Computer nerds are the last bastion of unadulterated bigotry, doing whatever they can to encourage a new digital apartheid and engaging in the worst forms of de-humanization rhetoric.
This could quite possibly be one of the best and most accurate quotes that I have seen posted on here in a long, long time. It about sums up the attitudes that I've seen from a number of programmers that I deal with on a daily basis.
I'm employed as a usability professional for a fairly major e-comm web site; which means that I get to see the world from the unique perspective of the users, and of the programmers. A lot of the time, problems with the system come down to sheer laziness by the programmers, not wanting to code it just a bit differently because "that's the way the back end works".
My users don't talk to the ass of the system, they talk to the face.
That face needs to be logically laid out, from the point of view of the user. Your idea of logical is fine on the back end where no one sees the code but other programmers. Your idea of logical is irrelevant on the front end where users see it. The only way to find out what is logical to the users is to run tests like this. Do some card sorts, run some hierarchical stucture evaluations, do some task based analyses, observe, go to your users and just watch them.
You're not programming for yourself, you're programming for your users. As long as you program for yourself, no one will ever use your products.
I see this attitude echoed in the *nix/BSD community far too frequently for comfort: Users are seen as stupid, as illiterate, as not caring to RTFM.
Well designed systems don't need a manual.
An OS is a tool, and a well designed OS is an invisible tool. All the OS is required to do is to allow a user to accomplish the tasks that they have set out to do, whether that's check their email, surf the web, write a paper, play a game, check their calendars, or look up a phone number.
The less the system makes itself visible to the user while they try to accomplish this task, the more likely the user will be to succeed and have a good experience.
Until you actually see a user struggle with an interface, something designed so illogically that it hurts, you'll never understand. Even if you do see a user struggle to the point where you just want to end the test, you'll never get it until you stop thinking of users as stupid. Users are not stupid. Period.
Pathetically poor usability will contribute 50% to the issue of Linux not being taken up on the desktop. The egotistical, ideocentric ideals of it's self proclaimed zealots will make up the other 50% of why Linux isn't taken up.
Get rid of those problems and maybe someone will consider it for use in somewhere other than in the server room.
Slashdot Mirror
How does a thread with 11 posts become generalized on Slashdot as iTunes for the PC is breaking all 5gb iPods?
There is something known as journalistic integrity, one piece of which involves not misrepresenting or overstating a single piece of information.
This could quite possibly be one of the best and most accurate quotes that I have seen posted on here in a long, long time. It about sums up the attitudes that I've seen from a number of programmers that I deal with on a daily basis.
I'm employed as a usability professional for a fairly major e-comm web site; which means that I get to see the world from the unique perspective of the users, and of the programmers. A lot of the time, problems with the system come down to sheer laziness by the programmers, not wanting to code it just a bit differently because "that's the way the back end works".
My users don't talk to the ass of the system, they talk to the face.
That face needs to be logically laid out, from the point of view of the user. Your idea of logical is fine on the back end where no one sees the code but other programmers. Your idea of logical is irrelevant on the front end where users see it. The only way to find out what is logical to the users is to run tests like this. Do some card sorts, run some hierarchical stucture evaluations, do some task based analyses, observe, go to your users and just watch them.
You're not programming for yourself, you're programming for your users. As long as you program for yourself, no one will ever use your products.
I see this attitude echoed in the *nix/BSD community far too frequently for comfort: Users are seen as stupid, as illiterate, as not caring to RTFM.
Well designed systems don't need a manual.
An OS is a tool, and a well designed OS is an invisible tool. All the OS is required to do is to allow a user to accomplish the tasks that they have set out to do, whether that's check their email, surf the web, write a paper, play a game, check their calendars, or look up a phone number.
The less the system makes itself visible to the user while they try to accomplish this task, the more likely the user will be to succeed and have a good experience.
Until you actually see a user struggle with an interface, something designed so illogically that it hurts, you'll never understand. Even if you do see a user struggle to the point where you just want to end the test, you'll never get it until you stop thinking of users as stupid. Users are not stupid. Period.
Pathetically poor usability will contribute 50% to the issue of Linux not being taken up on the desktop. The egotistical, ideocentric ideals of it's self proclaimed zealots will make up the other 50% of why Linux isn't taken up.
Get rid of those problems and maybe someone will consider it for use in somewhere other than in the server room.