Top 8 Reasons HCI is in its Stone Age 547
UltimaGuy writes "This Editorial describes 8 reasons why HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is in its stone age. It laments about screen corners, filesystem, GUI Design and also 'spatialness'. "
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Top 8 Reasons HCI is in its Stone Age
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"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"
computers: still not for lay people (Score:5, Insightful)
Some pretty good long-standing beefs listed on that blog -- beefs I've never seen addressed. (Kind of like a recent article I saw talking about cell-phones, and that consumers would much prefer seeing the cell-phone issues and problems addressed before the crap like cameras, mp3 players, video recorders, etc. get incorporated into the "phones".)
Off the top of my head I can add three that drive me crazy:
Yes, we're a LONG way off from interfaces that are easy to use and that make sense to the average user.
computers: still not for the disabled (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article: Every single little tiny-weeny little interaction-shraction requires your visual attention."
We are a long way from HCI obviously, as the article does not seem to consider blind computer users as Human. If we focus on the hard problems (one of which is improving the interaction with disabled users) the easy ones will simply fall into place.
Disabled users aren't normal users (Score:3, Insightful)
Bull. Disabled users aren't the same as normal users and designing for them isn't the same. I'm willing to bet blind users would prefer a text only computer, with the information organized in table form so it's easy to follow the hierarchy of information. The CLI, I'd think, would be ideal for blind users.
The real problem right now is that people who are technop
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:2)
(I've seen some suggested registry hacks, but I haven't seen them work properly in XP)
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:2)
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Interesting)
I really fucking hate how every program you install nowadays has some kind of agent running in the background on startup. What's worse is that a lot of new programs make it impossible to disable them.
You know what? I'll decide when I want a certain program running on my computer, thank you very much!
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Informative)
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:2)
It's part of spybot s&d now, basically it babysits the registry and alerts you to attempted changes. If you install/uninstall software alot it can get on your nerves, but that one registry change from a random app is all it takes to hose your box.
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:2, Funny)
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:4, Informative)
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is kinda the point of this story
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:4, Informative)
Google is your friend [google.com]
Removing Balloon PopUps in Windows XP [personal-c...-tutor.com]
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:5, Insightful)
Although a lot of programs may lay it on a tad thick, computer users NEED to learn a bit of jargon if they hope to have any shot of dealing with modern technology.
You can't use a car without understanding what the brake and accellerator (and sometimes a clutch) do. When you take it in for repairs, even if you don't know how to fix it yourself, you want to know if you need a spark plug or a timing belt (not just "it broke, please pay $xxxx for the next 20,000 miles...").
The same goes with computers. Your example, of an "instance", I consider not that bad... How do you phrase that better? "GAIM is already running"? Since such errors usually happen when you have a ghost process, I suspect most users would find that even more frustrating (I know how my grandfather would react - "God damn it, if I already had it running I wouldn't have tried to start it, you worthless pile of (stream of obscenties ommitted)").
Cutesy tooltips.
I agree 100%... You can actually turn those off, at least the ones that come from Windows itself, but XP has a rather obnoxious bug wherein you will eventually get them back, and can't turn them off again (because you already have them off).
Oh, and your peeve about the task bar - Drives me absolutely batty. To re-quote the grandfather, "God damn it, if I wanted to switch to that window, I'd click on it, you worthless pile of (stream of obscenties ommitted)!".
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Insightful)
No one is able to just sit down in a car and drive down the turnpike, you need to spend some time upfront with it. People need to realize that with computers as well.
So I appreciate
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:4, Interesting)
I also agree with the blog, too many preferences and too many flashing notification everywhere are very distracting. GNOME I think is on the right track with this, especially in the Ubuntu distro version. Applications are simple and streamlined.
Today most computer users are all tainted by MS Windowz interface, that is what they know and they won't learn anything different even if it means improved usability and efficiency in the future. Therefore there are two philosophies for designing new interfaces:
1) Design what is familiar to the users even if it considered "bad design" according to standards and HCI research
2) Design what is believed to be correct according to HCI research, even at the expense of confusing the Windowz crowd.
It seems that KDE has mostly addopted the first approach and GNOME the second.
