The Condescending UI

theodp writes "Paul Miller has some advice for user interface designers: Don't be condescending. 'The Ribbon in Microsoft Office products,' complains Miller, 'is constantly talking down to me, assuming I don't know how to use a menu, a key command, or an honest-to-goodness toolbar.' Miller's got some harsh words for Apple, too: 'And of course, there is the transgression of the century: Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book...these new tricks are horrible and offensive [and likened to Microsoft Bob]. They're not only condescending and overwrought, they're actually counter-functional.' So, how does Miller cope while waiting for his UI knight in shining armor? 'I recently switched my Windows 7 install over to the Classic Theme', Miller explains, 'which is basically Windows 95 incarnate, just with all the under-the-hood improvements I've come to rely on. I really like it. It feels right, and if it isn't beautiful, at least it's honest. I wish there was a similar OS 9 mode for OS X.'"

Comments

Users disagree with him

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Many people like how easy and straightforward Mac OSX is. I didn't like Ribbon first either, but after getting used to it I like it much more than the previous Office UI's. It does take some adjustment if you've used the old ones, but that's true for every kind of change. And people don't like changes, but the truth is, Ribbon is much better interface. It would be stupid to drag using bad interface because old users hate change. Everything is displayed much more clearly. I noticed this especially when I used Office products I haven't really used much before. If I had used them, it was always more work adjusting. But when they were new to begin with, there was no problem. I think Ribbon is still a great idea, especially for non-geeks. I guess they could include both interfaces though, like Opera does (not with Ribbon, but with hiding menu).

Re:Users disagree with him

[TheRaven64]

Many people like how easy and straightforward Mac OSX is

But how many prefer the 10.7 version of iCal to the 10.6 one? With 10.6 I could quickly skip to any given month. With the 10.7 one, it decides to show me that it's like a real calendar by showing a page-flipping animation on every transition. It turns the sidebar into a pop-up, making inserting and inspecting appointments more difficult. It removes the small calendar display, making navigation harder. The same is true of the 10.7 Address Book. It now looks like a real book (so, once again, slow page-turning animations rather than instance changes) and the two-page metaphor means that you can no longer see groups and individuals at the same time. Using groups to navigate is harder. I was going to say that they'd removed the groups functionality, but on closer inspection it is there just less discoverable and requiring more mouse clicks and more mouse movement to use.

I agree on the ribbon though - it is a menu, just one that stays open all of the time and presents larger targets. I'm not totally convinced that it's better than menus + toolbar, because the hierarchical nature of it means that you need more mouse clicks and movement to use two actions that are on different menus. The only real complaint about it I have is the amount of screen real-estate it takes up - this is not a problem on a desktop, but Word on a laptop with a smallish screen ends up with less than 50% of the screen usable for actually displaying the document...

Re:Users disagree with him

[Kagetsuki]

Actually I very much agree with him, and I'm a user. I feel like OSX is trying to make me do things with mittens on, the freedom of my bare hands obstructed with a warm fuzzy enveloping layer. And I absolutely disagree that the Ribbon is a better interface as well, I want to know exactly where things are and have them there all the time even if they aren't related to the current context I'm working in.

I am not however rejecting "new" interfaces - now that there's an extension to add a taskbar to GNOME 3 (shell) and after tweaking it a bit I feel like I can use it more efficiently than GNOME 2 now, and like it. I'm an old user, and though I resisted a bit I'm all for change and I'm enjoying change that lets me take more control and work more efficiently.

As for the Ribbon and new users, I have clients who hated it so much that when I showed them OO/LibreOffice they immediately switched. That says a lot if you ask me.

Re:Users disagree with him

[InsightIn140Bytes]

This is why it should be important to have something like Google Analytics for applications. There's already several such solutions for games, like Playtomic, but there only seems to exist such for mobile applications. This could give app developers and UI designers great information on how exactly users use their application.

But truth is, users need clear interfaces and sometimes they really need help doing even simplest things. This is why Ribbon is better for new users, and design goal Apple has too. I own several websites and we use heatmaps to determine how users navigate and where they click on site, collectively. Things like that provide good information on how optimize applications or services.

Re:Users disagree with him

[DarkOx]

I will agree with you I don't know where all the ribbon hate comes from, at least from a UI perspective. Now the API interface, for it SUCKS, if I wanted to use XML to build my interface, I'd write a browser based app, thank you very much. I don't see the ribbon as being much different from the old toolbar from a user perspective though. If anything its how tool bars would have been if displays had been higher resolution in the past.

The modern Apple and MS Bob like one to one metaphors are wrong headed. The author is dead on there. It does not scale at all. It works ok for things that have a good one to one metaphor with near universal familiarity, but it falls down for more esoteric things.

I struggled for nearly a half an hour the other day with an OSX machine. I wanted to add a new certificate to the system wide trusted roots. I have a pretty solid understanding of the functional elements of public key cryptography the stumbling block was entirely UI. I knew what I wanted, but the UI was not easy. First finding the darn thing, then trying to make sense of the really forced key chain metaphor. I suppose the key chain makes sense of user certificates but falls down when it comes to roots and intermediates. Perhaps something like a notary stamp icon would make more sense, but how many users would recognize that? Computers are all about abstraction all the way down, both in terms of what we do with them and how they operate. One to one metaphors don't offer a flexible frame work for things that don't have a physical analog.

  Its terribly inefficient from a developer perspective you have to create a new interface for every task, or its terribly confusing from a user perspective you force something on them that really does not make any sense. It also means that every application is different with its own rules, users can't take knowledge with them from task to task. Not only do they have to know what they want to do, but they have to know the unique mechanics for doing it. Instead of just going ok I want to store my changes, I am sure there is a save command on the file menu, now its um ok I drag the icon to my book shelf?

Re:Users disagree with him

[DJRumpy]

The calendar has a Go To Date functioning the menus under the View menu (Shift + Command + T). It goes directly to the month, or day in question without having to switch through various months.

On the address book, if you double clip the bookmark ribbon (placeholder) graphics, you can see both contacts and groups in the left pane (Command + 3), although selecting one or the other will show you that specific view in the right side (Command +1, Command + 2, & Command + 3 toggle these views respectively).

I actually prefer my groups to be partitioned from my general contacts, but as with all things, everyone has their own opinion as to what is functional and what is fluff.

Re:Users disagree with him

[TheRaven64]

They're never visible settings, but they're often undocumented user defaults. One of the reasons I use OS X, however, is so that I don't have to waste time poking undocumented settings to get a usable system, and so this rather defeats the point.

Re:Users disagree with him

[Nursie]

Please enlighten me as to what it is people do with office software that is much more advanced than this?

I haven't used MS Office in many years so I have no idea what the interface is like, but for me an office suite is good for writing letters, resumes and occasionally technical manuals. These latter require sections, tables, an index and... that's usually about it.

