Are Computers Getting Too Easy To Use? 269
An unnamed correspondent writes: "The latest issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing has a paper by Bradley Dilger called The Ideology of Ease. Dilger writes that making computers "easy" may also make them less useful. 'Ease is never free: its gain is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, health, or a combination thereof,' he says." Some of the allusions seem a little stretchy (I'm not sure that Marx has much to do with user interface design) but Dilger makes an interesting case for re-thinking the motives behind some moves toward "easiness." Especially as GUIs for Linux proliferate, it makes sense to think about exactly what constitutes ease.
Being easy means being productive (Score:2)
Emacs-like systems, with a built-in language for detailed operations instead of menus aren't the answer either. How many people have the time to spend learning to program in elisp? I myself have programmed computers for 25 years and still have to learn how to be productive in Emacs. I plan to learn it. Yes, I really mean it, it's the first thing I'll do in the twenty-third century.
Meanwhile, how can we make computers more productive, without making people waste time learning useless details about internal computer workings? I think Artificial Intelligence is the answer. But AI needs to reach a capacity threshold to become useful in this context. That gay paper clip is irritatingly stupid, but at least it's one step in the right direction.
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
I can definitely believe this, but I'm curious: how do you differentiate between Mac and Windows people? What type of computers does your college library use?
Re:Ironic (Score:3)
I find it ironic that a paper on ease of use uses such unapproachable language. I found to be over-analytical and bombastic (I love self-describing words).
Not to pick on you in particular, deacent, but I was rather amused to see several people commenting on the vernacular the author demonstrated.
As I was reading it, I was thinking of how nice it was to see someone who dares push beyond the simple vocabulary we're used to encountering on network television and even in most newspapers. The "people who use big words are elitist" and general anti-literate attitude that prevails in North America disgusts me. (And you'd think that people who, in general, claim to have sufferred mild persecution for their intellect would be the last to criticize such an author.) Even if he did manage to lose a good chunk of his readership by mixing in several coined terms without defining them until a couple paragraphs later, he used the most accurate language he could find for the job. More power to him.
And don't forget that the man teaches writing. He'd very nearly look bad if he were to forego a smattering of tri-sylibic words in everything he publishes.
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Re:Yes. (Score:2)
It would be more like a car maker letting you have a simple way of setting the air/fuel mixture and timing from a little panel by the stereo.
It can be easy but wrong but never easy enough (Score:2)
Ask a boss (Score:2)
In my experience, it's bad business.
Don't pay someone a lot of money to do something they don't have the skill set to do. You don't send a script kiddie to do a gurus job in a network, and you don't send a veepee to fix a peecee. People (unlike computing) have limited skill sets and it's important for a business to get the most out them without expending a lot of money in wasted time.
If an employee teaches themselves (on their own time) to fix their computer when something goes wrong, they'll be a more productive person. On the other hand, I don't want a board member to cancel all his client meetings for the week because he can't figure out how to print out his presentation. You get an expert in to fix the issue and move on!
Put another way:
You've got 2 employees.
Alice and Bob.
Alice spent the weekend evaluating fixed wireless conectivity for the company network and Bob spent his weekend golfing with the clients son. On Monday the client calls to close the order and the network is down. Q:Do you put Alice on the phone with a client she doesn't know and Bob in the server room trying to find the "any" key?
A:No. People gravitate toward things they like doing and build their skill sets around that choice, and a good business will let them do that.
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
oh, you mean we should be using Microsoft Outlook?
Ease of use versus power (Score:2)
So users start off with the friendly tools, as they grow more comfortable they switch to the advanced mode. In time they might well grow so advanced that they craft their own tools under the scripting/linking system to automate tasks that they want to be done.
Essentially it would be taking the Unix 'find' command which is powerful but not easy to use and you write a new simple GUI front end to it, with a simple mode that allows for easy selection of the starting directory and a fill in the blank approach for the -name field with the default -print modifier. And the advanced mode invokes find with a few more fancy options. The power user then starts using find directly or creates their own little button on some control panel if they need say, something that will present a window of all their log files for the day.
What you need is to encourage the creation of these tools and make it easy to link them together under the language of your choice. GNOME and KDE are taking steps in the right direction with Bonbono and KParts respectively, but sometimes I wonder if that goes far enough in some ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:two sorts of ease (Score:2)
User "stupidity" is usually due to this maddening cycle: rather than explain key concepts (not even the difference between * and a regexp, I mean key concepts like files go in directories they try to hide the concept and make it unnecesary (rather than put applications on your disk in an appropriately named directory, applications go under the Start menu.) That backfires when you ned to do something not in the Start menu. But by that point, the computer and the OS has already been sold and invested in by the user. So the incentive for computer/OS makers is to sell units that appear to be useful, rather than be useful in real life.
Me, I don't care how easy and lickable the interface is, is has to come with a MANUAL that TELLS you how to DO THINGS. :-P
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
Sacrifice (Score:2)
Of course they're too easy! (Score:4)
Man, when I started out (1973), you had to be really, really dedicated to use a computer. Everyone who used one knew how to program (ok, mostly because they didn't do much else). When I hacked into my first UNIX system (1975, one of the hundreds at Bell Labs in Holmdel), half the users didn't even have passwords. Didn't need 'em, UNIX (System III, maybe something even earlier) was just to hard to use.
Now anyone can learn a computer. My Mom knows three operatings systems (AmigaOS, MacOS, Windows). What's this world coming to? They were hard to create, they should be hard to use. In fact, most of you shouldn't be on a computer, either. I think the test should be "can I design one from scratch". In case there's no silicon FAB in your backyard, you can use FPGAs...
He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
Bullshit.
This may be true in a Microsoft or Apple type world, where there's only one GUI and it's the only available choice, and OS is written around the GUI, but it's complete nonsense in the rest of world.
Linux, *BSD, and Unix are built with a robust operating system designed for maximum utility, with the GUI residing in user space where it belongs, and very little done to the OS to make the GUI's job easier.
In such an architecture, you can make the GUI as "easy to use" as you want, without affecting another user's ability to "get at the guts", because he doesn't have to use your GUI.
That is why he is wrong, and that is why we will win.
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Same applies to Internet (Score:3)
With the advent of the Web (A Very Good Thing) suddenly people without the knowledge of how things work and many other general skills were thrust into an arena where it was easy for them to crear nonsense and havoc. (who do you think put the chaos there?)
To quote my father when a non-tech would ask what was so good about the web- "Nothing, stay off, don't clog it for those of us who want to actually use it."
Im not saying that the Web is a bad thing, but with the ease of use comes an inevitable loss in standards of quality.
I agree 100%, but.... (Score:2)
The real costs in IT come not from the cost of shrinkwrap, but from all the support and downtime associated with ignorant users. We should attack the root of the problem, ignorance, not just the immediate stumblings.
"too easy"?! oh please! (Score:3)
In the real world, work is typically divided into tasks. People have a hard time concentrating on more than one task at a time, which is why a task division is logical. Computers however, do not work like this, so a task division and a division into applications is not at all as clear. I like the Java idea a lot where the whole collection of objects running / "living" in the virtual machine is essentially one big application.
Recently, web based user interfaces are everywhere. This is a pretty interesting analogy because it's based on documents - almost reports. "Here is the current situation. What do you want to do? Ok.. here's the situation after you did that."
The way I see user interfaces in, say, 3-5 years, is that we have large systems of objects, be it Java, COM/DCOM, Corba or whatever, collaborating between relatively small and simple devices. There could be some in a VCR, some in a TV, some in a game console, some in a web pad, some in a cellular phone etc.. Then you have user interface consoles; cell phones and web pads for instance, that you use to access the data in the network / system of objects. The user interfaces will be relatively simple - much like that of a TV.. On, off, volume, select channels.
