Beware Of User-Interface Experts
The nice thing about GUIs is that there are so many to choose from. And everybody has an opinion about them. Particularly UI experts, who are always ready to point to things that any particular GUI does wrong. Even the platform developers themselves are prone to keep redesigning things from time to time. And then not even following their own rules. There was a famous map of the New York subway, released in 1972 <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/arts/design/the-subway-map-that-rattled-new-yorkers.html>, that represented the network in such a stylized fashion that the city’s residents got mightily confused. Was it the people’s fault? Was the designer’s brilliance simply misunderstood? Sometimes I think UI designers themselves lose track of how users actually do things outside their labs...
But also beware of developers who say beware of UI experts 😳. History is littered with software that is really smart and well written, but to the average Joe cumbersome and horrible to use! I think its always a collaborative thing and most of all user test!!! and understand the real world application of the tools being made! Sent from my iPhone
On 3/08/2016, at 5:54 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo(a)geek-central.gen.nz> wrote:
The nice thing about GUIs is that there are so many to choose from. And everybody has an opinion about them. Particularly UI experts, who are always ready to point to things that any particular GUI does wrong. Even the platform developers themselves are prone to keep redesigning things from time to time. And then not even following their own rules.
There was a famous map of the New York subway, released in 1972 <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/arts/design/the-subway-map-that-rattled-new-yorkers.html>, that represented the network in such a stylized fashion that the city’s residents got mightily confused. Was it the people’s fault? Was the designer’s brilliance simply misunderstood?
Sometimes I think UI designers themselves lose track of how users actually do things outside their labs... _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: https://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
On Thu, 4 Aug 2016 13:08:21 +1200, Paul Wilson wrote:
But also beware of developers who say beware of UI experts 😳. History is littered with software that is really smart and well written, but to the average Joe cumbersome and horrible to use!
Smarter people than I am have pointed out the important distinction between “easy to use” and “easy to learn”. Powerful and useful software might not be “easy to learn”, but once you have mastered it, it can become “easy to use”. Too often people pass judgement on a piece of software as to how “easy to learn” it is, even though they think (and say) that they are evaluating how “easy to use” it is.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro -
Paul Wilson