I often wonder what the other 10 million settings and options in office suites are for, and if anyone uses them. What do people do with a word processing program that requires scripts FFS?

Re:Users disagree with him

[Hatta]

Many people like how easy and straightforward Mac OSX is.

Many people expect and require condescension and don't know what to do when their hand isn't held. That doesn't negate the fact that the UI is in fact condescending.

Re:Users disagree with him

[Half-pint HAL]

I agree on the ribbon though - it is a menu, just one that stays open all of the time and presents larger targets. I'm not totally convinced that it's better than menus + toolbar, because the hierarchical nature of it means that you need more mouse clicks and movement to use two actions that are on different menus. The only real complaint about it I have is the amount of screen real-estate it takes up - this is not a problem on a desktop, but Word on a laptop with a smallish screen ends up with less than 50% of the screen usable for actually displaying the document...

Also, we've all widescreens these days, and under the ribbons, everything looks really claustrophobic and letterboxy.

Anyway, larger targets than what? Because in software with menus, I use keystrokes to get wherever I want to go. The ribbon is the graphical-only endstate of the process that caused Microsoft to drop visual underlining of hot-keys by default: no-one is willing to train anyone to use a computer properly. The average computer worker is woefully underefficient due to relying on mousing to do even simple everyday tasks such as switching between italics and plain typeface, or to send an email, or to lock, log off or switch off a computer.

The problem is that the ribbon interface has given up the advantages to the true power users in order to make undertrained desk jockeys marginally more efficient.

Re:Users disagree with him

[Half-pint HAL]

Double click on the ribbon and it will fold up into a single bar and the full tabs won't open until you click on an entry. That should solve the screen realestate issue since it don't take up any more space unless you are actively using it.

I tried that -- unfortunately it made the interface completely unusable.

The ribbon comes up when you want it. You click on something. Great. But it doesn't disappear until you click in the edit pane. But when you click in the edit pane and the ribbon disappears, the whole page scrolls up, and you're not clicking where you want to click. Moronic.

Re:Users disagree with him

[Stormwatch]

Well, if they were doing 'serious work', they would be using TeX, not MS-Word, right?

Re:Users disagree with him

[schwinn8]

Agreed. I still use Office 2000 because it's less bloated, and doesn't have that MS activation nonsense. The only feature I "miss" is the compress pictures feature in the newer versions. I have Office 2007 at work, and it's really not much different or better, other than it "looks prettier"... which is really not a big deal. The real reason I continue to use MSOffice in any form is because everyone else uses it, and when I have to send it along, it's just more compatible. In other words, the problem is that import/export between doc/docx is not great... and MS's implementation of standard formats that LibreOffice supports is just crap. I will admit that for Graphing (Excel) LibreOffice really doesn't do as well. However, LO can handle large files (O2k can't)... so it's still rather usable for the most part, and good enough for my usage (speaking as an engineer, so I use a LOT of Excel).

Re:Users disagree with him

[hjf]

Carrier IQ?

Re:Users disagree with him

[Half-pint HAL]

In the 20th century, one of the goals in the IT world was "context-less computing" -- ie you shouldn't have to switch "modes" to do different tasks. The ribbon has reintroduced modes in a very clumsy way: the ribbon's idea of "context" is the last section of the ribbon you were using. It doesn't matter what you've been doing since you last used the ribbon. You could have been typing constantly for two hours without touching the ribbons, but they're in the last place you left them. You might have forgotten the context, but the computer hasn't. This leaves you unable to work by instinct, because it's random from the user's perspective what you have to do and when.

Re:Users disagree with him

[hedwards]

I hate to break it to you, but Ribbon gets progressively worse the more obscure the options you're using are. It's definitely worse than the older system as they can't use the entire height and width of the screen for the menus. Meaning they'll pick and choose the options that they think are important. And yes, they're widely used, but I rarely use any of the things I've seen in the Ribbon more than once or twice editing a document. Most of the time I'm cursing because they've moved an option or function to a buried menu and trying to remember where that submenu went is infuriating.

Re:Users disagree with him

[berashith]

I was doing quite a bit of work in photoshop when widescreen monitors were first appearing. I was happy to be able to undock the menus and place them to the side on the new real estate that the widescreen gave me. My canvas was free for me to work. I havent found many other apps now that allow the interface to be removed, and everything on these damn monitors is compressed. The new ratio isnt new anymore, but no one has decided to actually make things usable within the available size.

Re:Users disagree with him

[ATMAvatar]

Agreed. I have found that it is usually less effort to code up a TeX document nowadays than continue to use Word because I seem to have had a penchant for using obscure features. I used them often enough in older versions of Word to remember where they were in the old menu system, but not so often as to memorize keyboard shortcuts, so they are effectively unusable with the Ribbons.

Re:Users disagree with him

[ILongForDarkness]

As a third party you get a bit of info back from MS already: when your app crashes and someone clicks the "send info to MS" MS forwards that on to the developer. There is even talk of making the Windows logo process for apps revokable if the developers don't fix the problems. It would be nice if they put it right into the APIs not sure technically how it would work but it could just be a runtime constant needed to turn on logging in the UI of a .Net app say. Bundles everything up and sends it off to the developer. I imagine it isn't being done already because of security concerns but I think they could make it so it goes to MS so that they can have some sort of control to make sure that identifying info isn't being sent, etc. It would be great for devs because you'd get to see what features the users are using, what ones you think they are missing that would help their workflow etc. No more spending time working on a buried feature that know one is using, or fixing bugs on a rarely used feature over a highly used one because you didn't know.

Re:Users disagree with him

[ninetyninebottles]

No-one running Office software in a production environment would pick LibreOffice over Microsoft Office for anything other than the most basic of mundane word processing.

I worked at a place that switched to OpenOffice (before LibreOffice existed). We left three MSOffice boxes for translation and everything else moved over. It was a very successful and beneficial transition. One of the main problems it was solving was the needs of the documentation team. We needed dozens of engineers to have the ability to modify very large documents. The problem was, above a certain size Word regularly corrupted the files on save and the next time someone opened it we ended up having to roll back to the previous version of the document, losing all the work of the last person. Before switching to OpenOffice we had to institute a policy that everyone had to save a document, then (without closing it) send it elsewhere and test opening it before they could quit and save. It was ridiculous and I still see people complaining about this same issue in professional writing forums. After the switch this annoying and very costly failure was no longer wasting our time and money.

My current client, my co-workers and I, and an outside consulting firm for regulatory compliance, often exchange MSOffice documents. Using Word and the native formats is horrible. Templates, TOC, comments, headers and footers, they all break all the time switching between various versions of Word for various platforms. The manpower waste is easily in the tens of thousands of dollars already and project is in the early stages. With LibreOffice (which we use on other projects) we have no such problems because clients can always upgrade to the same version and the same document format in short order given the free nature of the licensing.