An interesting point, in one of the HCI classes I took, we read a paper that compared the command line to the graphical point-n-click interface. It turns out users are slower to learn the commands but once they do they remember them longer. For example it might take a while for my grandpa to learn that 'ls' means 'list the files in the directory' as opposed to just double-clicking the folder. But once he will learn it he will know it for a longer time, as opposed to asking him to open a folder in windowz a week later -- he might try to click on it once, click with a wrong button or try a mouse gesture.
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Instead, you pop up the existing GAIM instance.
If the user clicked on the GAIM icon, s/he wanted GAIM. Give them GAIM. The problem in the dialog is a red herring; the problem is in the implementation.
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Seriously.
I like to run multiple instances of applications. If I tell my OS I want another copy of something open, I don't want it to switch to the one that's already running.
It would be even worse to make some applications behave the current way, and others switch to the instance that's already running. This is what a lot of MS apps do now, and it's really annoying.
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Insightful)
We were discussing a hypothetical situation in which applications should work intelligently, such as if you try to run a program that's already running, it brings to the foreground the already existing one.
Continuing along the same hypothetical, you don't need two instances, you need one instance with more features. Just like the grandparent said about the warning
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Interesting)
Its adding another function to the application that masks the problem and allowing multiple instances that fixes the problem.
If I want to do two separate tasks which, while similar enough to be accomplished by the same program, are otherwise completely different: What sense would it make for me to have to use the same application? The tasks are completely different. Arguably the settings I set for one might not be optimal for the other (and if you have on
One item worth mentioning (Score:2)
My version: abolish open/save dialogs and just use Finder/Explorer. If you're currently limited to files of certain types, figure out a way to deal with that inside Finder/Explorer (since this is a common enough requirement even if you're not in an application -- I am only interested in image files, stop showing
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Interesting)
For a large percentage of people, that's fine. But for me, I have my task bar at the top. (used macs years ago, switched and that's where I put it. Your program menu bar is up there, why shouldn't the task bar be?)
Anyways since some programs open up windows at the TOP they get covered by the task bar, and I cannot see the top so that I can move, close or mimize them. I am forced to change the size of the task bar to n
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Interesting)
The original article is yet another whinge without any realistic solutions. There's a great series of demonstrations by 37 Signals where they put their balls on the line by showing how they would make real improvements to an existing scenario. e.g.:
http://37signals.com/better_fedex.php [37signals.com]
They took the Fedex shipping manager screen/process, and redesigned it to make more sense and increase usability.
Be sure to note their lack of weak jokes about aliens or Russians being able to design better GUIs, or the absenc
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:2)
So the solution is to basically stop using a feature I want to use? Wow! Sounds like a Microsoft solution.
I don't like the task bar hanging around, that's why I hide it. I know my maximized apps will not overlap it, but there goes precious real estate.
Doctor! It hurts when I move my arm like this!... Then don't move your arm like that.
sigh
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3)
Re:computers: still not for lay people (Score:3, Interesting)
What you want is the Canon Cat [wikipedia.org], designed by Jef Raskin.
And here's the answer of an amarok developer (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting read, I think.
Re:And here's the answer of an amarok developer (Score:2, Informative)
Not so great? But what about focus-stealing. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Browse the internet by hitting the screen corner? Check mail in the screen corner? Get Info in the screen corner? System preferences in the screen corner? Switching applications in the screen corner?"
The first and most obvious problem with this concept is that the user must know what each corner does. You should not expect the user to remember this by heart. Therefore, you have to either allocate screen real-estate to show it (doh!), or pop up the information about what happens when you move or click here (doh!). If you allocate screen real-estate, then that should be clickable as well. Doesn't sound like such a great idea anymore, does it? If you pop up information, then you just made your interface more annoying because the mouse sometimes tends to end up in the corners by mistake.
"Ray Charles figured that out. Stevie Wonder figured that out. And they would probably make a better design team than any money-driven market thugs."
Gee, which market thug are you thinking of?
I wish Microsoft would fix their most fundamental user interface problem: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever steal my input directed to one window and start providing it to another. I don't care if the applications are not playing ball properly. Don't allow it. How many times have I hit "enter" while typing, say, in a word processor, but just before I hit "enter" a message box pops up and my enter key is swallowed by it, taking the default action, and I don't even know what happened because I never got the chance to see the question. Or my password being entered into one window's field but ending up in another. Bad.