To perform more complex tasks, you might use some kind of agent system, assigning tasks to autonomous agents that carry out the tasks on their own and report back to you. Artificial intelligence is an area that has been largely forgotten lately. People make fun (perhaps rightly so) of the Microsoft Office actors (the paperclip), but the fact is that this is a very clever system and can help making systems much easier to use in the future.
Whatever happens, it seems pretty bizarre to claim that computers are getting too EASY to use. Please! We are nowhere near that point yet! The user interfaces we have now are very primitive and un-user-friendly.
Tough getting anywhere... (Score:2)
One of my peeves is that one can't do as much as they think they can with the easy interface. One good example of this is most of the scanner software out there. I often see scanning software that has simple selections: Scan for web, scan at photo quality, scan for blah...and so on. This isn't always the best. A great majority of the users out there use scanning software for a very specific task -- and most of those people know enough (or far more) to do optimal image settings. Say I want to do a 1280x1024 scan of an image at 32bit and so on -- which option do I choose? scan for web, scan for whatever?
Oversimplification is fine for the average user. But it would be nice if (in many cases) the power user could tweak things so that we can do what we want. Sawfish (formerly SawMill), a windows manager for XFree86 does a good job with this by allowing you to select configuration levels. Why can't everyone do this?
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
Did you read more than three words of my comment?
I'll spell it out again, in small words:
One person can use a GUI that's "easy to use". Another can use a GUI that lets you get to the guts.
I did not mention the CLI at any point in any of my comments on this topic, yet two people so far (perhaps more, I only read at +2) have attempted to refute statements I supposedly have made about it.
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Re:Really interesting... (Score:2)
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Making things difficult only breeds masochists (Score:2)
I have a ten page paper to type up later tonight, should I abandon the evil Microsoft ways and do it in vi instead of Word? Would this be acceptable for you cli d00d?
Re:Heh, yeah, right... (Score:2)
The majority of web sites don't require HTML smarts to submit. By default /. does. While it allows a few cool features, it is inconsistent and prone to bend over newbie submitters. Slashdot *could* of been standerd, but that's not cool for hacker-macho no?
It's a perfect example actually.
Re:Of course they're too easy! (Score:2)
What is, my dear?
While there may be certain (numerous) problems with your car that you *can* fix, most modern cars are complicated enough that you will not be able to fix many of the significant problems that could occur. If you're really into fixing your car's ABS system, please, let everyone else know where you drive so we can steer clear.
Yes, so? The analogy to fixing your own computer is perfectly valid, where 'fixing' usually means replacing the broken part with a new one.
He's right on the money. (Score:2)
>In computing, the contemporary GUI sets aside >the idea of mastery as not only unnecessary but >unattainable.
This is exactly what I believe. The sign of a good GUI is not that a user never exposed to it can immediately master the fundamental basics, rather that mastery of the fundamental basics can be easily applied to the mastery of new programs.
>But the specifics of the spatial metaphor vary >widely. Consider the icons on the Windows >desktop: the Network Neighborhood, My Computer, >Recycle Bin, and any shortcut and file icons >that may be present all have the same basic >appearance -- but they function very >differently. In some applications, dialog boxes >that accomplish file management functions use a >left-to-right hierarchy; others may choose top->to-bottom; still others will make use of both.
The problem with windows is that it makes a lot of exceptions to the desktop metaphor. Move a folder to somewhere else, that's all well and good. Try moving the "control panels" or "dial-up-networking" folder, you're told you can't do it.
Drag a a file to the desktop--no problem. Drag an program to the destop, windows makes a shortcut instead.
>Worse yet, when there is a system problem, and >the structures which supply ease are replaced >with "Unexpected exception in module >Vx00f323.dll" or "Oops. Dumping core . .
Again, another great M$ inconsistency. Objects like "My Computer" are given Plain English names that make sense, but then we take a look at the system files and they're all DOS 8.3 naming convention gobbledygook. Windows is a 32 bit OS, unfortunately windows programmers are still 16-bit. It is intersting to note that the MacOS has a filename limit of 31 characters, but still has system files with far more intuitive names. The example the author gave also illustrates another M$ inconsistency: half the time they try to do everything for the user with their wizards and talking paperclips--and wind up getting in the user's way. The other half of the time they default to their old DOS heritage--and shamelessly and completely abandon the user to a system so arcane, confusing, and erratic that it makes kernel hacking look intuitive.
People say that the desktop metaphor has failed. I say that it is not the desktop metaphor that has failed, but rather the failure of non-mac programmers to adequately understand this metaphor and implement it consistently. Good GUI programmers don't try to do everything for the user, they allow the user to make better, more informed choices in a highly productive manner.
Re:User friendly != Idiot Friendly (Score:2)
Never before have have I had any problems with the formatting of any of my posts regardless of the platform or browswer I used to submit them.
Had I been aware that mozilla would have this problem, I most certainly would have used "br" and "p" where needed, in brackets instead of quotes naturally.
As you can clearly see, with regular old netscape, the paragraph formatting is easily achieved with simple carriage returns.
Lee
Re:Yes. (Score:2)
This is a good analogy -- but I can put a different spin on it. All of the above items should certainly be visible to the driver -- because ALL drivers are concerned with these displays and options. (With the exception of the temperature gage -- which nowadays is often no longer a gage but is simply a warning light when temperature is not ideal.)
There are loads more driver adjustable features on a car though: fuel mixture, engine timing, suspension travel and stiffness, steering sensitivity, idle RPM, turbo boost pressure, etc., etc. Should all of these have dashboard controls? They could. Many race cars to have dashboard controls for some of these.
But in a modern passenger car they're hidden from the driver, because not ALL drivers need them, and their presence will only clutter the interface and confuse the novice driver.
Re:Language is hard to use too and 20 years to lea (Score:2)
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
Empirical data (Score:2)
Re:User friendly != Idiot Friendly (Score:2)
Lee
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
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Re:User friendly != Idiot Friendly (Score:2)
Lee
Re:Contaminated sample : Learn The TRUTH (Score:2)
You see, each GUI in the world actually presents a fiction to the user, e.g., files are "documents" that are stored in "folders" which can be "moved" to the "trash".
That's a very striking point. As Dilger points out, that original interface made sense because the target audience for such a GUI was business workers already familiar with real files, real folders, and real trash cans.
Expecting college students (who probably don't have much work experience in a paperful office) to have an existing knowledge of such things is a problem: The fiction has to be learned.
It doesn't make sense to base the interface metaphor on experience and knowledge the users don't have! You wouldn't expect a city kid to know how to milk a cow, or a bushman to drive a city bus, without some training.
The problem is, users end up learning this metaphor as if it were the truth of things, and not just a convenient mental model to explain the bare metal underneath.
I say, if you're going to have to teach something from scratch, find a better metaphor based on something the users already know, or stick to teaching the actuality of things. Don't maintain the cargo cult repetition of ritual without understanding.
(Yes, this issue is near and dear to me. I've mentioned A GUI for Gurus [wgz.org] before, and i'll keep mentioning it until someone builds it. Maybe the Entity [evilplan.org] folks...)
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Re:Easy to use? NOOO!!! Easy to fsck up? YES!!! (Score:2)
Amen, brother! I'm tech support at a large, Midwestern University, and I see the exact same things. You forgot to mention people who leave their email running -- I've lost count of how many times I've shut down email or Hotmail and emailed the person a warning about leaving their email running. I ask them to consider the fact that someone else, less ethical than I, could use their email account (pine from a shell on a Sun box) to do a number of illicit things, not to mention devnulling all their files. The ones that bother to write back and thank me are just *shocked* to discover this!
On the other side, there are the students who know just enough to do damage. My favorite was the person who thought he'd format a disk under Windows NT. Since all the public computers were in use, and it was late at night, he'd thought he'd just "borrow" one of the staff computers (that happened to be accessible by going behind the counter) -- couldn't hurt, right?
