"System and software engineers seem now to be moving toward increased customization." - from the atricle

Giving users the ability to 'skin' their interface is not improving usability. Whenever I see someone use a mouse and GUI OS for the first time, I am ashamed that the industry has not been able to come up with a better interface. I have seen people push the mouse against the screen and push it around (honest!)

Once you have been trained in the GUI conventions you are able to use a computer in a Pavlovian way, but surely we can be more innovative that this?

Posted by: Mac on July 19, 2002 03:54 AM

 

Oh bugger, was I supposed to add a comment via the InfoDesign link? I have just followed the link but cannot find any way to add comments. Am I just another dumb user ?

Posted by: Mac on July 19, 2002 03:57 AM

 

Oh come on...any interface that's geared for the "push the mouse against the screen" crowd is unlikely to scale up to something that people would want to use on a daily basis, once they've achieved a basic literacy of the interaction model. The whole "WIMP"/Mouse inteface might not be absolutely ideal, but it has a lot of good principles behind it. (Remember, the only truly intuitive UI is the nipple, everything else has to be learned.)

I agree that skins are not usually a usability improvement...most people are pretty unaware of what makes a good UI, even for their own use. And when something like Linux gets the configurability crown, it probably indicates an interface geared towards engineers, with default settings that less experienced users won't like or know how to change or what to change them to.

The article makes a great point that getting used to the little quirks of a UI will tend to keep people on that OS. (And my wife and I both drive Honda Civics, and we benefit from having idential interfaces...)

Posted by: Kirk on July 19, 2002 11:26 AM

 

Kirk, the nipple is not "truly intuitive." Newborn human babies have to be pointed in the right direction (positioned) and stroked with their mother's nipple to learn to nurse. It also helps if they are wide awake and naked (no artificial sensory barrier between their skin and their mother's). And even then, there's always the issue of biting.

Posted by: Jack on July 20, 2002 05:35 PM