Re:Not so great? But what about focus-stealing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not so great? But what about focus-stealing. (Score:2)
Re:Not so great? But what about focus-stealing. (Score:2)
Re:Not so great? But what about focus-stealing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think people who do HCI with a stopwatch are missing an important point, that A. initial friendliness to newbies, ideally to let them ramp up and B. "mental load" for experienced users, how much they have to keep in their head, are both as or more important than an extra millisecond.
One random addition to this discussion:
"If people were going to use computers all day, everyday, the design of such machines was not solely a technical problem-- it was also an aesthetic one. *A lo
Re:Not so great? But what about focus-stealing. (Score:3, Interesting)
I need to read more carefully (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ultimate HCI format (Score:3, Funny)
The four corners of Mac OS X... (Score:5, Informative)
In Mac OS X, built into Mac OS X 10.4, you can trigger any of the following from any of the four corners of the main screen.
1) Expose - All Windows
2) Expose - Application Windows
3) Expose - Desktop
4) Dashboard
5) Start Screen Saver
6) Disable Screen Saver
Also on the main display (the one with the menu bar) you can slam the mouse into either of the upper two corners and click. On Mac OS X 10.4 the upper left corner brings up the "Apple" menu and the upper right corner brings up "Spotlight". The later allows typing for spotlight search without having to click to gain focus.
Re:The four corners of Mac OS X... (Score:2)
I'm currently using gnome and:
Top left corner: main menu
Top right corner: calender
Bottom left corner: show desktop
Bottom right corner: trash
Note though, that you have to actually press a mouse button to trigger any action, which might be a good thing, as it prevents accidently triggering something you don't want to trigger.
Seriously, I don't know what OS the self proclaimed expert, who wrote the article, is using.
Want some . . . (Score:2)
Re:The four corners of Mac OS X... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh well, the Apple menu has been mostly worthless for four years n
Re:The four corners of Mac OS X... (Score:2)
The ideas were ok... (Score:5, Funny)
Great (Score:2, Insightful)
Great.
'useless' screen corners (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever seen a system which lets you, out-of-the-box, hit a corner in order to do anything at all even remotely related to anything having anything at all to do with a document or application?
Hmmm... yea... yea, I have... In the lower left corner of the screen for 99% of out-of-the-box systems when they are on there's that little start button, which does have something remotely to do with apps & docs... Also: what about the menu bar at the top? Upper right-hand corner: close window..
Honestly, I don't know WTF half the articles are on here for... other than us flaming the crap outta 'em..
Re:'useless' screen corners (Score:2, Informative)
Try moving your mouse all the way to the corner of the screen and click. See what happens? Nothing.
Also: what about the menu bar at the top? Upper right-hand corner: close window..
Again, try moving your mouse to the top-right corner and click. Again, nothing.
Also from TFA, the author addresses this issue. Maybe you shou
Re:'useless' screen corners (Score:3, Informative)
Not that clicking anywhere else on the screen in Windows is guaranteed to do what you expect should a modal dialog pop up right before y
HCI (Score:3, Funny)
1. Screen Corners (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually wrote an application that timed how long it took to click on a small red box with the word click me written on it (distance / time)
After doing the math you could nicely fit a straight line to the points, I even tried splitting out the results based on the direction of movement and their was very little difference and setup a test to explicitly test the 'corner of the screen' theory.
In the end it was no quicker to reach the corners of the screen than a small box anywhere else on the screen. That it probably why no one utilizes the corners of the screen in the way suggested.
I wrote a few more tests and was going to put together a Java applet so that world + dog could help out.
Things like giving your menu entries sensible names and keeping things consistant were far more important for novice and experienced users. I was also looking at things like colour coding, 'vanishing' and growing buttons and other UI elements depending on how often they were used etc...
The main reason for the lack of good user interfaces is that no one ever seems to o solid scientific testing on them, the kind of testing that proves innovations in UI outclass current designs instead of relying on a designers hunch.
Re:1. Screen Corners (Score:2)
And of course these days, with big screens, it can be quiet a journey to get to the edge.
Re:1. Screen Corners (Score:3, Interesting)
My intent was to produce some stats on the very basics of user interfaces so that they could be used to evaluate more complex interfaces. The first test was designed to look at how long it took people to click on something.
I started out fairly basic, just a box with that appeared randomly on the screen, and then moved up to having boxes that appeared in ordered patterns and at given locations on the screen (including points in t
Re:1. Screen Corners (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you also track the eye movements of the users? Did they look at the box in the corner before clicking it?
