3 ms·

> Are those impressions also wrong? Individually no. Your experience provides a sample of one case against the their proposition (at least for periods up to a

by dejb 17y ago

> Are those impressions also wrong? Individually no. Your experience provides a sample of one case against the their proposition (at least for periods up to a few months). Whether this can be reliably generalised to others is still in question. To do fair test you would need also do a good sample of people trying to move from (up to years usage of) the N1 to the iPhone. You could see how they are doing after a few days, weeks, months... It seems that for a some people, their first use of the iPhone was a life changing experience and it is possible that they have been so marked by it that they will always prefer that interface. Also different interfaces are probably a better fit for the way different people's brains work (Edit : From my experiences the strongest iPhone fans seem to have a more personal/intuitive approach to things rather than being focussed on statistics or logic. Exactly the group who would be least impressed with the arguments I'm making). With so many matters of personal taste/preference/experience involved I'm not sure if anyone's proclamation of 'the best interface' has more value than the 'best food' or 'best movie'.

houseabsolute 17y ago
> With so many matters of personal taste/preference/experience involved I'm not sure if anyone's proclamation of 'the best interface' has more value than the 'best food' or 'best movie'. http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
- dejb 17y ago
  I don't think that linking to a PG article somehow makes the issue 'settled'. This isn't a religion you know. To truly escape the realms of relativism the article should have included 'Good Design is Measurable'. In many ways of course it is measurable - you can ask people to rate their experience or measure how long they take to learn to perform various tasks. These measurements would not necessarily be universal though for the following reasons * They would apply only to the segment of the population being measured (may not generalise to other populations such as Chinese nationals) * Within the measured populations there will be differences in preference. If a particular subgroup or individual exhibits different preferences does that make them 'wrong'. * Different UI's might serve different purposes better. One may be easier to learn but another more powerful once learned. There would be chefs, movie makers, authors, musicians who would argue even more strongly that there is a definite 'good and bad' in their fields as well. To me there argument is just as valid as for UIs.
  - houseabsolute 17y ago
    Of course it's not settled. But the article says what I wanted to say better than I could say it. I don't see any benefit in restating what has already been said, worse. Think of the article as a library function I called. It's an obvious point that there will be some rare souls who prefer Android. For example, if the importance you put on a working Google Voice implementation counts for more than the sum of all possible other goods a phone might offer you, then maybe the iPhone is not right for you. Likewise, a child who will eat nothing but fish sticks will likely prefer them to the best filet mignon ever cooked. But for the most useful definitions of "good," there's still an order on the set in both cases. It probably won't surprise you that I mostly agree with the hypothetical chefs and authors you cite.
    - dejb 17y ago
      > Likewise, a child who will eat nothing but fish sticks will likely prefer them to the best filet mignon ever cooked. Actually the child in your analogue more closely resembles a devoted iPhone user than anything else. The image of a reluctant child being encouraged to try a new food is quite a good match. 'I TOLD you I wouldn't like it' they say. Of course in the case here we aren't comparing frozen food with high cuisine where 'better' really is obvious. We are comparing the meals of 2 of the most accomplished chefs in town. In that case individual differences in taste are often likely to be the deciding factor. > It probably won't surprise you that I mostly agree with the hypothetical chefs and authors you cite. Correlations in taste are to be expected. Within a cluster of highly correlated tastes the notion of 'better' will make more sense. If you chose to define your cluster as being 'better' then by extension you could say that their/your tastes are 'better' in some absolute sense.

by dejb 17y ago

houseabsolute 17y ago

> With so many matters of personal taste/preference/experience involved I'm not sure if anyone's proclamation of 'the best interface' has more value than the 'best food' or 'best movie'. http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

dejb 17y ago
I don't think that linking to a PG article somehow makes the issue 'settled'. This isn't a religion you know. To truly escape the realms of relativism the article should have included 'Good Design is Measurable'. In many ways of course it is measurable - you can ask people to rate their experience or measure how long they take to learn to perform various tasks. These measurements would not necessarily be universal though for the following reasons * They would apply only to the segment of the population being measured (may not generalise to other populations such as Chinese nationals) * Within the measured populations there will be differences in preference. If a particular subgroup or individual exhibits different preferences does that make them 'wrong'. * Different UI's might serve different purposes better. One may be easier to learn but another more powerful once learned. There would be chefs, movie makers, authors, musicians who would argue even more strongly that there is a definite 'good and bad' in their fields as well. To me there argument is just as valid as for UIs.
- houseabsolute 17y ago
  Of course it's not settled. But the article says what I wanted to say better than I could say it. I don't see any benefit in restating what has already been said, worse. Think of the article as a library function I called. It's an obvious point that there will be some rare souls who prefer Android. For example, if the importance you put on a working Google Voice implementation counts for more than the sum of all possible other goods a phone might offer you, then maybe the iPhone is not right for you. Likewise, a child who will eat nothing but fish sticks will likely prefer them to the best filet mignon ever cooked. But for the most useful definitions of "good," there's still an order on the set in both cases. It probably won't surprise you that I mostly agree with the hypothetical chefs and authors you cite.
  - dejb 17y ago
    > Likewise, a child who will eat nothing but fish sticks will likely prefer them to the best filet mignon ever cooked. Actually the child in your analogue more closely resembles a devoted iPhone user than anything else. The image of a reluctant child being encouraged to try a new food is quite a good match. 'I TOLD you I wouldn't like it' they say. Of course in the case here we aren't comparing frozen food with high cuisine where 'better' really is obvious. We are comparing the meals of 2 of the most accomplished chefs in town. In that case individual differences in taste are often likely to be the deciding factor. > It probably won't surprise you that I mostly agree with the hypothetical chefs and authors you cite. Correlations in taste are to be expected. Within a cluster of highly correlated tastes the notion of 'better' will make more sense. If you chose to define your cluster as being 'better' then by extension you could say that their/your tastes are 'better' in some absolute sense.