And finally, I'm a bit confused about what tasks you think users hould be employing Word for where it is more suitable than LibreOffice. I see Word misused a lot for tasks where a proper CMS and/or Framemaker or Indesign or Quark is the real type of tool that professionals use. If you're using Word for "advanced tasks" from a publishing or documentation standpoint, you've already failed. For the tasks Word is actually suited, LibreOffice seems a fine replacement.

Re:Users disagree with him

[BasilBrush]

With the 10.7 one, it decides to show me that it's like a real calendar by showing a page-flipping animation on every transition.

The problem isn't the page turn transition, the problem is the implementation that means that the animation has to finish before the UI will accept another click. A real diary isn't like that. It'll let you bend up the corner of a few pages and then let you turn them together. So actually it's a failure to implement the metaphor well enough, rather than a problem in using the metaphor.

Re:Users disagree with him

[0100010001010011]

1) Hold down the alt key while flipping between stuff. No animation. (Hold down the shift key for a very slow animation).
2) Click on year, double click on month.

Re:Users disagree with him

[epyT-R]

unfortunately, this attitude of 'we must make it as simple as possible for new users' is quite prevalent today. this newage fisher price UI crap puts a cap on the user's potential with the machine by preventing the application from growing with his skill. While it might make things a tad easier initially, the user doesn't get a chance to learn more of the skills and processes needed to get more adept at getting what he wants. I think the society groupthink needs to relearn the old 'you get out of it what you put into it' adage...and we should accept that sometimes it's best to tell people to RTFM if they lack remedial skills. idiotproofing is a stupid race to the bottom.

Re:Users disagree with him

[BasilBrush]

Many people expect and require condescension and don't know what to do when their hand isn't held. That doesn't negate the fact that the UI is in fact condescending.

Interesting use of the words "condescending" and "fact" here. Condescension is a quality of human to human communication. It's subjectively judged by the receiver from the speaker/writer.

For sure where there's a text message from the the developer to the user such as "You look like you're trying to write a letter, would you like me to..." that would be recognised as condescending by most. But non language based aspects of UIs? I don't think "condescending" can be used there. My microwave oven is easy to use, but "condescending"? That word just doesn't fit.

But it's a very subjective topic. What the hell is the word "fact" doing in there?

Re:Users disagree with him

[multisync]

The first thing I do at any Win XP machine is turn off "transition effects".

The first thing I do on any Win XP machine is add the following to the registry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]

"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000

which disables all the annoying balloons. Switching to Classic view, as the summary suggests, makes the UI a lot snappier.

If I'm going to be spending any amount of time working on the machine, I'll usually do some or all of the following:

set the default Explorer view to List, enable Display contents of system folders and Show hidden files and folders, disable Hide extensions and protect operating system files, set the Sound scheme to No sounds, disable Hide inactive icons in the system tray. Actually, if I'm smart, the first thing I'll do is enable RDP, add my user account or admin group and note the hostname so I can do all the above from the comfort of my own machine. Also, the above assumes the account I'm using has local admin privileges.

If the machine is on a domain and I'm logged in with my own account, when I'm finished I'll either blank the DefaultUserName and AltDefaultUserName registry keys, or set them to the regular user's account. This stops the user from repeatedly inputting their password with my account name until they lock out my account if I'm not there the next time they log in.

Of course, there are dozens of other tweaks, depending on the machine and my reason for spending time on it, and I'm sure a lot of this could be scripted, although not as easily as it could be done in bash. Going through my little routine of tweaks, as well as scanning firewall exceptions, running services and installed programs, gets me acquainted with an unfamiliar machine, and often reveals issues such as spyware etc. Being unable to change certain settings while logged in with admin privileges is a sure sign something's wrong.

Finally, you need to consider the user when deciding how many of the tweaks to leave intact when you're finished, and which to return to the default.

Re:Users disagree with him

[zootie]

Learn where menu and toolbar commands are in Office 2010 and related products
And complementing this. MS has a plug-in based interactive tool to map from the office 2003 menu to the Office 2010 ribbon. You can just click on the Office 2003 menu, and it will show breadcrumbs of where to find it in Office 2010 (and display it when you click on it)

Re:Users disagree with him

[cjb658]

As much as I like the eye candy newer GUIs provide, I miss the old days when you had to be smart to use a computer. Sigh...

Unfortunately, computing is going to be like TV - if you want to maximize profit, you cater to the lowest common denominator. Hopefully Linux will continue to be Team Discovery Channel.

Re:Users disagree with him

[fyngyrz]

Seriously, the menubar at the top is a key aspect of the Mac. You say "have to go all the way to the top", but the top is an infinite target. Just a flick gets you there, and you can't overshoot it.

Oy. Wrong in so many ways. I have six monitors on my Mac Pro. The menu for any one app probably isn't even on the same monitor. It is a HUGE pain in the neck to navigate back to the display that (currently) contains the menu. The menus belong on the window(s) of the app that owns them. Period. Top-of-the-main-monitor is a complete foul-up. Not just because you have to move the mouse further in almost every case than you would if the menus were where they belong -- on the app windows -- but because they'd at least be on the right monitor, and because there'd be no guessing late in the game if you're quitting the right application.

And then there's OS X's inability to send keystrokes to any application other than the one in front. What a huge UI fumble. Got the ability to remotely control an app by sending it keystrokes? Too bad. Won't work under OSX unless the app is already active, in which case, you're not remote controlling it, because the app attempting the control has lost the focus.

And then there's the whole one button mouse thing, although there are so many ways around that today you don't really get screwed solidly by it unless you buy an Apple mouse / trackpad. Even then, there are options besides the brain-dead "control-click."

And page animations... really? Seriously? You're going to exchange my TIME for eye candy? Unbelievable.

Seriously... Apple's UI designers all needs to go take a long walk off a short pier.

I love my mac pro for what it can do, but there are ui-specific reasons that constantly limit what it can do as well, and I sure as heck don't appreciate those. The stupid, stupid menus-at-the-top feature pretty much serving as the poster child for exactly how NOT to do something because it's BROKEN and gets in the user's way and requires more mouse travel and is less clear and breaks the multi-monitor paradigm.

Re:Users disagree with him

[Grishnakh]

The other problem I see is this constant striving to make digital metaphors for physical objects. For instance, from the article summary: "The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book." For someone who's 80 years old, sure, metaphors to these things might make use of a computer easier since they can compare to things they're already used to. For someone 30 or under, however, it's dumb: how many people under the age of 40 have a paper address book? I haven't had one of those in ages, and I'm sure younger people have never had one and wouldn't know what to do with one, since they keep all that information on their phones now. A leather desk calendar? WTF is this, 1890? Do they even make those things any more? And even physical bookshelves are rapidly disappearing thanks to ebooks and simply looking everything up on the internet.