I would posit that moving the mouse to a screen corner *without looking at it* is faster than clicking a box which appears in the corner. The users in your test may have gotten used to boxes appearing at random screen locations, and having to look where it is so they could click on it. Wh
Soviet Union? We have The Leader... (Score:2)
I bet you my bunny the former Soviet union could have designed a better operating system GUI than any of the software vendors of today.
We have The Leader (Steve Jobs) thank you very much.
Sorry...I'm not seeing it. (Score:4, Insightful)
The author of this article has some valid points here...it's unfortunate that he chooses to embed those few valid points in a sticky matrix of hyperbole, hysteria, and inaccuracies.
Just a few things:
From TFA:That's funny....I was under the impression that preferences were exactly the answer to this issue.
Also from TFA By the way, did you know that a) Stevie Wonder is blind, not deaf, and b) 'shrink' is not synonymous with 'crop'?
Re:Sorry...I'm not seeing it. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with preferences is that they are quite often not used to configure important stuff, but more in a terms of "We don't know how to do it correctly, so lets the user figure it out himself via Prefs". This than leads to inconsistency and throuble, since you can't predict how stuff will work on the users computer (MacOSX style menu at top is not much fun with focus-follows-mouse, etc.).
But I agree t
Re:Sorry...I'm not seeing it. (Score:2)
That's the point. A good HCI will DWIMNWIS.
Re:Sorry...I'm not seeing it. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sorry...I'm not seeing it. (Score:4, Funny)
And your computer promptly donates 25 cents to the Republican party.
All together now: natural language is NOT a good interface.
Clear as mud (Score:3, Insightful)
If he can't communicate his ideas better, maybe he's not the best person to describe what's wrong with HCI. I'm not the brightest bulb on the billboard, but come on -- this guy needs an editor.
Define "editor" -- you were a little vague there (Score:2)
In the sense that the article is essentially an overlong rant no better or worse than the usual slashdot missive, and that it's on the home page right now, it did at least get past one "editor." Let's see... Ahhh yes, that would be Taco.
We all have our peeves and pet ideas about user interfaces. Only the rare among us write so many ponderous, wooly rhetorical fluorishes into our opinions about those that our opinions un
Re:Define "editor" -- you were a little vague ther (Score:2)
Ha -- I started to attempt it, too (Score:2)
-- put me off somewhat. Oy oy oy. I imagine the author writing term papers in her or his Freshman courses in college. What attention getting device shall I employ this time? "Let me introduce you to one of the greatest mysteries of our time"? How about "One of the most profound
Pet peeves... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unsolicited offers from the system to remove unused shortcuts on my desktop. I don't need help removing my unused shortcuts. They are there for a reason and just because I haven't clicked on them in a month doesn't mean they're not useful.
Special buttons to page forward/page back in the web browser. I don't know how many times I've accidentally erased my latest diatribe by inadvertently paging backward on Slashdot. Good grief, at least put the function behind a modifier key.
Caps Lock. Who named this key anyway? In Windows, it's not a caps lock key, it's a caps reverse key. And who the hell needs a caps reverse key? hAS aNYONE eVER rEALLY nEEDED tHIS fUNCTIONALITY bEFORE? I wonder where some people's brains are sometimes.
I could go on...and on, and on, and on...
Re:Pet peeves... (Score:3, Interesting)
My biggest complaint about caps lock is that it's very rarely used but is layed out on most keyboards opposite the enter key. Shouldn't we be able to s
Re:Pet peeves... (Score:4, Informative)
This is not a problem with the existence of forward and backwards buttons, it's an issue with their implementation. With Safari, I can hit back, then hit forward and still have the text I entered in this text box remain here when I get back. Remember Raskin's first law:
A computer shall not harm your work or, through inaction, allow your work to come to harm.
Re:Pet peeves... (Score:3, Informative)
Yep, same in Firefox. In fact, Internet Explorer is the only browser I know of where this is not the case. And after all these years, I have to say that anyone still using Internet Explorer, when they don't absolutely have to, frankly deserves all the pain they get fro
Thats nice (Score:2)
The largest key (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, how about maybe it's the largest key on the keyboard because it's the MOST FREQUENTLY USED? Wow, imagine that, making something that you use often larger and thus easier to find. Doesn't seem stone age to me, seems more like tried-and-true.
