a dozen options that they don't need at all. Even if they get in the way.
Too many choices is a bad thing, and will confuse users (especially novice users). However, my PC does not do a better job of power management than I do; it's noisy and in my bedroom. When I switch it off, I want it off, not suspended to disk but still ticking over, all the fans still whirring away, keeping me awake. Also, if I'm opening the case up, I'll shut it down and switch it off at the mains and leave it plugged in. That way it's still earthed...
I'm at a loss to understand why he's counting the special key combinations on a laptop (put there by the manufacturer) then blaming MS for giving the user too much choice. For once, that's not their fault.
Finally, when you're teaching someone how to use a system, you really don't need to tell them about all of the different ways to do something - teach them one, and let them find the others for themselves. Just because the system is complicated doesn't mean you have to throw that complication in their face. For example, my parents' PC was running slow. I took a look at it, saw that it was woefully short of RAM, told them that and roughly how much it would cost to upgrade, went with them to buy it, and fitted it. I could have explained the difference between the hard drive and RAM, the various different types of RAM available, touched on memory management and paging, etc, but really, what would the point have been? They don't need to know - they just need to know that this thing here in my hand costs £50 and will fix their problem. Same with this - so there are 19 ways to end your session. Teach him two - how to put it in to standby and how to switch it off.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Curly: I'll take burning at the stake over decapitation any day.
Larry and Moe (together): Why?
Curly: A hot steak is better than a cold chop, isn't it?
But who decides what the right amount of choice is?
And how were they chosen?
And...
(This post was made from 100% recycled humor.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This has nothing to do with anything. Having the application look the same across platforms doesn't have anything to do with the amount of functionality you're providing, unless you don't provide it on all platforms, in which case, you have bigger problems.
I meant across machines, as in the 50 desktops at an office. Or my desktop/laptop/server. Depending on the program, i.e. a web browser, consistency of interface is important... granted, depending on the program customization of the interface may be more important. My original point wasn't intended to say ones better than the other, just that depending on the realities of the program everything can change... Five million installed web browsers vs. 10 installations of a highly functional custom coded solution are going to have different priorities. "Software" is not some concept for which the answer to this question is always the same. And, IMO, that goes for both the developer's and user's view.
I completely agree with Joel's comments. Similarly, what about the installation process? Surely I just want an application to install itself and then run. Why do I have to click through screen after screen of wizard? Shouldn't the system know where to install my applications (i.e. the "Program Files" folder)? Why do I need to be involved with any of this? Any configuration should take place from within the application, not the installer. Talk about making a mountain out of a mole-hill...
I think it depends on what the choices are. Who here loves going to a bar with 100 beers on tap? (I do!) Who here knows a girl who loves going to a shoe store and trying on 100 different pairs of shoes? Don't get me started on the number of choices you have for the color of your home!
Ultimatly, I think the proper number of choices has to do with the implications of making the wrong choice. If I'm making an important descision on something that I'm unfamilar with, I want few options that are easy to understand and differentiate. If I'm making a trivial descision on something that I'm familar with, then I want lots of choices.
No, I will not work for your startup
I agree. This is what I feel the 21st century sales model should be for media.
"Straight up song: Free. Complete Disc package, with pictures, Bonus clip, Artist interview: Premium"
There's different kinds of choice. Choice of Features, vs. choice of total format. I have a choice between Open Office and MS Office for *the same work*. For the DVD stuff, they are antagonistic, and it sounds like a Phyrric battle. "Yay. I won. My 12 subscribers like me."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I strongly agree with you on this with one additional point.
...), the next update/version/patch frequently clobbers the personal preference setting/templates .... Folks have many different ways of doing things, but many vendors ... want you to do things their default way ... which works well for regressive testing.
When you do edit something to personal preferences in applications (email, wp,
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Face it.
I like there are a few software out there that give you the choice to have more choices or less choices.
The more you know about one single piece of software, the more you'll want to tune it, eventually.
...but I strongly believe that an expression of opposition to a maximum amount of choice in software reflects a chronic lack of both intelligence and vision in the person making said expression.
People want monoculture for one reason and one reason only: If there is only one choice, they won't have to invest in the mental effort necessary to make a decision between alternatives. There are sadly a very large number of people in the world who more than anything else, seek to avoid being required to use their brains. Choice means that they have to do that...thus, in order to avoid having to use their brains, they also seek to avoid having to make choices. Only having one of everything means that they can do this.
Whenever I hear anyone calling for monoculture or a restriction in the amount of available software choice, I chastise that person for being the entirely voluntarily brainless, small-minded example of insect life that they generally are.
In Soviet Russia, choices pick you!
Yes, but give me a reasonably good default option so I don't need to choose if I don't want to.
Even it terms of UI, one user might find a certain type of desktop to be much more production than another, or might prefer to eschew the desktop altogether in favor of a command line (as I often do under OS/2, Linux, and Solaris).
I can see having a generalized default, perhaps, but the removal of choices will almost always mean a removal of functionality (and perhaps also productivity) at some level. IMO.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Well. To point out the obvious, what we need is:
-- The right choises
-- Not too many, not too few.
However we figure out that...
Interesting related talk by Barry Schwartz on Google Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813 950043200
I heard Barry Schwartz - the guy Joel is referencing - talking at the Less Is More session of PopTech!. The guy is a genius.
m l.
Go listen to the session at http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail252.ht
Darn, too bad I came late to the discussion. You are 100% right. The main problem with the number of choices is their presentation. I will never forget the horror the first time I tried FreeBSD X-window configuration utility (back in 1996) which was a huge window that was bigger than my screen resolution could handle and in there it had what seemed hundreds of checkboxes and textboxes. Sure, so much for making it "graphical user interface" based.
This is where usuability and intuitivity [spell?] comes to play. And it is not about making it cuter and more shining and with 3D effects, it is about presenting the different options as coherent sets and subsets of choices. But it takes more than John Developer sitting at his toilet thinking how to arrange the menues in his application, it takes some real research about user reasoning. Of course open source software can not pay for that.
And the same happens with the hundreds (or thousands?) of Linux distributions now, distrowatch or linuxcd or anyone else should spend some time researching what are each one of those distros for and order them accordingly.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The UNIX philosophy is that you have a large number of applications, each of which does a small, simple task, that you can combine in countless numbers of ways to achieve the end result you want. The advantage with this method is you get unlimited opportunity for automation, the disadvantage is that you have to spend time learning what tools there are, what each one does, and how you can combine them together.
The Windows philosophy is that you have a smaller number of applications but that each application is generally GUI based and has a large number of options to enable customisation within that tool. The opportunity to automate a lot of repetitive stuff is minimal but, for the layman, you get a more intuitive interface.
Both these philosophies lie at either end of a spectrum of software design, yet it seems as though some people want tools that are even more intuitive to use now - i.e. they do not want to spend the time actually bothering to learn anything and want it all delivered on a plate to them.
Sorry, but computers are complicated things and there is only so much software designers can do, in either philosophy, to accommodate people who are either stupid or lazy.
Yet again, I draw the analogy to learning to drive a car - people are prepared to invest time and money in learning to use what is also a complicated machine in the correct way. They don't ask for "the gear stick to be made two inches shorter" or "the numbers on the speedometer to be blue instead of white". There comes a point when "enough is enough" in designing anything...
By all means, go and ask a software developer to put the features you want to see in a software application but please don't expect everyone else to want that same feature...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
i have wanted to use linux since i 1999 and have installed many distros over the years but have never found one that would work as my main computer.
One of the problems is that the installations come with so many programs, many do the same thing, many can't be uninstalled becasue they are needed for something else (that you don't know what that does either).
I am trying to get ubuntu to work for me - but its at about Win95 level, with driver probelms, programs that half work, masses of prgrams i don't need, software running that i have no idea how to stop. I do wish people could agree on making 1 program work - like 1 media player, 1 cd/dvd burner, 1 ripper, 1 editor etc.. the choices make life very difficult.
o YES - Your pc will start now and give you many choices and tools in order to let YOU decide what works best for your task.
o NO - Your pc will start now and give you just a few choices in brown color and one single pre-selected tool WE found best fitting for all.
Greetings,
Chris
"An operating system must operate."
There must be fifty ways to leave your laptop
Fifty ways to leave your laptop.
Just Slip out the back Jack
Make a new plan Stan
You Don't need to be coy Roy...
You're Joe OSS User (a fictitious person haha), and your spouse demands quality photo editing on the home computer.
:)
Do you use Gimp, digikam, picassa, F-Spot, or ? You try program after program, and none of them work very well, not user friendly, and the printing looks bad on your Photogizmo 4732039nxtgi printer you bought just last year (and the integrated card reader doesn't work).
There you go. A bunch of sub-par choices, and nothing that works really well.
**Note, a clever response would not be "switch to XP".
Seriously though, yes, more choices are always better.
;-)
Mi pense ese molto wrong sind.
Not many, I guess.
Most of the Macs have one internal drive and cannot be updated. An external drive is not a problem as you said yourself. So your problem is only valid to Mac Pro owners with two optical drives. I'm not sure, but I guesstimate, that this may be even less than 1 percent of all Mac owners.
So you have two choices: Give 99% of all users an option they will never use. Or require "special training", which btw. is the use of the option key in addition to the eject key (in effect I find this more consistent and even a bit more intuitive than fiddling with the holes the older drives had).
But nevertheless it could be even more intuitive: Mac OSX knows how many internal drives it has. If you have one, eject it. If you have two, present a dialogue that explains eject and option+eject. Give an option to never show this dialogue again.
I'm not an Apple zealot and you definitly make a good point asking, why Apple doesn't simply put an eject button on every drive. This is the most intuitive solution.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
The questions of "too many choices?" implies that there is a way to limit choices...
What are they going to do? Stop us from building new software? Force us to write to their standards? Sorry, my time is my own. I can write whatever I want, to whatever standards that I want. How are they going to stop me?
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
In my opinion, it is not the number of choices that matters, but how they are presented to the user. Look at the example in TFA. There are different goals that I can have when I leave a computer. Don't tell me that suspend, hibernate and power off are basically the same. They differ in how much power the computer still consumes and how fast it will be available again if I want to work with it again. You don't pay my electricity bills, and the time wasted for a boot is still mine.
The problem is how the choices are presented. Joel already pointed out one case in which the same functionality could be achieved by a more intelligent analysis of the use case and a refactoring of how the choices are presented, and there I agree with him. But I notice that he does not mention which of the other options should be done away with. I guess he does not want to make that choice. Neither should the software manufacturer. Give me the choices, but present them in a more manageable way. There are several methods that I can think of right now, and I'm certainly no UI expert:
I'm sure someone with a better background in UI design can come up with lots of other ways to address the problem. But please, pretty please don't remove the choices. I'd bet even money that the choices that would be removed would be the ones I'd like to use.
Question: Are more choices really better?
Answer: That depends on WHAT YOU WANT DONE.
THE END.
This man's poorly disguised gripe about the variety of shutdown options presented to him in Windows is not news, nor it is cause for us to exhume a debate about user interface that was already ancient when Neal Stephenson wrote about it in 1999. You want a shutdown option for your laptop, Joel? Close the [expletive] lid.
Yes, Windows GUI designers are suffocated under layers of committee and management, and the result is poop. THAT was old news more than a DOZEN years ago. I hereby knight thee Sir Observalot.