At that point in time, staff computers didn't have supervisor passwords on them (they do now ;-), so he just booted up, ran command.com and was at the C: Prompt. He put in his floppy, typed "format a" and sat back, secure in the knowledge that he was going to end up with a formatted disc. Yup -- a formatted HARD disk -- idiot. He'd forgotten the colon after the "a", and DOS was "smart" enough to 1) reject the "a" without a colon and 2) STUPID enough to run format ANYWAY -- on the *C* drive! Aarghhh!!!
Needless to say, there was a great deal of staff wonderment the next morning at that particular computer -- what could have possibly happened? Gee, computers are *so* complicated, etc. :-P The only good thing that came out of all this is that I decided to quit this sorry-ass job cleaning up after L-users and do something more interesting with my life and skills. Final freedom occurs in 431 hours!!! =8-D
Easy to use? NOOO!!! (Score:2)
Here at a state university, I frequently watch people as they use computers to whatever serves their purposes. And what do I see?
LEGIONS, dozens, nay, *hundreds* of students, who use these computers only to do what they absolutely have to, who use the computers strictly to surf porn, chat, and do email.
It sickens me to watch as these students never learn to do more, and they use the non-SSL webCGI to do their email, because it's pretty and "easy to use."
These people are the ones that just close the browser instead of clicking the "logout" button, leave ICQ registered to them and save their password, leave 1-click shopping turned on at Amazon (in a public lab) and often walk away and forget to logout of the terminal, because "I don't have to do that on the one in my room!"
Sure, "easy to use" interfaces cause the mainstream public to flock to computers, but these people never do learn to do more with a computer than these simple operations.
I've watched students go through year after year, advancing from Freshman to Senior status, and not growing in computer proficiency.
Another common theme among this class of students are the ones who use the lab to type up papers, because the professor requires them to be typed. However, looking through the menus for that spell checker option seems to laborsome; I have grown tired of counting how many college level (COLLEGE LEVEL!!!!) students typing up papers with the reading proficiency of a third grade student.
And I'm in Iowa, the state where we're told we have the highest literary rates, the smartest kids, and the best schools!
To steal a term from alt.sysadmin.recovery, these interfaces spawn thousands of Lusers, not users, not students who are truly interested in computers.
Maybe I'm a bit harsh, considering my first computer booted into BASIC and would do little or nothing without learning how to program it, and assembly quickly became second nature to me. But it wouldn't have, if that computer had a hard disk loaded with windows 98!
If you ditch ease of use, you can focus on other goals, such as security, speed, and flexibility. These parts are far more important than catering to the masses who have little interest in learning to use the tool they have.
If we developed knives that would cut things for the chef automatically, would he learn to use the knife manually? Probably not.
If we made hammers that only needed to hang from a wall and would drive in all the nails, would the carpenter learn how to use the hammer? No.
Likewise, making computers easy to use lures not the truly interested people, it only gets the slightly curious-but-don't-really-give-a-damn people onboard.
Computers should, by their nature, be somewhat difficult to use. This will get the lusers out of the industry, and the students who are flocking to become CS students that are motivated solely by money out. In the end, ditching ease of use will save us.
Let's face it, there are some people who simply should not be using a computer, much less programming one!
Yes, people can learn, but take your average Business or Elementary Education major, give them a one-semester course on Visual Basic, and watch them develop some truly nasty stuff.
We had a Business Major get a job in the ITS dept because it happened to be one of the better-paying student jobs, and he developed this horrible VB app that propogated throughout the labs as our method for authenticating users (on win95.)
And what was the result? No encryption, local lists containing thousands of SSNs on publically-accessible network volumes, a program that segfaulted often and lost students' work when they had to reboot, and open network ports that permitted any user to capture any other users' SSNs. Computers which were virtually unusable because the Ctrl, Alt, and windows keys were disabled.
And don't forget, just removing the vbrun*.dll file would completely circumvent the security completely!
Stupidity breeds stupidity. Mobs are generally panicky and stupid in the first place, and going "easy to use" only makes the lives of the CS/ITS people (who can DO something with a computer) more difficult and troblesome.
Ditch ease of use, and get all the lusers off computers around the globe. Technology will increase, and the cumulative IQ of computer users everywhere will skyrocket.
GUIs can be thought of as clothes (Score:2)
The GUI can be considered like clothes, or the icing on the cake. In almost all situations (Macs excluded) the GUI is not required to use the system. This philosophy seems to now be going the way of the dodo ( thank you, uncle Bill) but it was once quite true, and it still is, at least for a little while longer.
So with the GUI as the clothes,
the central OS can be considered the skin,
and programming anything with moderate complexity requires knowledge of the anatomy at the skin level or below.
The sad thing is, a great many new users will go into a store, see the computer's flashy clothes, and then by it, as if it were all a fashion contest.
And so, that's how the BigCompaniesTM will set them up--give it the prettiest clothes they can.
But that has little value when it comes to actually using the computer for things more interesting than writing a paper, checking email, or webbrowsing.
It just sickens me to see how the cycle is propogated. Newbies buy easy to use Windows boxes, and their kids become script kiddies and chat junkies, but all too often don't learn about the computers' internals, or how it really works.
They can move and click a mouse, and that's all that really matters...right?
I distinctly recall a kid who tried to tell me he was a 1337 hax0r, and then tried to con me into passing him all my registered software. Less than a week later, he came to me to say that his sister had acquired a computer and he couldn't configure it to dial into our local ISP. When asked why, he said, "My sister dropped the mouse, so it didn't work!"
Since when is the mouse required to configure a computer for Internet access?
I was fortunate, I guess, because some Great White Guru came down and divined into my brain the knowledge of the keyboard shortcuts.
But should that not be common knowledge?
He missed his own point (Score:2)
Students can begin to assume they can't get their work done without the computer helping them.
That has nothing to do with how easy the computer makes doing their work. The real problem is that they do not have a real understanding of what it is they are doing. As the paper, and most of the comments on
In fact, the original problem which motivated the paper is that instructors are asking their students to create hypertext projects to complement traditional essays. So they focus on creating essays, which is the actual work that needs to be done. Then they bring in an alternate way to do the work, using the computer, which is supposed to be a way to illustrate what is the actual work (the organization and expression of ideas) and what is the technology (pen and paper, typewriter, word processor, or powerpoint) that is used, so that they can learn to focus on the work, regardless of the technology. That should be the real point of a writing class.
Re: Of course they're too easy?! (Score:2)
Computers are complex machines, much more complex than any other machine used by man, and thus learning to use them (properly) will take much more time than learning to use a VCR, for example. A lot of people I know don't know how to use their VCR, so how could they possibly operate a machine that's thousands upon thousands of times as complex?
Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS go a long way to make computers easier to use. Too long a way. Many people expect to be able to buy a computer and work with it right away, without having to learn anything about computers first, not realising that it's not a simple kitchen appliance but an incredibly complex and powerful machine instead. They want to be able to drive a car without knowing how to use the clutch or the stick. They want to be able to drive around a city without knowing anything about traffic rules, like that you have to keep right, have to stop when the light goes green and the exceptions to that, and the exceptions to those exceptions ("no turn on red").
The internet is being flooded by people who send HTML email with lots of flashy colours, who make homepages in Frontpage that either come straight from a template or that have the most eyetearing colours you've ever seen and put them online on Geoshitties, Xoom, Yahoo or whatever. People who think netiquette somehow doesn't apply to them, that they should be able to decide what they do and do not want to do.
Yes, netiquette isn't a law, neither are table manners, yet when you're in a restaurant, you do adhere to table manners, so why don't you adhere to netiquette when you're online? Why do you spend lots of time learning to drive a car, yet expect to be able to use a computer instantly?
*sigh*
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Re:Easy is not always easy (Score:2)
Re:The problem is abstraction (Score:2)
Re:GUIs can be thought of as clothes (Score:2)
White Geek's burden (Score:2)
Re:Same applies to Internet (Score:3)
You're absolutely right there. But the difference is that people who don't know how to fly a 747 generally don't, whereas people who don't know how to use a computer do. That's the stupidity: it's not in not knowing how to use it, it's in trying to use it anyway.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:5)
His argument is that ease-of-use has ceased to be the means (as it was initially with the desktop metaphor) but the end of GUI design. That is, programmers are now trying to make things easy on the user, instead of easy to use productively.