What are they going to do next, replace the print queue manager icons, so instead of a picture of a laser printer, when you print a document it shows you a fancy (and slow) animation of a Gutenberg printing press?

Re:Users disagree with him

[Alex Belits]

Because a major reason why Windows-only products are still in use is a "long tail" of features that are of marginal use overall but every user believes that at least one of such features is absolutely critical for his purposes. Reproducing those features to placate everyone is a massive pain in the neck, and objectively most of them are worthless, but they are effective at keeping users on an inferior, obsolete platform because software developed for it has some continuity in implementing those things.

Re:Users disagree with him

[JoeMerchant]

You know, I've been using computers 8+ hours a day for 25+ years now, and I don't give a damn what sub-sub-menu spock pinch hot key this week's latest incarnation of calendar uses to do the same damn thing I have expected a calendar program to do since 1991's Sidekick.

I especially don't care that I can spend 3 hours learning how to and executing a reconfiguration of my latest desktop software to make its UI almost mimic the program I used to use last week. I move from machine to machine, OS to OS throughout the day, Windows 7, XP, Vista, OS-X 10.4, 10.3.9 and 10.7, iOS 4 and 5, and a couple of flavors of Ubuntu. I don't have the time, or inclination to set each and every one of these machines up so that they are familiar to me. When a new one comes around, I just want the damn thing to work, in a non-mysterious fashion. For every "improvement" that has come down the pike, there have been a half dozen changes for the sake of change - my favorite was the "Apollo" OS - very similar to Sun, it was Unix, with all the commands renamed and options rearranged for no particular reason.

The path of least resistance is to grin, bear it, and get on with it. I still wish that programming editors would get back to the simplicity of Brief with its easy to use column text selection (yes, most editors have an Alt-mouse click version, which sucks by comparison), but even if I had that in one editor, it still wouldn't be present in the 3 others that I have open at the same time.

So, if you're a "new" ui designer, really really think about taking a look back at what worked 20 years ago - ask yourself if what you're planning is truly any better, or just different, for your users. If it's different, deduct 10% usability points for the required learning curve, and, don't kid yourself, your app will be replaced soon enough.

Re:Users disagree with him

[ILongForDarkness]

True though relying on old things isn't exactly something that the *nix world can claim they don't do either. After all a large part of linux "innovation" has been the copying of the features of UNIX from back in the 1970's. Sure there are new schedulers etc but ultimately the structure of the OS has stayed pretty consistent over time. MS is going to blow away a lot of their old framework with Metro in Win 8 (and the WinRT vs MFC replacement). Anyways things like apps not being able to write ad hoc to the harddrive is going to make things "interesting" to say the least. I guess give it 5 years and if people are still choicing to port things over to the new run time rather than to Mac or Linux than there will likely be proof that it isn't "old incompatiblities" that is keeping users.

Re:Users disagree with him

[Galestar]

Hopefully Linux will continue to be Team Discovery Channel.

requiring 20 manual edits to conf files and 3 commands with 15 switches, all just to install something is not exactly what I'd call "good user interface design" either.

Re:Users disagree with him

[oursland]

If we're busy discussing how horrible software used to be, let's not forget how much a pain in the ass it was to install and use DOS software with all those switches (seriously, I have to specify IO port and IRQ to the audio devices?!) or DLL hell brought on by Windows. Or, you know, you could talk about software as it currently exists. You don't have to manually edit conf files and install things on the command line with modern distributions these days.

Re:Users disagree with him

[forkazoo]

Unfortunately, computing is going to be like TV - if you want to maximize profit, you cater to the lowest common denominator. Hopefully Linux will continue to be Team Discovery Channel.

You want the Linux UI to be based on occasionally shooting a cannon at people? Or, you want somebody to fork Linux and make it only ever print messages about weddings and such?

Re:Users disagree with him

[Alamais]

Check it: http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79

Re:Users disagree with him

[CAIMLAS]

Users were never supposed to be allowed to 'install' anything, though.

And if you're having a hard time editing a string in a text file, I suggest something my be wrong with you, not with the system. It's not like editing text files is something new or novel.

That said, you're grossly over-exagerating. You're not just stalling "something" you're either installing something incorrectly, or something esoteric not in repositories.

Re:Users disagree with him

[drsmithy]

6 monitors? That is a totally non standard configuration of course things don't work well. OSX was never designed to support that kind of setup.

The problem exists whenever the monitor count is greater than one. To suggest multi-monitor scenarios weren't considered when OS X's UI was being built would beggar belief.

Easy and Advanced

[TaoPhoenix]

We're back to this discussion again.

Unskilled Users (not necessarily new!) like the new Padded Rails simplicity. I have advised a couple of such users now and they really do like things being as "Safari is the internet". They don't know what a web page address is. They just type words into the search bar until it (hopefully!) shows up.

So if companies would quit playing Proprietary Lockdown games, we really do need "Basic / Advanced" versions of a UI at the click of a button.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[buchner.johannes]

Experienced users want it the way they got used to.
Finding interfaces that new computer users can learn quickly and be productive in is difficult (you also need new test subject all the time).
This story and the GNOME3 discussion on /. seems to be a case of "I want it like it has always been", not being interested in what could be done better. I know new ideas in UI development can make you very productive, a very good example is Mylyn.

On a related note, Apple has always used silly analogies ("Desktop", "Trash", Eject by dropping to trash). I hope I offended everyone now.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[visualight]

The problem is that if weren't unnecessary abstraction layers and illogical "real world" metaphors there wouldn't *be* any unskilled users. These interfaces not only assume you're ignorant, they *keep* you ignorant.

The premise that I disagree with is that it's okay for people to go on thinking that "Safari is the internet". This isn't rocket science. Having some basic grasp of a hierarchy, or understanding the concept of a URL would not be difficult if the UI(s) weren't so disconnected from reality.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[InsightIn140Bytes]

It's more ignorant to think that users need to know the underlying system or how URL is formed to use computer or internet. Truth is, no one wants to have to learn things they don't care about. While you may think it's essential for everyone to know how computers operate, many people think otherwise. Likewise, I bet you don't have to learn things you don't care about just to enjoy them. We have almost 7 billion people on earth - we can specialize in things and enjoy all the things world offers but someone has to simplify it for the rest of us so that we have the time to enjoy and use everything. You can't learn everything, and for majority of people computers are just something they want to use, not something they want to learn to understand.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[TheLink]

In my opinion it doesn't have to be the same way people are used to, as long as it can be much faster.