Re:The largest key (Score:2, Funny)
Funny, I seem to get a lot of emails about supplements for that kind of thing.
Why does /. even link to this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy's simply a moron. At least half of his "points" are opinions. Others are just not really points at all. "4. Multiple representation of the file system.
Finally...
We wish to rotate an image, shrink it 50%, attach it to an e-mail and send it to a deaf musician. Say Tip a quarter to the right, crop by half and e-mail to Stevie Wonder.
You sir, have failed. You just sent it to a blind musician, not a deaf one.
Re:Why does /. even link to this? (Score:5, Funny)
I think the assumption is that Stevie Wonder will then forward it to Beethoven.
Hey, give this guy a chance! (Score:3, Funny)
What's that?
He's just ignorantly bitching?
Oh...
Editorial? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh (Score:2)
Console. (Score:2)
Let's see...
1. Four corners..
I bet i can type out a simple command faster than most people can move their mouse to the corner of the screen.
2. OS GUIs..
Any application can include their own console for an experienced user to do things in a faster, more aggressive manner. (yeah, im talking about autocad
5. *ash... s
About Those Screen Corners... (Score:3, Insightful)
GUI's suck at iteration (Score:2, Interesting)
for file in `find . -name \*.[ch] -print` ; do mv $file /var/backup; done
I have yet to see a GUI that allows me to select files in this manner, and perform the same operation on all of them. A large collection of archive files that need to be unpacked is usually quite difficult to do in a timely manner on Windows, or in any KDE or Gnome desktop. Oh, you can use the GUI filemanager in Windows or Unix to find files whose names match a pattern, but how do
Re:GUI's suck at iteration (Score:3, Informative)
Screaming for a joke (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but then the User Interface would be controlling us.
Re:Screaming for a joke (Score:3, Funny)
physical limitations (Score:2)
Alternatives? (Score:2, Insightful)
counter argument (Score:2)
In terms of using screen corners, Windows uses the lower left corner for an applications menu, the lower right corner for system/application information, and the upper right and upper left corners for application control when the app is in full-screen mode.
As he mentions, expose is invoked by going to a screen corner as well, but apparently has disrespect for spatial navigation, so this does not counter his point...wtf?
2. OS GUI's are Designed for Beginners
Just using the term O
Nice Rant (Score:5, Insightful)
Useless corners explain science fiction (Score:2)
In the future, they figured out that corners are useless, so they cut them out!
Um, this guy is off... (Score:5, Interesting)
Examine his (central) point about corners, for example. Yes, corners *can* be hit easily with the mouse. Isn't that a long way to travel to achieve ones goals? His point about scrolling with the spacebar press is on target (and a feature I appreciated), but then he goes on a tangent about the biggest key on the keyboard producing "nothingness". Considering that each and every word must be separated from each and every other word with "nothingness", I fail to see where its place of honor is diminished by the lack of pixels being illuminated by its use.
Crying shame too: usability *is* important and should be a central consideration. Sadly, I don't think this guy is the one to much of that consideration. Maybe once he grasps the utilization of natural language a bit more, I would consider his ideas on more natural interfaces.
Core problem: non-centralization (Score:3, Insightful)
New OSes have little opportunity for HCI improvements because too many of the details are left down for the application programmers to decide upon. At best, the OS vendor provides a shared GUI library (buttons + widgets), and a guidebook [apple.com] teaching app authors the "right" way to do it.
But, depending on each individual author to carry out the instructions is fundamentally limited and slow. Not every programmer will be aware of the guidelines, choose to obey them, or be capable of following it exactly even if he tries.
And even if all coders were magically obedient to the published standard, it's still non-optimal. New ideas to improve the HCI guidelines cannot be uniformly implemented without waiting years for all programs to be updated. Computers are supposed to REDUCE redundant labor- instead of each app's GUI being written separately, all trying to implement the same guidelines, one piece of code should handle all that functionality in one place. Code reuse is a fundamental rule of software design that has taken far too long to penetrate the HCI world.
What we need are applications written to a high level GUI description service, so that the OS can implement a UI consistent with other programs and exactly tailored to the limitations of this user (Colorblind? Blind? No keyboard? No mouse? No muscular control besides blinking [medgadget.com]?)