An example of his point I'd like to reference is the "smart menus" in Microsoft Office, which deliberately hide functions in order that the user doesn't have to see them. That actually makes it harder to use the software's functions, and it doesn't make it any easier to use the existing ones; it simply lets the user feel at-ease, never even seeing options he doessn't understand.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:Yes. (Score:2)
Mixture and exhaust analysis, maybe, but compression indicators have been used by engine experts since the age of steam, before cars existed. They plot a continuous record of cylinder pressure as a function of crankshaft phase on a strip of paper.
Contaminated sample. (Score:2)
"(I should note here that I will be writing "students" all along when perhaps I should be saying "users" or something like that. The set of problems I will identify here is common to graduate students, instructors, staff, and undergraduates. However, I dislike the word users, and as a rhetoric and composition specialist my focus is teaching, so I'll be using "students" most of the time.)
Every student who takes a course in the NWE has a UNIX account with almost totally unrestricted Internet access. Students can make Web pages in one of the five NWE classrooms using one of several HTML editors available through our X-Windows interface. However, many students find the transition between the online environment and their home computer very unsettling."
The sample is flawed. Therefor, the conclusion is biased.
Yes, Newbies have trouble learning.
Yes, New network recourses require some learning.
Yes, New a interface requires going through a learning curve.
In short, this is little more than a helpdesk employee whinning about how stoooopid the CEO is for not remembering his subnet IP. Moreover, We've come a long way over the years to make computers easy and, if we would have never move toward "ease of use" we would all be writing our own drum memory drivers to push individual bits!
What are computers? (Score:3)
All of the above certainly employ computing technology. They even all have interfaces though of vastly differing sorts. No, none of them are the same as the general-purpose box that sits on your desk yet many of them duplicate the functions it performs.
At one time a 'computer' was a large hulking device that sat in a special air-conditioned room attended by a cadre of highly trained folks that spent all day performing mathematical calculatiions (hence a "computer".)
Now we use that underlying technology to edit digitized video, play interactive simulated 3D games, and instant-telegraph each other.
Are all of those 'computing'? Well, yes in one sense but no in another. Are all of the devices listed above 'computers'? Well, yes in one sense but no in another. Do all of them have interfaces? Well, yes in one sense but no in another.
What and how we use 'computers' have evolved. Their capabilites have also evolved. To argue that they've become 'dumbed down' is to ignore their ubiquity and specialization.
Tools are built appropriate to a their task. For computers that task is no longer calculating large tables of ballistics or whatnot but rather the ones listed above plus so many others. That we limit our tools to their task is not suprising: it's smart engineering.
Kee It Simple, Stupid means defining a tool's functions and paring off extranious functions. Make it the best at what it does and don't compromise it with superflous features. If it can be multipurpose great but don't let this interfere with it's basic usability.
Computers have become specialized tools. To confuse optimizing their functionality for their task (oftentimes interfering with extranious or lower-priority functions) with 'dumbing-down' is to ignore the features this specialization brings.
Re:GUIs can be thought of as clothes (Score:2)
Re:"too easy"?! oh please! (Score:2)
Ironic (Score:2)
I find it ironic that a paper on ease of use uses such unapproachable language. I found to be over-analytical and bombastic (I love self-describing words).
I think good UI is intuitable, i.e. users can easily use intuition to figure out how to accomplish a task. You should study users habits to come up with such an interface. If you ask a user what should be in an interface, they rarely tell you what you're looking for. Instead you end up with a lot of bells and whistles and a paradigm that doesn't work the way most people would find natural. This a large part of the reason that Windows (and other MS apps) look and act the way they do (aside from the crashing).
Another thing this article doesn't take into account is that most software development teams tend to treat UI as an afterthought or an experimentation in aesteics.
Lastly, if you are going to have users use FTP, I think that it's perfectly reasonable to expect those users to understand what they are doing, i.e. transfering files. It sounded like they didn't have a firm grasp of file management and I can hardly blame the UI for that. RTFM, but good documentation is another story.
-Jennifer
Clueless MS-Shill more like. (Score:2)
1) The best processors and hardware are designed to work best with Windows. All of these components take advantage of specific code inside Windows to bring us the best performance, particularly with processor intense work like multimedia.
Which is why 3D rendering on MIPS R10K chips (which run much slower than PIII's) is still faster than Intel boxes and why Photoshop on the Mac is still king. Oh, silly me. Wait, that's right, Windows is a faster web server, except Linux beats it hands down and Sparcs are phenomonal.
2) The when required phrase is key here. We aren't talking as much about how often completely new vesions come out, we're talking about the regular updates and bug fixes that any software requires.
Really. Explain why the F00F bug took 2 months to get fixed in Win95 and why critical security bugs are fixed faster on the free *nix systems than anything showing up on Microsoft's site.
Windows has the Windows Update web site. It has no peer, in fact, MS has a patent application pending because it is so good.
Oh, like that means anything.
There is no better way to be sure you have the latest security fixes and functionality patches.
Except most anything put out by a competitor.
Windows is extremely stable given its functionality, particularly the 2000 version. Uptimes of more than 1 year are common with properly configured systems.
Really? You have a release-copy Win2K box running for more than a year? I'd like to know how you managed that one. Course, Win9x until recently couldn't stay up *AT ALL* for more than either one or three (I forget which) month(s) because of a timer wraparound. Through NT4SP6 there are fixes for memory leaks and such that have a noticible impact on performance and stability after a couple months. No, you may have "correctly configured" boxes, but those boxes are massively overpowered compared to what you need.
Since we're talking "non-standard" systems, Alan Cox had a Linux box up for 4 years without a reboot, and this was the system that was known to have problems with a timer wraparound after a little over a year.
If you don't know how to set it up, don't bother to knock its stability.
Microsoft has constantly and continually billed NT/W2K as something easy to set-up and administer. Are you now admitting administering W2K/WinNT is not a simple matter?
The UI in Windows is customizable in a limitless number of ways.
This I want to see.
Want your file manager to look like a web browser? Done. How about putting web objects on your desktop? Done. Details in your file view of just big icons? You can have either with Windows.
Ooooo! As if that means anything useful. You give me a very small subset of things I can change. Can I change the window manager easily without worry about its stability and interaction with other programs? No. Does Windows offer me a way to significantly alter the feel of the desktop, not just the look? No. Does Windows offer me a selection of full-featured scriptable command-line shells? No.
You people will label me as a troll, but all of these points are valid.
Really? All those invalidated points don't mean squat to someone looking at facts.
Linux and BSD and the like can't hold Windows' jock strap in these areas.
That would be because Windows doesn't have a jock strap. It's not even playing with the little boys, much less the big boys in these areas.
It also goes a hell of a long way better than this, it can do SMP better,
Only for databases. For everything else it sucks raw eggs at SMP.
is easier to manage,
Didn't you just say that you had to be highly skilled to properly configure an NT server?
faster for most tasks,
You mean slower at common tasks, right? The Mindcraft test was an obvious joke, considering hardly anyone runs 4 NICs in a web server. Instead, they buy lots of little web servers which gives nice redundancy. On a single NIC system, NT gets its ass handed to it on a platter by Linux. Badly. Very badly.
more intuitive,
People like you keep saying this. I do not think that word means what you think it means. Windows is "intuitive" because it's familiar. If I deliver someone who has never *SEEN* a computer a Windows box and a Linux box, I'd wager money that neither will be intuitive to that person. Of course, NextStep makes Windows look like a Rube Goldberg contraption in terms of intuitiveness. Oh, wait, Windows *IS* a Rube Goldberg contraption in terms of intuitiveness.
has the backing of a major corporation,
Which has been proven to be illegally operating a monopoly and is doing its best to keep consumers locked into its platform, an act which is blatantly bad for the consumer.
virtually all software is released in a Windows version.
