the real hardcore Gentoo users won't consider you a Linux guru until your self-starting Linux system begins its bootstrap procedure by constructing your PC and CD-ROM drive using a desktop matter fabricator.
It's been established that the KDE/Gnome metaphor doesn't work at all and that the file manager and window manager need to be intergrated
That's been established, has it? By whom? When and how?
Oh, wait... you're just blowing smoke up our asses, aren't you, generalising your personal preferences by pretending that everyone else agrees with you...
Of course it's blindingly obvious, we have seen it for 50 years.
It was blindingly obvious 50 years ago. Look at the designs of reel-to-reel tape recorders. Once it was realised that consumer models didn't require dial-controlled variable speed the moved immediately to the present layout : for example.
Well, there's a reason why Oil is called Black Gold. Ask the Dakota Sioux who signed a treaty guaranteeing them their ancestral lands in the Black Hills...
they put gears in different spots because you have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT GEAR BOX.
I know that. The point is, UI designers would tell you this is the wrong way to design things -- you start with the consistent interface (all gears in the same place on the stick), and engineer the gearbox backwards from that.
beyond the most important features : steering wheel, pedals and indicators.
I was explicitly excluding those three things. They're fixed, except for which side the indicators are on. (And rightly so -- if I have to think about them, even for a second, I'm going to kill someone. That's not true for the vast, vast majority of software interfaces).
Like most/.ers, this guy committed the cardinal sin of research. He took a few of his own personal preferences with respect to UI design and generalised them to the population at large, paying no attention to whether there was any evidence that this was valid.
He then passed these prejudices off as insight, and research.
It depends. If I have to use a Windows machine do a few short tasks, and I haven't had to do them for a while. I'm pretty inefficient (keep trying to use the emacs keys in Word... grrr). But, in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't matter, because I'm only inefficient for a little while, and then I'm either finished, or my muscle memory is temporarily retuned. I probably have to concentrate a little more.
My work and home computers use different keyboard layouts (US and UK) and I find I can flick between them with little concious thought. Psychologically, it's quite interesting.
Going back to the VCR example, you'll note that the Rewind button is always to the left of Fast Forward (whether the Play button is in the middle, or on one side (typically left) is debateable) because it's intuitive to think directionally like that (a timeline).
But that's not user interface design, as the modern UI designers choose to use the term. That's been well understood from the early days of cassette decks, and is now, surely, a truism. And you can bet that it wasn't a UI designer who thought of it, but one of the early engineers. Why? Because, as you say, its completely intuitive (i.e. blindingly obvious).
If something is thatintuitive, it doesn't need a UI designer to design it. If it's not that intuitive, it is not, IMHO, going to be all that much of a help.
Your point about uniform icons is true, and I accept it completely (also a great help for operating machines in foreign languages).
It doesn't have all the features you could hope for (FM tuner, voice recorder built in, Ogg Vorbis support, etc), but it does what it does so well that even technophobes can "get it."
I find that if something has a lot of features, all that happens is that technophobes don't use them. My dad's DVD player plays MP3 CDs, PhotoCDs, audio CDs, VCDs, and has any number of memory, access and replay settings.
I don't think anything beyond Play, Pause and Eject for DVDs have ever been touched.
User interfaces must have certain aspects similar or they are confusing.
I agree. But after that, if you throw anything vaguely sane at me, I'll cope.
But modern UI research goes far beyond those truisms, and tells me that if everything doesn't have an utterly consistent look and feel between apps, it will confuse my poor addled brain.
I regularly use KDE, OS X and Windows XP (my ecclectic home network) and find that a brief period of stumbing about is all that is necessary to aquaint the user with basic filesystem functions and get using apps.
Right, me too. By basic point, which I expressed pretty badly[0], was that -- as long as there was some superficial similarity (menus/buttons/WIMP paradigm), I'm gonna be able to cope, and the rest is just window dressing.
[0] But hey, I get to write another post explaining myself = more karma! points! (Laughs evily)...
Would you not say, though, that the two cars have equivalent interfaces? What if you had to reach under the passenger seat to push the brakes?
I'm not saying there is no such thing as bad interface design. I've used vi... and your example would be another case. But beyond the most important features : steering wheel, pedals and indicators, they're actually more disimilar than similar.
Slashdot Mirror
A pedant.
the real hardcore Gentoo users won't consider you a Linux guru until your self-starting Linux system begins its bootstrap procedure by constructing your PC and CD-ROM drive using a desktop matter fabricator.
Oh, wait
It's called that because the the "sabot" is a broad, thick, discardable coating, which (supposedly) is a bit like a clog.
You mean my Vic-20 based games console is already out of date? But it had "Blue Meanies From Outer Space" on it!
ObHistorical Pedantry :
i) There wasn't actually anyone called Ned Ludd.
ii) The Luddites were active in the early 19th century, not the mid-18th.
For the most part your post was very interesting and informative, but at the end it just tailed off into inconsequence, as if you'd run out of ideas.
Clearly, you are indeed a scholar of Mr Stephenson's work.
Which begs the question "Why do so many people who don't know what the phrase "begs the questioon" means, use it in conversation"?
Clue : it does not mean "leads to the obvious next question..."
Do you really think thats how the manual gearstick was invented? Or why it has its present design?
Or that such a method would, or indeed could, produce a better design?
Well, there's a reason why Oil is called Black Gold. Ask the Dakota Sioux who signed a treaty guaranteeing them their ancestral lands in the Black Hills...
I think thats silly. Evidently, you do to.
No wonder he's reticent about providing information.
Fyodors are supposed to remain closed at all times.
(Sorry)
Everything else can be changed.
What is this thanksgiving of which you speak.
Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Like most /.ers, this guy committed the cardinal sin of research. He took a few of his own personal preferences with respect to UI design and generalised them to the population at large, paying no attention to whether there was any evidence that this was valid.
He then passed these prejudices off as insight, and research.
It depends. If I have to use a Windows machine do a few short tasks, and I haven't had to do them for a while. I'm pretty inefficient (keep trying to use the emacs keys in Word... grrr). But, in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't matter, because I'm only inefficient for a little while, and then I'm either finished, or my muscle memory is temporarily retuned. I probably have to concentrate a little more.
My work and home computers use different keyboard layouts (US and UK) and I find I can flick between them with little concious thought. Psychologically, it's quite interesting.
If something is thatintuitive, it doesn't need a UI designer to design it. If it's not that intuitive, it is not, IMHO, going to be all that much of a help.
Your point about uniform icons is true, and I accept it completely (also a great help for operating machines in foreign languages).
I don't think anything beyond Play, Pause and Eject for DVDs have ever been touched.
But modern UI research goes far beyond those truisms, and tells me that if everything doesn't have an utterly consistent look and feel between apps, it will confuse my poor addled brain.
Which is just patronising.
[0] But hey, I get to write another post explaining myself = more karma! points! (Laughs evily)...