Moving and Resizing Windows (Score:2)
I also think that the UNIX Way (tm) of doing applications (small, modular, and easily integrated) should be brought to the GUI level, so that our apps better communicate with one another, even to the point where you can hook multiple apps together into a single "app group".
Bad devices are the root of bad interfaces. (Score:2)
No, seriously. We only go along with this crazy thing because we've been trained that way. We got the keyboard because there were typewriters. We got the mouse because it was better than cursor keys (mostly).
The tablet PC shows some promise, but it is strange that the tablet part isn't offered as a peripheral to an honest computer. I mean, a nice LCD monitor that you can write on with a stylus. You could take it down to do detailed work (photoshop, etc)
Yet more HCI whining (Score:2)
For example, the spatial attention thing is a great point, but there are good reasons we use symbology in the interface, because that's how the underlying computer works! It's not that these people are idiots, it is clear that space is important, it's just that they haven't yet built enough layers of abstraction on top of the underlying computer to turn everything into space.
An
The Zork CLI! (Score:2)
Because utility sends the wrong message (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, suppose you are marketing a product. Which message gets you the most sales?
Software user interfaces pretty much respond to the same pressures as any other kind of interface. Most interfaces are designed to communicate messages of desirability, not anything as pedestrian as function. Most car dashboards are a mess for that reason. You can get custom color face plates for your cell phone so you have one to match every outfit in your closet, but it's still a piece of shit to use.
Skip the article, here's the lowdown. (Score:3, Funny)
That's what a college education will buy you.
Hypocritical and Amateur (Score:3, Insightful)
The editorialist makes a few good points, but it's a bit one-sided. He presents a very simplified view of what it takes to build a powerful user interface. There are thousands of scientists with PhDs studying the field of HCI, coming up with answers all the time, but there's a huge leap between what sounds good in theory and what actually works. One persons idea of a brilliant user interface is another person's nightmare that turns their operating system into something that resembles M.C. Ecsher's work.
Games are the breeding ground for examples of where conceptually-superior user interfaces often fail. Take a game like Black and White or Temple of Elemental Evil. Controlling a character or environment is no longer as simple as pushing some arrow keys, it's an exercise in digital dexterity. Even though conceptually it allows you to present more options in a smaller space, it's still foreign to everyone who has ever played another game.
Everytime you try a new user interface, it requires everyone who is comfortable to give up that comfort for the sake of eventually having an easier experience. The effect can be observed when people try using a Devorak keyboard. Technically speaking, Devorak might be a superior idea, but it also represents 4 weeks worth of practice.
The idea that we "should" find a better way to use computers has been around for a long time. Implementing those ideas in a way that the majority of users can accept is an enormous task. If the author really thinks his ideas about user interfaces is a trivial task, he should build a prototype.
Every couple years, someone comes up with a brilliant idea for a new way to interact with computers that involves some sort of surrealistic work of art like a Pyramid Keyboard you stick your fingers in like you're piloting an alien shuttle.
The article is hypocritical. There's no table of contents for each numbered point. For all the talk of making things difficult, why do I need to scroll repeatedly up and down the page to locate information? And why use >> << as some sort of quotation mark replacement? He talks about how intuitive using corners is but he can't use the same symbol to quote a person that almost every English document for the last 3 centuries has. Glass house meet stones.
Use the 4 corners!? (Score:3, Informative)
From TFA:
This guy's obviously never used Symphony OS [symphonyos.com].
People, get a grip! (Score:3, Interesting)
From the Stone Age blog post:
``After more than 20 years of research, development and competition in the field of HCI, not one single leading operating system developing company has come up with an OS that utilizes the four corners of the screen.''
That doesn't mean that HCI is in the stone age. It just means the leading OSes have it wrong. The GNOME version I am running uses all 4 corners. I don't use any of the functions from the corners on a regular basis, but that's a different story; they are used, and it's obviously because the GNOME team realized their power.
The Fitt's Corners article writes about this:
``why don't any major Desktop Environments exploit the screen corners?
I have a good reason: it's because they are the easiest spots to hit with the mouse.
Setup your OSX box to trigger Expose when you move the mouse to a corner. Now count how many times during the day you nudge the mouse into the corner and trigger Expose by accident.''
This has nothing to do with screen corners, and everything with mouse gestures. It's the fact that just moving the mouse (without any indication that some action is intended) triggers actions that causes these accidents. This is why I always disable mouse gestures in apps that support them.