Finally a point, albeit a very minimal one. If the software you need to run, runs on another system, why constrain yourself? That and I can use Win4Lin or similar to use the software that is unavoidable.
Can any of these things be said of Linux?
Yes, and I wouldn't be lieing when I say them, unlike you and Windows.
--
Ben Kosse
Re:Funny how you mention Truespace (Score:2)
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
Maybe what is needed is something like Xerox PARC, were design Geeks can all get together and start from scratch again. A true reserach institute.
GUI design has stagnated, with every copying evryone else, and doing daft things such as Smart Menus to try and make it appear as though they are really improving the GUI. Lets have some real inovation.
Language is hard to use too and 20 years to learn. (Score:2)
Why do we spend 20 years of our life to learn to read and write? Is it because reading and writing is hard, or is it because reading and writing is so critical that our society DEMANDS high proficiency.... Proficiency that takes two decades to learn.
Computers are turning the same way. Kids are learning computers the same way they learned reading and writing. Because they're so valuable, so powerful, and so versatile.
Reading and writing is the most powerful tool yet imagined by the human mind. It let's one record knowledge, disseminate it, and store it. Computers are becoming just as powerful a tool.
We should be designing interfaces that may take 20 years to master, but create incredibly proficient users. Just with illiteracy, some people won't have the time or ability to gain that proficiency.
Idiot-proofing isn't the correct answer. We don't idiot-proof reading and writing skills, why should we do the same for computers skills?
Society needs the greatest number of people to be incredibly proficient in using computers.
Ask A User (Score:2)
Certainly, these users have learned how to do tasks as difficult (if not more so), than use a computer. Maybe it stems from a fear of "mucking up the works", or from fear of learning new skills, but there has to be a more psychological reason why people don't (or won't) master this very simple appliance.
--
Re:Python has limitations (Score:2)
IANAL but I'd say you are wrong about this, your program would only be interacting with the GPL'd program, not incorporating it.
i.e. your automation program is not a derivative work.
Does ease of use always mean "dumbing down"? (Score:2)
Perhaps we should be working on easy-to-use interfaces that are intended for a higher target IQ and a bit more study?
Thanks
Bruce
Computers are getting dangerously easy when... (Score:3)
Grandmothers are exchanging cookie recipes.
Children are being harassed daily by the same type of people who would try to kidnap them.
Rednecks say things like: "Maw, Paw done shot up the America Online again!"
oh, wait a minute, every one of these has happened!
{SARCASM}We're too late! We're DOOMED!{/SARCASM}
Re:Of course they're too easy! (Score:2)
You can find plenty of information on the web. My roommate fixed his own car after it broke down, using information found on the web and the car manual. The information is no more inaccessible than a Linux HOWTO. No different from setting up software or fixing your own computer right?
Outlook Express and security holes (Score:2)
Here the author tries to say that because MS Outlook express is easy to use, it therefore presents security hole.
I'm sorry my friend but this is bad logic. The security holes in outlook express are simply a design flaw. There are plenty of easy to use email clients out there for various platforms that do not suffer from this problem. This point is just plain weak.
The author has a number of suggestions at the end of his piece on how we can reduce peoples dependency on easy to use programs(!?!) which include education, encouragement, and basic design principles.
So to paraphrase and summarize Bradley Dilger, we need to make our people smarter, not our programs easier.
...and to that I counter:
Good luck buddy!
Re:Yes. (Score:3)
I would agree that this is a good example "hiding the machine from the user", but this is just a natural progresion of computer science. Drum, Core, and Random Access Memory have all given spawn to their own file systems to help a user store and retrieve information from them. Extending this logic, one could say that a journaling file system "makes it to easy" and doesn't really teach the user about the computer they are using. Clearly, this is progress to welcomed with open arms.
Should car makers include displays for compression per cylinder? Mixture? Exaust spectralnalysis? All of these items would be educational to the user and give the user a better understanding of how and why his car works, but it would not help him get to work in the morning.
If the product has a target demographic that is very diverse and crosses many differant educational levels, the interface should match the market.
What about BeOS? (Score:2)
Re:Same applies to Internet (Score:2)
one of the most irritating is ...
"you system is brocken and I can't get in to hotmail"
no the reason you cant get in to hotmail is because you typing your username / passwd in to the boxes on iemail ...
and one time someone told me that they could'nt get in to their email a/c because of the "firewall in work" and would'nt let me finish telling her that typing in her Email address and password in the username box of iemail would not get her anywhere near her a/c. and dont get me started on people who use aol ... let me just quote "but i dont need a password at home" ...and "can i send an EMAIL to someone in america ... does it cost more to send a mail to america"
needles to say that alot of people using the web have no understanding of what it is ... let alone how it works...
They just know the few little things that they have been shown and dont know enough/are'nt bright enough to figure out anything beyond what they do know ....
Re:Easier is a relative term (Score:3)
Leading to strange ideas such as how is such a user ment to have a clue what a stack frame and register dump in hex is ment to tell them.
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
I would really love to see a scripting langauge based toolkit (like say Tcl/Tk) which forced the Plan9 style cut and paste based menus. It would make GUI applications much more transparent and functional to serious users.
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:5)
While I agree that his statement is bullshit, your reply implies some steaming hot crap of its own.
While you can make the GUI itself as usable as you want, you certainly can't make the system as a whole easy to use unless the underlying non-GUI architecture is clean, consistent, tight, and well-organized. Typical end-users need more than a pretty symbolic graphic interface slapped over top of a chaotic, complex system; they need a system that is simple and well-organized in every place it is exposed, including the filesystem hierarchy and the ability to install and configure hardware and applications.
GNU/Linux or GNU/BSD systems are the furthest thing from this. They are chaotic and their overall organization (or lack thereof) hasn't been thought out well at all. It's not that the development community is incapable of developing a well-organized GNU/Linux or GNU/BSD system; it's that no one seems even remotely interested in doing so.
For instance, every program uses a different configuration file format, often times with its own steep learning curve. This is a headahce not only for expert users who want to configure everything with a text editor (they must usually learn a new and different scripting language just to configure each new app!), but for developers who have to implement a custom GUI configurator app and different file format parsing code for every program. What is needed in this instance is a common XML/schema-based configuration file format so that developers can write a single configurator app and have it suck in a schema that comes with every app it is used to configure; the configurator dynamically creates dialogs, controls, etc, based on the schema and can then be used to configure any program in existence--while expert users or administrators who want to telnet in and edit a configuration by hand can easily do so to an XML-based config file, and can then even run a common XML validator that verifies the syntactical correctness and well-formedness of the XML configuration file before doing something crucial like restarting a key system service.
Another foolish oversight in underlying GNU/Linux design is the practice of hard-coding absolute directory path references into programs. For instance, if you relocate gcc to a new directory, it breaks unless you (1) recompile it from sources and compile in a different hard-coded directory expectation, or (2) download binaries that someone else has already gone to the trouble of compiling that way for you. As an end-user or administrator, you have very little choice about where you can install a new program's files within the filesystem. This sucks for distribution makers who might want to make a simpler, better-organized filesystem hierarchy to make a GNU/Linux system that is more suited to normal people. For instance, I might want to create a distribution that has only 3 major root-level directories: /apps, /docs, and /system. But I can't do this now without hacking around on source code and rewriting every single app and utility and daemon I include in my system--and that's preposterous. Instead, every app should have been smartly programmed to not expect the existence of a file in a particular place in the filesystem, but instead to assume the existence of an environment variable in which it can look to retrieve the needed path; in this way, I (as an end user of intermmediate knowledge or as a distribution maker) can rearrange the filesystem hierarchy as I see fit, without having to hack around on the source for every installed program and recompiling it. In fact, I can even relocate installed binaries and other files and still have the program work--something that's a clear advantage over the world of Windows.