I'm happy that Apple, Microsoft etc are taking care of the "newbie" users - that's actually a good idea.

BUT in my opinion they should also provide short-cuts so that skilled/trained users will be able to do things much faster.

Not everyone remains a "newbie". Being skilled at complex stuff is not beyond normal people. Many gamers can do many actions-per-second. And look at some of the experienced "old-school" supermarket cashiers (who can identify products and enter the correct product codes faster than low-end barcode readers can read a barcode) or those using those "dumb terminals" - using all the short cut keys to jump to various fields/pages to enter the data or search for stuff quickly.

But what I see nowadays are UIs where you have click/swipe, _WAIT_ for fancy animation, click again, _WAIT_ for fancy animation, then only finally get what you want. That gets old if you already know exactly what you want.

Any non-idiot can create a UI that allows a user to manage 1-3 windows/items. Give me a UI that allows a normal user to manage magnitudes more than 3 items/tasks easily. One that actually _augments_ humans, rather than gets in their way.

All those fancy animations and pauses are like those cut-scenes in a game. They are very nice the first few times round, but most skilled/experienced gamers skip them in order to get to the real stuff they want to do.

In most games, if a weapon/skill that has a long fancy animation before it actually does stuff, it's considered a disadvantage of the weapon/skill by experienced gamers. The same applies for Desktop GUIs.

A Desktop GUI is crap if even GNU Screen is faster at managing "windows" in the hands of users who are experienced+skilled in both.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[stewbacca]

On a related note, Apple has always used silly analogies ("Desktop", "Trash", Eject by dropping to trash). I hope I offended everyone now.

Yeah, I'm not sure why everyone is jumping on this one, other than maybe there's an entire generation of "power" users who don't realize the modern desktop's origins stem from the first Macintosh in 1984?

Maybe it's a tired metaphor, but it can't be that bad since Microsoft copied it. It will be interesting to see where desktop UIs go from here. I bet Win8 is a huge flop, as it tries to be both touch and desktop UI. Instead, I bet both are just poor versions of touch and desktop UIs that exist now.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[Nursie]

The GNOME 3 discussion isn't just on slashdot. The change to GNOME shell even drove Linus away from GNOME.

The problem with GNOME Shell is that it takes away options. All of them. It promotes some specific programs to indelible places on the screen (e.g. empathy) while relegating all others (e.g. pidgin or other IM clients) to second class status. It also adds complexity. The problem with the GNOME devs is that any argument against any of the decisions they take are met with the same argument you just gave - people are stuck in their ways, we're changing things for the better, you have no vision etc etc. It's not helpful.

Sure, there are people who will resist change for the sake of it. There are also people who will resist change because it's a productivity hit to switch their way of working, one they're not prepared to take. There's also a third group who have genuine problems with the way things are going. Calling them luddites and putting them with group 1 is not helpful, and makes people (and interfaces!) come across as arrogant. In the case of GNOME they're going to be lucky if they don't lose the majority of their existing user base whilst they go on the search for a mythical new one.

Re:Easy and Advanced

[Ihmhi]

On a related note, Apple has always used silly analogies ("Desktop", "Trash", Eject by dropping to trash). I hope I offended everyone now.

Yeah, I'm not sure why everyone is jumping on this one, other than maybe there's an entire generation of "power" users who don't realize the modern desktop's origins stem from the first Macintosh in 1984?

I'm personally very aware of it. I like to point it out all the time. "Man, check out the original Mac! You could mess with the software, change out hardware, it's awesome! Too bad you won't be able to do any of that pretty soon."

Re:Easy and Advanced

[wfstanle]

"Experienced users want it the way they got used to."

Exactly! Instead of ramming a new GUI down our throats why don't the designers do something radical. When upgrading to a newer version offer the option to continue using the older ("classic") version of a GUI. Newbies will be happy because of all the new eye candy and experienced users can continue using a computer in the way they are used to. Later on, if the new way of doing things isn't just the latest fad and really is better the older users will surely migrate to a new GUI. It's the test of time.

Has he ever actually talked to users?

[Xugumad]

I've spent a decade in the firing line (developer exposed directly to users), and this goes directly against everything we've heard from the vast majority. Yes, your power users are going to be frustrated by simplified UI, sorry guys, you're not our main audience. The average user does not want to spend time learning the UI, they want to pick up the app, do what they need to do and move on with their life.

Re:Has he ever actually talked to users?

[InsightIn140Bytes]

I don't think he has. He sounds like grumpy old guy who just wants to do things the old, especially since he is talking about how Windows Classic theme "just feels right" because he knows how it functions. He just wants to use something he has got used to it, and doesn't even think if it's really better for other users. Having used both, Windows 7 theme is still much better than classic one, especially since it groups windows in task bar and only show icons with a hint of the windows title. When you hover your mouse over the icons, it quickly shows all windows. This is much better design than in the Windows Classic theme where everything was just dumped together.

Re:Has he ever actually talked to users?

[geekmux]

I've spent a decade in the firing line (developer exposed directly to users), and this goes directly against everything we've heard from the vast majority. Yes, your power users are going to be frustrated by simplified UI, sorry guys, you're not our main audience. The average user does not want to spend time learning the UI, they want to pick up the app, do what they need to do and move on with their life.

And most of us have absolutely no problem with the "For Dummies" theme that's skinned over so many products today.

The problem isn't even if it's the default look and feel.

The problem is generated when frustrated (and experienced) users cannot change it to suit their liking.

And while you may be doing your job to address your "main" audience of "I'm-too-damn-lazy-to-learn", I wonder if they recognize the irony of the downward spiral they're helping perpetuate by forcing you to placate to the masses that continue to lower the bar. You know what they say when you constantly try and make something idiot-proof. Someone usually comes along and builds a better idiot.

We keep this up, and computers are going to look like Babys first cell phone because people don't want to spend more than 17 seconds learning anything these days.

Re:Has he ever actually talked to users?

[gbjbaanb]

which is exactly why the new UIs are so poor.

Remember when Windows first came out, it has menus and every app had the same menu bar. Everything had a file menu that had new/open/print/etc items on it.

You could open any app and instantly know how to create a new document - because there was the file|new menu item, every time. You'd received training for all apps, instant familiarity, instant productivity.

Fast forward to today and we have different interfaces for everything. The new UIs with shiny orbs and animated transitions mean you have to figure out where all the new bits are for each app. Then some of them start working differently (eg Excel that has multiple icons in the task bar, but they're all running in a single instance so you close 1 you close them all kind of bo**ocks), and some don't even have menus - well, they have menus, but they're tucked away behind a little coloured icon so they appear when you click it, if you can find the f***er in the first place (eg the new hide-everything-away browser interfaces). The the ribbon comes along (which is a fine toolbar repacement BTW) but is used as a menu replacement too - with loads of bits hidden away in little menus behind tiny ">" icons.

The old interfaces were fugly, but functional. They made us productive and really that's what is needed for line-of-business apps. No-one really cares that excel looks cool, not when you're typing in the accounts.

Re:Has he ever actually talked to users?

[zigfreed]

He's older than that. You have some powerfully tinted rose-colored goggles if you want OS X to look like OS 9.

Back then, the Mac desktop was filled up with aliases, you didn't default copy things from disk (you just made 'links'), and the dock was more like a control panel with advertising for whatever you installed. Although his argument could apply to OS 10.7, a user can turn the extra features off.

With Windows, the 'classic' Windows 7 theme is a lot less usable than a 'tuned' Aero Windows 7 theme. Aero has better notification, better window management, and buttons that cram more usefullness out of limited screen real estate.

What is condescending in Windows, and most graphical interfaces, is the requirement of using a program like AutoHotkey to do custom keyboard shortcuts. When touch devices start to wear out (or when the mouse pointer goes mad), (i)OS X and Windows don't have an alternative, fast method for an experienced user to navigate the system, but Ubuntu Unity does.

Re:Has he ever actually talked to users?

[vlm]

A delay that long would drive me completely bonkers. I don't need my eyes to catch it, I'm not reacting to the computer, the computer is supposed to react (preferably instantly) to me. It is my servant, not the other way around.

The basic concept is a bug not a feature. No one who reads old fashioned physical books does it for the experience of the delay while turning pages. For example, I cannot go to a convenience store without an unwashed slacker taking their time at cashier duty. That does not mean that adding a USB operated B.O. generator, inserting "like" in between every three words, making it really slow, having to wait in line, and taking 45 seconds to figure out the change coinage for $1.76 would be a huge improvement to the amazon.com web interface.

IF you're using firefox, that means you can use greasemonkey to write scripts. I am not conversant in greasemonkey enough to do this myself, but I triple dog dare you to write a greasemonkey script, that wraps /. inside it, and each time you scroll down via "pg down" or wheel, it freezes for 300 ms, displays an animation of an ancient roman scroll winding up and unwinding, makes a paper turning sound, and then finally displays the next page of /.. I will make a bet that within a week you throw a chair thru your monitor, or disable that script, or admit I was correct.

This is another example where horrific UI mistakes by OS designers are "OK" because there is no competition or choice, but a website would be laughed off the internet if it tried to implement something that awful.

Wait.

[knuthin]

No mention of Unity? It has been made to look worse than the ribbon these days (by techwriters).

Also one could comment on UI on websites, webapps, phone apps. The author didn't seem to mind them at all, though they are the ones that successfully annoy the shit out of me.

maybe he should use vi.

[decora]

it's not condescending. it assumes you have memorized dozens of little one-letter commands.

Re:maybe he should use vi.

[DarkOx]

Ah Slashdot where there is never a middle ground, its vi + tex or Office 2010.

Re:Doesn't everyone run in classic?

[lightknight]

Nonsense. I like my eye-candy, and the silver Luna theme in XP was awesome.

If I'm going to be staring at my computer screen all-day, it might as well be pretty.

Re:Like and Okay

[TaoPhoenix]

It's a difficult problem!

I remarked that my two Anecdotal Users "liked" that ultra low level understanding of Safari = Internet. I think it's rather disturbing, but I will politely call it the "wide base of learning problem" where any brand new field of information will have a wide swath of extremely confused users in a big circle at the base. These are decent guys who just didn't get the whole Computer Revolution thing, but they're stuck needing to check their email, so that's the best they can do.

Likewise, don't ask me any car questions. Or road navigation. Or hunting/fishing/golf/_____/____/_____ questions. I'd look equally dumb. Not even Command Line ones! (Oops, is my Geek Cred now at risk? Oh well!)

However, once I DO know how to do something, the message for companies is "don't take it away later." It's like the story Harrison Bergeron - "Let's move everything around so much that Everyone Becomes Equal because none of the stuff the old power users liked works anymore."

Re:Windows 7 theme

[InsightIn140Bytes]

I hate "pinned" apps. If it's not open I don't need it "pretending" to be open on my task bar. It's already got a desktop shortcut.

In turn, this is one of the things I love about it most. I rarely see my desktop. In fact, the only time I do is when I boot up my computer. If I have to minimize everything to start a desktop shortcut it messes up my workflow and the window orientations. I pin my most used programs to taskbar and they're quickly there if I need them, and they're out of way when I'm actually using them already. If it wasn't for that I would have to go to start menu, write part of the programs name and run it there. I also do have separate pinned programs in start menu, but they're ones I'm not constantly running. In task bar I have those that are almost always running. That combination makes things much faster and nicer.

User interface as a message from the designer

[TuringTest]

The best advice I've found for thinking about user interfaces is by CS. De Souza, the author of the
Semiotics of Human-Computer Interaction. She calls the interface a 'design deputy', meaning that the interface is to be seen as a message from the designer saying "this is what I know of you and what I think will serve you best".

The most the designer knows about the users, the better tailored the interface will be. A designer may indeed be condescending when giving that message if she doesn't really know enough about the targeted user.

It's not better, it's different.

[Lumpy]

And that is the problem.

Every single Iteration of Linux or Windows creates a ball of confusion for everyone. Microsoft starts hiding things, moving things, or WORSE, re-naming things.

Honestly, if you put in consistency so that a person looking for system tools like. Updates, Software Manager, Hardware Manager, etc.. It's easy to find.

But the latest iteration of Ubuntu and Mint, it's easier to drop to a shell and type sudo apt-get update than it is to find the farking Update manager.
In windows, Add and remove programs is now renamed. And unless you change away from the "idiot at the wheel mode" of control panel you will have a bugger of a time finding it.

Microsoft renames and reshuffled everything to force their certifications to be updated every release, but the Linux people have ZERO excuse for making thing confusing as hell by renaming and putting something important like Update Manager Under "Menu,Other" It fricking goes under Menu,System... Anyone in charge of layout in Mint that put it in "other" needs to be beaten with a sack of doorknobs until they lose consciousness.

It seems we have entered into the era of change for the sake of change and not for the sake of better. I honestly am waiting for Windows to rename "control panel" to "shiny stuff" in windows 9.0

Re:It's not better, it's different.

[vlm]

I honestly am waiting for Windows to rename "control panel" to "shiny stuff" in windows 9.0

With the long term trend in the groupthink arena toward icon-ization, we are nearing the point where there will no longer be words or names. The inability to discuss the interface is an advantage for marketing, to some extent. It is 1984 new-speak like.

So, click on the shiny ball (color depends on your local theme). Then click on the paradichlorobenzene molecule, don't know what that is, well tough cookies. Then click on the smiley face. Ta da you're now upgraded. Whatever you do, don't click on the icon that looks like two mating centipedes. And the Cthulhu icon, thats not a good choice either. Who knows what any of this will do, and if it doesn't do what you wanted it to do, thats because you're using it wrong; the user is always to be blamed either for being too much of a power user or too much of a noob. Our UI did great in the focus groups; everyone knows focus groups are never wrong; after all they brought us Palin, Hillary, and Britney Spears; our UI is proven perfect QED.

Think about even simple stuff like replacing the "my pr0n" directory with a wordless ribbon-like icon... we probably won't be able to agree on an icon of exactly what body part, nor agree on female or male, nor even what species.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Except there's no consistent menu bar.

They didn't retain the consistent default text-based menu bar that typically starts with "File, Edit, View...", and usually has selections like "Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Perferences, Options, Tools, Blah blah blah..."

You can't press "Alt", and expose the menu bar. So FTFY.

Indeed

[lightknight]

That appears to be the focus of GUIs these days.

A well-designed GUI is fast, efficient, user-friendly, and conveys the maximum amount of information possible to the user without overloading the user's senses.

Many GUIs these days fail to do this. Why? Many reasons, which I will now list:

1.) The CLI Guys -> these people believe the command-line interface is that cat's ass. Anything that can be done with a GUI can be done with a CLI, plus it works with pipes! What's not to like?
2.) The Artists -> these people think that a GUI is a social commentary on the growth of the computing industry and mankind's adjustment to technology. They treat every GUI like it should belong in an art gallery somewhere, and their work tends to resize like sh*t. Elements are not anchored correctly, discerning what is an clickable element and what is just an image / background may take several moments and a careful read of the online help manual. Look for navy blue text (size 8) on a royal blue background.
3.) The LCDs -> these people create GUIs for the lowest common denominator. They assume that the user is an absolute idiot, and make even the smallest configuration changes go through a 15-page wizard. The greatest experience an IT professional can feel is setting this program up correctly once, and never having to run one of those wizards again.
4.) The Minimalists -> these people are like the CLI guys, but they decided to include a half-broken GUI just to tease you into thinking that you won't be spending several hours looking through various usenet posts looking for the proper flag to launch the GUI with. The GUI will be extremely simple, with a poor design and badly labeled elements (the checkbox with a non-descriptive name or in a few instances, no name), which includes a link to the manual explaining a highly comprehensive scripting system for anything more complex.

   

Training Wheels

[drooling-dog]

I look at it like training wheels on 2-wheel bicycles. They definitely make it easier for a beginner to make it down the driveway and back, but at some point they become a hindrance and you'll want them off.

This isn't about old geezers pining for the UI they used back in the day; they're used to changing UIs and have been through many. This is about not being able to remove the training wheels, or to get a bike without them.

Menu-izing the Ribbon for screen real estate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not defending the ribbon, but as for the screen real estate issue with Ribbon, you can improve that by double clicking on the "Home" tab (or any other tab). The meat of the ribbon will be hidden, and now it's more like a good ol menu (gosh!!). Double-clicking on Home again restores the ribbon to it's full, bloated glory.

Re:Menu-izing the Ribbon for screen real estate

[repvik]

THANK YOU!

HA! that's a condescending comment!

[Anonymous Coward]

To paraphrase you:

"Ribbon is better, and if you don't like it, that is because you are resisting change"

I think that's the biggest mistake the designers and proponents of the new UIs are making (mind you, not all of them, but it is widespread to the point of being annoying).

Re:HA! that's a condescending comment!

[quixote9]

Exactly. And a commenter who shows so little understanding of what condescension is doesn't inspire me to believe that they'd have a clue about which UIs condescend.

Just for the record, I'm a user who completely agrees with the post. Make it easy for me to customize the UI to suit my workflow = Not Condescending. Shove big shiny buttons at me that mean my work takes more clicks to accomplish = Condescending. (Why, yes, I do hate Unity. Why do you ask?)

So wrong in so many ways

[stewbacca]

This article is terrible.

People don't like the ribbon because it sucks, not because it's condescending. It makes doing the job HARDER for both new users AND experienced users.

The bookshelf/faux leather metaphor is simply that. It has no functionality. It doesn't get in the way, so it's a complete non-issue. It is slightly offensive to anyone with a design-sense, but the world doesn't end because of it.

The fact that geeks like this author feel like they are being talked down to is why the millions of other non-geeks call us geeks. Computers aren't the sole domain for us. Companies have to make money, and when there are millions of more computer-challenged customers than experts like this guy, so they'll make their product for them. The fact this guy is mad about that tells me somebody should give him a Linux build.

I want to vandalize the ribbon designer's homes...

[Zaphod-AVA]

I want to break into their houses, and take all of their possessions out of their closets and drawers and nail them shut. Then I'll lay all their stuff out in piles sorted by type and leave a note that says "There! Now you can find all of your stuff more easily! Have Fun!"

Only part of the population can think abstractly

[Kjella]

Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book

Only part of the population can think abstractly. The exact percentage differs somewhat depending on what standard you use, but about 40 to 60% of the population is able to think using purely abstract models in well developed countries, without a good education far less. The rest may be very smart if they're dealing with physical objects or people, but the less it works like the "real world" the more lost they get. I've noticed this myself with simple cubes for reporting. Once you pass three dimensions that you can draw up physically, people start to zone out. Programming is dark magic, as is writing an SQL query - for me I'm just making an abstract skeleton where "The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone is connected to the leg bone" and so on.

In theory, that sounds like a huge market but just because they can do it with some effort, doesn't mean it comes easily to people. The people that can easily, effortlessly think in the abstract and would like to do it in their daily computing is probably in the single digit range. And most of them are here on slashdot and swear by the CLI, which is the ultimate in abstraction. No graphical hints, no feedback, just type in a command and abstractly understand what it and any switches you apply will do, particularly if you daisy chain it though sed, awk and grep. You might argue that there should be a middle ground here where the UI is both powerful and easy to understand, but the people on either side aren't going to see it that way.

Re:Windows 7 theme

[Gumbercules!!]

I got a new Win 7 machine at work a few months ago, and the first thing I had to do to it was to unhook a lot of the annoyances of the Win 7 theme.

Thus proving the parent argument. You didn't immediately understand the new UI, so you gave up and reverted to the old one. So your actual exposure to the new UI, from your own text above, is either negligible at worst or minimal at best.

To be fair, I likewise dislike pinned apps, versus the old quick launch bar, but this is because I equally never gave them a chance. Having seen others use them, I wonder if I made the right choice.

Re:Windows 7 theme

[Yetihehe]

I love pinned apps, but only after I enabled showing app title, not only icons. If you enable titles, pinned apps are just icons, opened apps have titles. When they are opened, you don't have opened app AND icon in quicklaunch bar anymore, so it conserves some space.

right

[Tom]

While I don't agree to all his details, the general point is strong and true.

One of the things that I have learnt to hate about all the recent MS Windows interfaces is how it tries to outsmart me. Not having used an option for a while? It'll hide it from you, so all the things that you need only rarely you always have to go and hunt around for. And I won't say anything about the "ribbons" interface, because there's not a single positive word I could say about it.

I also see the same trend in websites recently. Dumbing down and pseudo-smart seems the new trend. I long for my Unix commandline, where the system assumes I know what I'm doing and considers its two main jobs to be: a) do what I tell it to do and b) get out of my way as much as possible.

The computer interface is important, very important in fact. But not in and for itself. So let's kick all those artsy people and the managers and idiots out of user interface design and put some actual designers in charge again.

Re:This again?

[MightyYar]

It was Microsoft saying "there's been a proliferation of new commands in Office and we can't just keep putting menus and sub menus like this forever"

Except that's exactly what the ribbon does, except it uses huge buttons instead of concise text. What the ribbon did was take away a static toolbar and a static menu, so you constantly have to hunt around for stuff, especially if you tend to resize windows a lot or move between computers with different size monitors (like a laptop). It is still basically a menu bar, only one level deep is constantly displayed. There are still submenus - they just look like a button with a downward pointing arrow on it now. Most of the benefits of the reorganized ribbon could have been achieved by reorganizing the menus and adding a context-sensitive menu bar (like the "Inspector" in the older versions of Mac office or the old pictures toolbar that would automatically appear when you were editing a picture).

The ribbon would have been a neat accessory, or even replacement for toolbars. But ditching the menus was stupid and hurt the productivity of long-time Office users. Since the Mac version of office still has a menu system alongside the ribbon, and it surely sells fewer units, I don't think expense of development has anything to do with it - MS is just being dictatorial.

Re:Doesn't everyone run in classic?

[Oligonicella]

They can ladle in, layer on and apply all the eye-candy they want - just let me turn it off. That way, when you close a window in 7, you can delight into it's apparently falling back to the ground (sans shatter, one would think they'd remember the finale) and I can have mine simply disappear.

Anyone seen the new Google Calendar / Gmail?

[AbRASiON]

I haven't been switched yet but I have briefly tried them.

Holy ......... what a mess, or rather - what a ridiculously over-clean, sparse user interface. Minimalism for the sake of minimalism. No lines to define where one item begins and another ends, worse shading and use of colours to identify rows / columns / boxes / sections. The entire thing is designed by committee. The old one feels like it was designed by technical people with design skills. Now it feels it's designed by designers with technical lackeys to perform the work.

The entire thing is more difficult to use and slows people down, a complete step backwards.
Sorry for the language here but this picture I've made was designed for another forum. Including the file name.
http://chattypics.com/files/newcalendarisfucked_4ynyf5yix1.jpg
I've outlined why the original one is better, it's designed logically and well themed, the colours match with gradients of light / dark depending on heading / menu / etc - there's simple, clean lines seperating items (which should be damned well seperated)
Etc

User interfaces seem to be generally getting worse and worse, it's quite unfortunate.

Paul Miller is old

[Culture20]

I personally like clicking on a vague icon and not knowing what will happen. It's thrilling.

Re:Only part of the population can think abstractl

[joh]

Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book

Only part of the population can think abstractly. The exact percentage differs somewhat depending on what standard you use, but about 40 to 60% of the population is able to think using purely abstract models in well developed countries, without a good education far less. The rest may be very smart if they're dealing with physical objects or people, but the less it works like the "real world" the more lost they get.

And even those who *can* think using abstract models often just don't know that they can profit from things like an application having a unique design and style. Yes, things like fake pages and leather looks are just cosmetics, but they can make an app or a window look familiar and instantly recognizable among others.

Try it: use Expose in OS X and have only apps with "clean" UIs open -- they all look the same when zoomed out. The false-paginated address book still looks like an address book even at thumbnail size and you can find it without even trying.

Not everything that looks silly actually is silly.

The problems of the Ribbon

[master_p]

The people like me who complain on the Ribbon are not old geezers that cannot adjust themselves to the new way of doing things. There are legitimate reasons for complaining.

The Ribbon is actually worse than menus and toolbars because it forces the user to do more clicks than menus and toolbars. For example, if you make a piece of text bold, then you add a table, you have to click the 'home' tab in order to be able to change the font again. With toolbars, everything was on the screen all the time, you didn't have to click tabs.

Furthermore, the tabs of the Ribbon make it difficult to memorize where everything is. With toolbars, you could arrange them in such a way that you always had the same picture in front of you, which means you could memorize the interface much easier.

There are certain inevitable trade-offs

[DragonHawk]

From a classic Usenet "Computing Dictionary":

Easy to learn: Hard to use.

Easy to use: Hard to learn.

Easy to learn and use: Won't do what you want it to.

I'd call it a joke, but it's really rather apt. In most cases, there are trade-offs involved in UI designs. Make something flexible and powerful -- letting people do more -- and you necessarily make it more complicated, and harder to use. The more obvious and straight-forward you make a UI, the less you can pack into it.

Designing things that fit multiple user experience levels, and which transition cleanly, is hard.

This is one of the things I think the classic pull-down menu + toolbar paradigm does well. Sort things into categories, so like items are grouped. The accelerator keys for each menu item are highlighted, so as an intermediate step, you can remember (V)iew, (Z)oom, Whole (P)age. And shortcut keys are also displayed, so very frequently used commands give one the opportunity to remember something like [CTRL]+[0]. With icons next to the menu commands, you have an alternative shortcut for the mouse visually or mouse inclined.

Sadly, some people campaign actively against this kind of design, which facilities both novice and expert users. One complaint I read is that a Product Manager at Microsoft didn't like the underlined letters, saying novice users don't understand why letters are randomly underlined. While true, it also didn't really hurt them any. Meanwhile, removing the underlined letters prevents people who wish to do better from inquiring and improving themselves.

An advantage to GUIs is it lets those so inclined explore functionality. Hiding things removes that advantage. That's a loss.

Re:There are certain inevitable trade-offs

[Gr8Apes]

I can honestly say that I personally despise the Ribbon menu. Everything is moved, and nothing is obvious. It feels like every other MS menu change: a reason to have a new training class and certification test for "learning" what you already new, just in a new layout that makes little sense in comparison to the "old" one. Regarding ribbon, there's crap on the main "menu" that I never use, and stuff I do is buried. Fortunately, for me, MS Office products are an ever lower frequency used item, to the point I pretty much can ignore the entire toolset of late. I only need it occasionally when an alternative doesn't work, but even then it's painful.