Human Interface Design Hall of Shame

dayeight writes "I'm taking a class on human interface design at Bennington College, and started doing some out of class research, and found this site to the most entertaining by far. "

Comments

Already posted in July 1998, more links...

[Raphael]

A link to that very interesting site was posted in July 1998, so this is not really new for those who have been on /. for more than a year.

Several interesting links were posted among the replies to that story. I will re-post a few of them here, so that you do not have to browse through the old messages:

• useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website.
• Usable Web: Guide to Web usability resources
• MacKiDo/Interface: What is user interface, and what is superior (and why).
• User Interface Engineering

Follow these links if you are interested in user interfaces (mostly for GUI). There is no lack of good advice on the net. This makes me wonder why we still see so many bad user interfaces in the latest programs (even in GNOME and KDE).

"Intuitive"; Alan Cooper; Interface paradigms

[Clairvaux]

Ha! One of those interesting confluences.

I just now happened to be engaged in my semi-annual receive-ye-wisdom-from-the-Master-Alan-Cooper ritual. This ritual involves critically examining my most recent 6-month interval of design experience in relation to his book on design: About Face: The Essentials of UI Design.

First, a comment about the term "intuitiveness." AC discusses this term at some length and makes points about it that I agree with strongly.

A few choice excerpts starting from p. 57:

"No rational thought is evident in the process [of intuition.] ... In the computer industry, and particularly in the user interface design community, the word intuitive is often used to mean easy-to-use or easy-to-understand. I'm a big fan of easy-to-use, but it doesn't promote our craft to attribute its success to metaphysics.
...
Instinct is a hard-wired response that involves no conscious thought. Intuition is one step above instinct because, although it requires no conscious thought, it is based on a web of knowledge learned consciously.
...
Intuition is a middle ground between having consciously learned something and knowing something instinctively. If we have learned that things glowing red can burn us, we tend to classify all red-glowing things as potentially dangerous until proven otherwise."

I often see people in our industry confuse the terms "ease-of-use," "intuitiveness," and "instinctiveness." The last Marketing VP I worked with was fond of saying that the nipple is most intuitive interface there is. This is just flat out WRONG. The nipple is an instinctive interface -- we're born with the knowledge of how to use it. Well, some of us anyway.

Intuition, on the other hand, is a non-rational, often non-conscious process of transferring other, learned knowledge to a new set of circumstances. Definitely not true of a nipple.

Now that I've beat the "intuitive" issue into a bloody pulp, I can address David's conclusion. He said:

Entirely too many programmers think that because something is intuitive to them, it will automatically be intuitive to the rest of the world.

I respectfully disagree with the first premise. I don't think the typical programmer gives much thought to the interface or interaction elements of their work at all. How many developers do you know who give thought whatsoever to concepts like "affordances," "visual fugue," or "visual motif?" Primitives vs. idioms? Restricting the interaction space?

AC has a superbly articulated explanation for this.

"The technology paradigm of user interface design is simple and incredibly widespread in the computer industry. The technology paradigm merely means that the interface is expressed in terms of its construction--of how it was built.
...
The overwhelming majority of software programs today are Metabolist in that they show us, without any hint of shame, precisely how they are built. There is one button per function, one function per module of code, and the commands and processes precisely echo the internal data structures and algorithms.
...
Engineers want to know how things work, so the technology paradigm is very satisfying to them. Engineers prefer to see the gears and levers and valves because it helps them understand what is going on inside the machine ... but most users don't have either the time or desire. They'd much rather be successful than be knowledgeable, a state that is often hard for engineers to understand."

(Emphasis added)

I'll add a comment to this. Many engineers fall victim to this technology paradigm, but many engineers are also (justly) proud of their efficient/clean/structured/extensible/blazingly fast design of the ENGINE. Perhaps they unconsciously resist anything that hides, conceals, or otherwise covers the beauty of their design.

Well the fact of the matter is, very few people examine the engine or transmission or suspension when buying or driving a car. In fact few people even care. Drivers are typically interested in getting where they want to go in reasonable comfort without mechanical malfunctions, running out of fuel, or having to understand the disc-brake mechanism. That's why the DESIGNERS of cars are different people than the ENGINEERS .. perhaps our industry too will someday embrace this distinction. Until then, we engineers have sole responsibility for the utility of our creations. We still mostly have to wear the interaction-designer-hat and should take the time to learn from people who spend time really thinking about these problems, like AC, and iarchitect.com.