Easy "computers" make for stupid users. (Score:2)
I used to see it everyday, at my previous job. For instance, we had an excel guru, who many "tech" people in the company would go to for help when they needed to do a complex spreadsheet. This "guru" had a very difficult time with Novell NDS logins...just type in your password dumbass...and simple things like copying files, and understanding not to email 300MB files to remote laptop users (with modems.)
That, and his example of how people can manage files from within the application that creates them, but nothing else, are what really sum up his story.
Having worked in an envirnment supporting many non-computer literate users.
I agree fully with this article. Those of you talking about Linux/UNIX pervailing because of the ability to use both GUI, and CLI, are missing the point of the whole article.
-Pete
It's not just ease of use, but access to use. (Score:3)
In the end, each person needs to find the balance that is right for them. To have more configurability, they need to invest more time to do the actual configuring. To be able to configure in less time, they need to give up some of their configurability. This is a wide scale ranging from the Macintosh interface to actually programming an X application yourself. Obviously, actually programming the thing is the ultimate in configuration, but it takes the most time. On the other hand, using the Macintosh interface is much like watching a movie, you just sit back and watch without being able to change anything.
Missing the point entirely . . . (Score:3)
This all depends how that ease is obtained. This is no different from trading off power of a program against the speed or space resources it uses: of course you can make a program use fewer resources by making it do less. On the other hand, if done properly, you can often make it do *more* while using fewer resources.
Ease of use obtained by limiting your what you can do with the code, of course, necessarily makes this tradeoff, but that's just a straw man.
The difficulty of providing power while simultaneously delivering ease of use is overcome by excellent engineering. Real Ease of use obtained in modern software design is obtained by standardizing the general idioms with which many programs are to be used, and eliminating inconsistencies and awkward modalities that make software use more complex, not for the purpose of additional functionality -- but for the ease or ideosyncratic views of the programmer.
This latter "ease of use" actually empowers users, making it possible to do more, better and faster, without significant compromises.
Unlike the inherent conflicts between interactivity and fiction (where there is a true trade-off) one can at once offer a user consistency, elegance and power. It isn't as easy for the programmer to do this -- especially if the programmer is unfamiliar with user design issues -- but that isn't a relevant factor.
Ease of use is something for which we must constantly strive. Articles such as this simply offer lazy programmers excuses to rationalize shoddy engineering.
bad software (Score:5)
This sounds suspiciously like something out of an economics textbook: if you're at an equilibrium, utility maximizing point, you can't gain something without giving up something else in return.
However, the above is true only if you're at an equilibrium point, when all factors are in balance and you're forced to trade off one for another. The fact of the matter is, most software is difficult to use simply because it is poorly designed, with skill or little thought given to the end user experience -- end of story.
User friendly != Idiot Friendly (Score:3)
No cigar for you. (Score:4)
If you look at the very bottom of an article (before the footnotes and bibliography), you'll notice that Dilger writes:
What he's saying essentially is that he is opening a formal enquiry into this particular subject. It's the beginning of a scholarly dialogue about the ideology of ease; understanding this can be greatly beneficial to both academics and programmers and developers.Re:Yes. (Score:4)
I don't think your analogy is quite correct here. The Microsoft Office "hidden" menus are hiding functionality that cannot be duplicated with other features. If you were talking about how Microsoft hides things like the status of the disk cache or the the number of free clusters or something like that, you'd be correct.
But what we're talking about here is more akin to car makers who might, for example, hide the cruise control buttons or the car's stereo behind panels for fear that new users would find them to difficult to use. Imagine walking into a car where everything but the minimal tools you need to get you to work in the morning were hidden behind panels. The only things visible would be the ignition, the shifter, the steering wheel, the pedals, and the speedometer. The fuel gauge, the temperature gauge, the stereo, A/C controls, cruise control, etc. are all hidden behind panels that must be opened first before they can be used. That's what MS Office is doing.
Why does "easy use GUI" have to REPLACE other UI? (Score:2)
Python has limitations (Score:2)
a trained GUI monkey can automate anything (s)he wants to in Python
Provided the program you're trying to automate:
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
The dumbing down of computers (Score:2)
The lack of imagination of the suits is what really worries me. The original selling point of computers was that they can do virtually anything you program them to do, but it seems that people are content with what we've accomplished and now want to patent and sue and censor their way to keeping things exactly the way they are just so they can sell back to us what we already have for the rest of time. We haven't even begun to discover what we can do, but business doesn't seem to be in a rush to move forward if it's not something they can sell or pump advertizements through.
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
The problem is that the stupid GUI dose not (a) help develop a users intuition about they way the system works and (b) dose not interact well with scripting and user programming. These two flaws will effectivly reduce the number of power users and limit their knowledge/power.
The goal of user interface design should be to make it efficent for a person to move from a basic user to a power user, i.e. the GUI should be intermixed with it's scripting langauge, so that Joe adverage user starts scripting without knowing that they are doing it (kinda like a shell).
two sorts of ease (Score:5)
It seems to me that the MacOS is easy-to-learn, judging by the things the Mac-o-philes tell me. That is, you can easily get things done, without any need for any understanding of what is going on behind the scenes. That isn't really a bad thing, either, until you NEED to know what's going on.
That's where the author's example came in: the kiddies would use ftp, and not have a clue where the file wound up, or even that they had downloaded a file. They hadn't learned that you start an application, and then open a file... they had learned that you click on something, and it opens...
If you save a file somewhere on a Unix box, but don't know where, or exactly what the name was, you can use grep with regular expressions, or any one of a number of methods to search the directories where you have write permissions and find it. If you have that problem under Windows, there aren't any reg-exps, just ? and *. Reg-exps are hard to learn, but so powerful and easy to use. They just don't seem to fit the Windows/Mac way of doing things. This is the difference between easy-to-use and easy-to-learn In a Nutshell (hey, that's a catchy phrase, I should trademark it!).
I read that fellow's article,and I'm still scratching my head. I know that you have to salt a scholarly paper with some big words, and some obfuscation, lest people realize that you really aren't adding anything to the field, but this was ridiculous. What field is this guy in? The standards for content are very different than in Econometrica, or even American Statistician.
I'm really not sure what his point was, but I have the uneasy feeling that he had one.
Nels
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:3)
Yes, this is the core of the problem. Actually, I would like to see an argument for this based on the Church-Turing thesis, i.e. it's really stupid to use a program which is not a programming langauge since you loose the full power of the computer.
I'd say the ideal user interface is a partially graphical scripting langauge where it is easy for a beginner to do basic things (like typing shell commands), but the langauge pushes the user to notice that they can combine/script commands to make more powerful commands, i.e. a GUI which gently pushes every user into knowing how to program.
So where would it store init? (Score:2)
Your suggested filesystem layout (/apps, /docs, /system) looks very Mac OS-like (/Applications, /Documents, /System Folder)...
The first process the Linux kernel starts is init, the mother of all processes (in more ways than one). Sure, init can (eventually) read an XML-based configuration file that points to each of its daemons and each of their config files, but where will:
The kernel will at least have to be recompiled for these if we will be drifting away from /etc into /system/preferences like the Mac has.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
Re:Why does "easy use GUI" have to REPLACE other U (Score:2)
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
I like your idea, but I wonder if its really feasable. GUI coding (in its current instantiations) make for some of the most difficult to read and compicated code out there. How would one go about simplifying this so people can get a foothold?
More importantly, how do we encourage people to WANT to do customizations / scripts? All of us *nix geeks love customization, from the ability to change our window managers to the customizability of mutt, we know and love it.. But how do you encourage the average joe that 'just wants it to work' to accept all of this powerful stuff under the hood and begin to explore it?
Its a curious proposal.
Re: Of course they're too easy?! (Score:2)
Consider an office environment, even call operators are required to use computers to search for information these days.