From the Stone Age:
``2. OS GUI's are Designed for Beginners.
Ooooh. there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you can grow with your user interface.''
Yes, GUIs are designed to make computers easy for beginners to use. For those who want flexibility, there is the command line, or, if you don't want to leave the GUI world, scripting (think DCOP, AppleScript), augmented with macro recording (think Automator).
What's _really_ wrong with respect to GUIs being for beginners, is that many aren't actually easy for beginners to use. What idiot came up with double-click? Do you have any idea how much trouble this is causing?!
From the Stone Age:
``You have to actually drop focus on what you're looking at and move your eyesight in order to find that tiny little resize button of the window.''
What would you rather have, genius? A 1x1 inch resize widget cluttering up the screen? At least with people I know, resizing isnt a very common operation. If you want to temporary get the current window out of the way and look at another one, just throw the mouse to the dock or taskbar (yep, they're at the edge of the screen in all current GUIs) and click the widget for the window you want to look at.
Perhaps it would be useful to be able to resize a window by holding some key and dragging a corner of it (where the "corner" could be up to 1/4 of the total window size - after all, you need to hold the magic key to activate this mode), but then, holding a key and dragging is something very advanced for many users I know.
Or you could do like a number of advanced GUI users I know, and just partition the screen into non-overlapping frames, put your windows inside these frames, and never have the problem of overlapping windows in the first place!
More insights from the Stone Age:
``Situations like these make me feel sorry for the spacebar. So big and strong... He totally rules over the other keys, and yet all he produces is... nothingness.''
Maybe, just maybe, it's because inserting a space is a very common operation? How usable do you think a keyboard would be if the space bar were as difficult to hit as the 'Q' on a Dvorak keyboard (it's where the 'X' is on QWERTY)? For the same reason, the return key and the backspace are (hopefully) larger than regular keys, but smaller than the space bar.
The Stone Age guy also complains about modern GUIs offer
Computer Interfaces are Broken (Score:3, Insightful)
The commandline is broken. So many people hate it. Why? Lack of visual feedback? The need to memorize many commands and their options?
The GUI is broken. Popup windows constantly getting in the way; windows obscuring where I'm looking. Why is "ls *.bmp | xargs convert $i $i.jpg" so difficult in a GUI?
A complete rethinking of computer interfaces is needed. I think a lot of HCI research is of little use because it's starting from such flawed premises. You can only keep patching holes for so long. Projects like the late Jef Raskin's Archy are interesting and what I consider cutting edge HCI.
Of course, we're so entrenched at this point that any out of the box HCI research is also of little use... For shame.
Stop telling people how they should work (Score:3, Interesting)
People should stop assuming that real life metaphors are a better solution for everyone.
His arguments in favor of the spatial model are fine as long as you assume that everyone is more used to manipulate real life objects in closets, drawers and boxes than they are to manipulate stuff on a computer.
Because of my job (and centers of interest), I spend most of my time manipulating stuff on a computer. As such, I'd rather have my closet present its contents in a list tree than have my computer files presented as a real life metaphor.
Of course, I don't pretend to know what's best for everyone. That's why suggesting that preferences are unnecessary is idiotic.
The only solution that would be acceptable as far as I'm concerned would be "reasonable defaults" that people more familiar with physical objects than stuff on a computer would be able to deal with more easily, preferences out of the way by default, but existing, and let people switch back to the current way of working if they want to do so.
Also, his article is very critical of the way things are done currently, but don't provide much practical solutions, except get rid of preferences, put stuff in the corner, and a couple random specific use cases, so it's essentially pointless.
He's done the easy part (Score:3, Insightful)
- Spotting flaws in any technology - easy.
- Recommending a solution is - good.
- To fix the problem before everyone gets used to the broken implementation - divine.
Just like this guy's rant against Windows, it seems everyone now knew that New Orleans was doomed. Problem was, everyone got used to it the way it was, and felt the money could be better used elsewhere.Example: QWERTY keyboards sux0rs!
Example: Dvorak keyboard r0x0rs!
Example: I've never met anyone who uses a Dvorak keyboard.
Wake me when there's some real news.
Not just 10.3, earlier versions too! (Score:2)
Re:Mac OS X 10.3 (Score:2)
Corners have been used a lot in good UIs: