Incredibly insightful article on ease of use vs. power

[Lucas Vogel]

At Exponent we find ourselves in a unique situation. We are trying to build
a user interface for a footsoldier for a mobile computer system that he will
use to navigate, communicate, and use to interact with his weaponry. It's
quite a task to try to have all of these different interesting and complex
features, while trying to keep the user interface as simple as possible. One
lesson we learned was to minimize the usage of the mouse; even though there
was a body mouse and a weapon mouse, navigation was still a royal pain in
the butt. Our situation is unique in that the user will not interface with
the operating system at all; they have to interact through the program for
everything. 

Sorry if this doesn't relate to your message very well, just thought I'd
share this with the gang.

-----Original Message-----
From: Shawn T. Rutledge [mailto:rutledge@cx47646-a.phnx1.az.home.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 3:14 PM
To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
Subject: Incredibly insightful article on ease of use vs. power


We have the occasional flamewars over this.... but this guy really
gets the big picture.  Helped to crystallize some ideas which I've
understood subconsciously but couldn't have said so well.

http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/06-01/dilger.html

Also brings up the point that choosing power rather than ease of use 
(as most linux users do) is primarily a male attitude.

Now go contrast it with this...

http://catalog.com/hopkins/unix-haters/preface.html

which is all about how it doesn't make sense to go out of our way to
do things in backwards and difficult ways, when we know of better ways.

Good UI design straddles a line between two extremes - 
making an artificial veneer over the truth of how the software actually
works, so that you can't understand it, but don't need to (until it
breaks, or you want to do something that falls outside the provided box);
and on the other hand, slavish dedication to inappropriate metaphors (like
the metaphor that everything is a file, and files must always be arranged
hierarchically).  In the latter case the UI is very truthful and powerful, 
but artificially difficult because the metaphor doesn't match the task.

Another tradeoff is between accurately modeling the real world in software, 
and making "magic" - modeling as we wish the world appeared.  The use of
computers gives us that choice; if all the problems in the real world
were accurately duplicated in the virtual world, then there would be no
point.  Judicious improvement is the whole point.  But in either case
the UI should exactly match the chosen model; if the model is wrong, then
change that, don't veneer over it.

-- 
  _______                   Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD  ecloud@bigfoot.com
 (_  | |_)          http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud  kb7pwd@kb7pwd.ampr.org
 __) | | \________________________________________________________________
Get money for spare CPU cycles at http://www.ProcessTree.com/?sponsor=5903

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