I converted a Windows NT network to Windows 2000 environment a few weeks ago and I got more than 10 staffs asking me to switch back to the previous environment as the step by step usage they wrote down were not working for them anymore and they cannot do any work.
This is a clear case on why many of the people shouldn't be using a computer.
Re:Did anybody else actually read the article? (Score:2)
Dilger (a writing teacher) sounds like a typical customer who senses the need for an engineering solution. He correctly senses that something's wrong. Rather than explain what he sees as the symptoms of the problem, he diagnoses the problem and offers solutions. The broad premise is that users of modern GUIs don't understand enough about computer/network system structure to make effective use of current systems. His diagnoses and treatments, on the other hand, seem way off the mark.
For instance, he says that "ease of use" is the problem. Clearly silly. A well designed system should provide both an easy path to get the simple task done, and a flexible path, perhaps one that requires more dexterity, to perform more complex tasks. Such system designs go quite far back into our history.
Consider the text editor. A short digression: 25 or 30 years ago, any text editor was considered a luxury, most users poked holes in cards or ribbons of paper (and before that, they juggled patch cables). Eventually, we had the soft luxury of keying our input to magnetic media, disk or tape, still in batch mode. Any ability to edit a line of text, without retyping a card, was considered ease of use. In time, terminals were connected directly to computers, and people could actually interact with them.
Early interactive editors were designed for paper-output ttys or for "glass ttys" which may not have provided any random access to screen locations, and thus, no wysiwyg. [internet.com] In those days, wysiwyg was considered "ease of use" as GUIs are today, and many hardcore hackers considered wysiwyg users as soft. This spirit of ease of use is reflected in the following classic tale: (Ken Thompson is a father of UNIX, and its original editor, ed. For a long time, ed would respond any errant input with a simple "?" - in fact, many users found this sufficient.)
Anyway, back to the point. In time, powerful editors emerged, teco, ed, and variants. Eventually, xy-addressable crt's arose, and folks wrote extensions of these editors to provide user-friendly wysiwyg (emacs for teco, vi for ed).
The point of this digression: If you look at the design of emacs or vi, you will find that they provide a wysiwyg interface and a command line interface as well! A user-friendly interface and a separate more powerful interface with iterative control and so forth. We can have our cake and eat it too. Software should be powerful and easy to use. What is infuriating about most modern software isn't that it makes simple tasks easy, it's that it makes complex tasks terribly difficult.
I think Dilger totally misses this point.
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
However, I didn't make that argument; you've merely set up a straw man.
The only operating systems that have the problems Dilger asserts are those where the GUI is part of the OS. It doesn't have to be, and I'm arguing that it shouldn't be.
Furthermore, I didn't argue that all GUIs should be "stupid", as you mistakenly claim. I merely asserted that if some of them are, that doesn't mean others are, and with Unix we have a choice.
The command line is part of the OS, and has nothing to do with the utility of the GUI.
Perhaps you should have read my comment before replying to it.
-
No such thing as too easy... (Score:2)
Debian and ease of use. (Score:2)
When I consider the term "ease of use", I always consider two versions of it. On the one side, I have the concept of, "Could my grandma use this without being able to spell computer?" On the other side I have the concept, "Could I, with a little learning, be extremely productive with this?" When both of those concepts are in synch, an interface is then truly beautiful. Programs that can achieve both aspects of ease of use are apparent for their rediculously simple intuitive interfaces, and their extreme usefulness in achieving their purpose. Some of the many examples of this would be xmms or gnapster.
I think interface designers need to start concentrating on finding ways to express usefulness in a simple intuitive manner, rather than simply following the philosophy of interface reduction to keep things simple. I suspect you could fill a doctoral thesis just trying to figure out what it means for an interface to be both powerful and simple. Links would be appreciated.
Re:Outlook Express and security holes (Score:3)
Ease of use isn't bad. The point of the article is that, by taking such drastic steps to hide the actual workings of the computer from the end users, it does them a disservice. It makes it impossible for them to take their understanding of one program in one environment and apply their knowledge more generally.
computers as a home appliance (Score:2)
Why will people do this when
they won't sink money into a broken car if they don't think they can fix it?
they won't buy a home with a crumbling foundation?
they won't buy a television if they can't change the channels?
It sort of angers me when people buy a computer and then EXPECT it to be easy to use. It takes a little practice to use a standard transmission without lurching out of a stoplight. Why shouldn't computers be the same way?
Dollars and sense. (Score:2)
Any loss of performance at the upper end, can be managed in several opt-in ways.
1) professional product line (stick vs. automatic)
2) allowing users to opt-in to the advanced-user features and interface. (think "advanced options" buttons in an interface)
Wow (Score:5)
This is an interesting way to start a Sunday. :)
I've got to stress that the headline and snippet chosen here is NOT an accurate summary of my article. As I say time and time again in the article, I have NO problem with the general trend of computers becoming easy to use. My problem is that this ease is sometimes portrayed as the only way to do it, in a variety of different contexts, and by a variety of different agents. "Is it easy?" can become the only question asked, and that compresses the possibilities of computing for a lot of perfectly capable folks.
More on this very complex problem later... got a lot to do today. Thanks to everyone who has commented so far -- many of the points made are quite salient. I hoped to start an academic discourse about ease stuff; a Slashdot discourse is great as well.
best,
Bradley
Heh, yeah, right... (Score:2)
Sure you can, after you learn C, the Unix APIs, X-Windows, and GNOME.
I agree that the Dilger article is mostly beef by-product, but he points out that inconsistency is the hobgoblin of inexperienced minds.
The problem is the "hack-uber-alles" mentality, where even users are an afterthought to the glory of the hack. A sado-machismo: if it was hard to write, it should be hard to use.
There is no reason at all that an easy-to-use tool cannot also be powerful. "Pushbutton warfare" is a rather extreme example of this principle :-) But too many sado-macho folk get an ego boost from mastering arcane, inconsistent, poorly-implemented interfaces. It would damage their egos severely to find out that a trained monkey with a Mac can do immediately what it took them a day to figure out on Unix.
Dilger's example of inconsistent file save dialogs is quite illustrative. There are perfectly good, standard, consistent open/save dialogs in Windows and MacOS. If you need a special feature, there are provisions to add it in a consistent manner. But sado-machismo programmers won't RTFHIG (human interface guidelines).
This inconsistency is rampant in games, where nearly every game has its own look-n-feel. Game GUIs rarely resemble their host operating system, even with mundane tasks like dismissing a dialog. Game programmers seem to take pride in reinventing the wheel poorly.
Sadly, the Unix world is years behind Microsoft, and a dozen years behind Macintosh, when it comes to thinking about users. Maybe Eazel will help, but it runs the risk of being shunned by hack-oriented programmers, or forgotten when the next GUI-du-jour comes along.
The fault is not with ease-of-use, the fault is with programmers.
Next week, we'll see if Unix is about to leapfrog Windows and even MacOS 9. Watch /. to see the ignorant hollerings of the sado-machismo progs.
-toddhisattva
ps: this isn't a troll, I can be much more provocative ;-) Rather, see it as criticism.
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:3)
The article is discussing the fact that we are making the GUI so easy to use that the average user (NOT the power user) have no clue what they're actually doing. For example, the university provides a link to an FTP client to allow users to transfer files between the University system and their home systems. The users click on the link then complain that "I clicked, the computer downloaded something but then nothing happened. Now what do I do?"
The question isn't "Are GUI's restricting the power users from getting at the guts of the machine?" The issue is "Is making GUI's so easy to use a good idea?"
Learning Hurts. Get Used To It. (Score:2)
It doesn't mean that you need to be able to read assembler to use Word. You don't need to know how to work on your car's engine in order to drive it. But you should know the basics of the fuel, transmission, exhaust, and suspension systems of the car. Just because your car has automatic transmission (it automates the steps of shifting for you for EASE), it doesn't mean you should not know at least that your car is changing gears as you accelerate. "I just step on this pedal here and it goes and the one over here to stop" would inspire little confidence in one's driving ability.
