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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?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
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.
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.
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
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.
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
What's a "Joel" and why should anyone, other than a very few people, give a wet fart?
Actually, I think that's exactly what the author of the TFA is trying to hit home. There are some times when multiple options are unavoidable. For everything else, there should be simplicity where mainstream software is concerned (and I would be willing to argue even specialized software can benefit from this mode of thought as well).
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
That's a terrible interface. It gives you the option of the computer either doing what you mean (by pressing the button), or the computer not doing what you mean (by not pressing the button). Do you really need that choice? I don't ever want the computer not to do what I mean. Therefore the ideal computer has no button. It just always does what I mean.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The irony of this particular thread is that Microsoft already perceives these choices as a problem, and from what I am told, Windows Vista will no longer give you these options. You will just close the lid and be done with it. Initially it will suspend to RAM, then go into a mode like Hibernate, and after a little while longer, it will almost entirely shut down -- but not quite. It will still use a trickle of energy so that when you open your laptop back up again, you'll be back to where you left off. It will also be able to do things like checking your e-mail and displaying new messages on a secondary, external LCD screen without powering on the whole machine. I have yet to see all this work in a real-world situation, nor do I know how much additional drain it places on a laptop battery, but this is what I have been told is how it will work when the Vista laptops start arriving next year.
Breakfast served all day!