Likewise, you should know the basics of the filesystem, the OS, the hardware, even if you want to just make a spreadsheet. Hardware and software manufacturers have spread the notion that you do not. If it was a car instead of a computer, someone might get killed; with a computer people just "run over" their files. Oops.
Basically, I try to educate people that the reality is that if you really want to "know" how to use a computer, you're going to have to learn. And it can hurt. And it's easier for some to pick up than others. And you screw up. And who told you that it wasn't like that?
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Re:Why does "easy use GUI" have to REPLACE other U (Score:4)
Good point. However, most important for mindshare and marketshare, is how easy to use the "newbie" level is, because this is where the overwhelming majority of users will enter the system. If this level is sufficiently buggy, the new users will never bother to become advanced users, they'll just walk away. If the "newbie" level *requires* use of the power-user interface (like editing config files, or using the command line) to get basic things done such as modem setup, or printer setup, then, again, new users will never bother to become advanced users. Therefore, the most user-friendly level should have sufficient power to do the things that even beginning users need to do, easily, consistenly, and seamlessly.
Multi-level UIs is where OSes are converging. From the power-user side, the free *nices are adding increasingly easy to use GUIs - desktops and window managers. From the newbie side, the MacOS is layering it's extremely consistent, easy to learn GUI over a full BSD unix, with terminal windows/command line, bash, gcc, apache, etc. That's what MacOS X is.
But in order to succeed, an OS must ensure that the *easiest* UI level, the GUI, is seamless and easy to use. Power users expect, and can tolerate a little complexity, but most new users cannot, and it is from the legions of new users that tomorrows power users will come. If you want these future power users to end up on your OS of choice, then you need to make sure that the entry level UI on your OS is extremely consistent and user freindly. So far, the free *nices are not there yet. Much of this is due to the inconsistency of X application user interfaces on the one hand. On the other, it is due to the immature state of the free desktops, by which I mean, their failure to provide complete access to every sort of configuration a new user will likely need to do in a consistent, easy to understand way. Great progress has been made, but they're still not there yet.
GUI design today is not graphical (Score:2)
The GUI may have become the interface for millions of computers, but for all the hype of "ease of use", the only things its given us are buttons, windows and menus. Not really "graphical". And DOS programs had menus anyway.
In fact, the GUI seems almost to have made things "worse". Consider that the 'easiest' interface is one, single, big button in the middle of the screen that says "click me". Very easy. Anyone can operate it. This seems to be the goal of GUI's, an interface that a clueless user can operate. But the problem is that the user remains clueless.
To overcome the cluelessness, we need to emphasise understanding. Think of all the mental maps you have stored up, that you rely on when using a computer. When I used to work at a university help desk, I found that the hardest part was transferring to the students the mental model that I had aquired through my own computer use.
But by the time they are asking for help, it is usually too late, and they just want to "print their assignment before the deadline". And long theoretical blurbs just send them to sleep (I was told that my 'Starter Pack' booklet that I wrote to try to explain the basics of computer systems, like networks, peripherals, software, and filing systems, was used as bedtime reading, for it's soporific effect). But they do need to know this stuff!
So every time there's a new task, they are still clueless, because they lack the understanding. Without a map, people will have no clue how to go about it. You can give them precise step by step instructions, but if there are any discrepancies then they will get lost. And so we get students who can't even find their own files.
Now I'm not sure about the Marx stuff, but I do think that Bradley Dilger is on the right track. We need to get people understanding. And the current GUI does not do this.
So often when we try to explain something and words fail us we will resort to drawing a diagram. Why oh why diagrammatic explanations are not used to their full in interfaces I don't know. But "Understanding Comics", by Scott McLoud argues that we undervalue pictorial thinking in preference for so called "left-brain" skills like english and maths. Rudolf Steiner schools have tried to redress the balance, with art being a valuable thinking" tool. I'm happy that Dilger sees this:
Too, images are considered easier to understand and work with than text. I'm thinking of W. J. T. Mitchell's notion of the "pictorial turn," a broad shift in culture which constructs pictures and images as more accessible and more vibrant and just plain better than text [9]. The idea that images are less information dense or inferior to text starts early with toddlers' picture books -- which in my elementary school library were all under call letter E for "easy". It continues today in fear of television, a caustic attitude toward serial-graphic narrative (what most people call "comics"), and a lack of support for the visual and the aesthetic in school curricula.
Our cultural bias against "right-brain" education has been carried over into the so called "GUI". Let's face it, it's not really a graphical interface. Heck, studies quoted in "The Trouble with Computers" by Landauer show that the GUI is no more easier or more productive to use than the old DOS ways.
We are missing the potential of using interactive diagrams that self-document the functions available and the structure of the informtation being manipulated. Sorry about the 'big fancy words', but I know of no prototype. And I don't mean to imply that such diagrams would be the ultimate answer. Some people prefer auditory clues, so there's potential for much experimentation.
Re:He's working from faulty premises (Score:2)
Bullshit, pure and simple. (Score:2)
Example 1) Maya. Maya has more features than most people will every use. However, it is easy enough for somebody with no graphics experiance to learn it.
Example 2) Photoshop. Photoshop has features that even pro designers can't find a use for. However, it is easy enough for someone to learn to use pretty well in a weekend.
Example 3) Truespace. 3D animation is a very powerful topic. However, Truespace makes it easy to use without limiting its usefullness.
The idea that making something more powerful means making it harder to use is an excuse used by crappy UI designers. The three programs I mentioned above have one thing in common: they gave good, inuitive UIs. Despite their huge power, their interfaces are organized all the features in a consistant way and without making the user feel overwhelmed. For example, the floating tool-palattes of Photoshop and customizable tool-bars of Maya allow you to use exactly the features you need, without feeling boggled by all the options. A bad example of UI design is Blender. Though hot-keys make it pretty efficient, it is no more efficient than Maya, and is infinately harder to use because of it's illogical and inflexible tool layout. Another example is Maya's MEL. It allows you to do complex actions through a language, and then attach those actions to a toolbar icon. This allows the user to use this powerful feature when they are ready too, and by integrating it into the toolbar, hides the complexity of the feature after it is coded. Truespace has another innovation. It extensivly uses context-sensitive right-click menus, thus allowing the user to quickly manipulate items without hunting through toolbars or memorizing hotkeys. These are examples of powerful programs that are fairly easy to use. Methinks that the guy who wrote this article had spent too much time with Blender, and thus his sense of reality was distorted. The bottom line is, that if a user-interface is well designed (even text files, for example, XFree86 4.0's text file UI is well designed, while modules.conf's UI isn't) then the program will be easy to use. However, just as good UI designers can make the hardest program easy to use, bad UI designers can make the simplest programs hard to use.
Re:Why does "easy use GUI" have to REPLACE other U (Score:2)
Is it really necessary to move configuration data to a database in order to make it easier to set up a GUI front end? Wouldn't it be sufficient if the configuration text files: (a) had a consistent format; and (b) were all found in the same place in different Linux distributions? Isn't this what the Linux Standards Base is all about?
These are not rhetorical questions. I honestly don't know. I'm just one that currently believes that making Linux friendly for newbies does not necessarily reduce the ability of experts to configure and modify it as they will.
ease of selling, not ease of use (Score:2)
Now, compare that to something like non-GUI UNIX. You can do excellent desktop publishing with it, edit things very efficiently, move among applications quickly, and deal with large amounts of data. But before you can do all that, you have to spend a couple of months learning a good text editor, learning some of the command line tools, learn some scripting language, and learn a text formatting language. That kind of stuff doesn't sell, in particular in a culture that demands instant satisfaction and that believes that democratizing technology means that you don't need any experience and anybody can be a "professional" by just buying the right computer (or camera).
But why worry about it? People who buy stuff that's easy to sell may not use their systems very effectively, but at least they drive down the cost for the components that other people use.