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>first calculator should have made his product look as much like an abacus as possible, so he wouldn't confuse the new user. No, he should have made it look as

>first calculator should have made his product look as much like an abacus as possible, so he wouldn't confuse the new user. No, he should have made it look as much like a calculation sheet as possible, and he did (calculators were made for accountants initially). The point was that you should use the interface your user expects, unless you are attempting to fill a demand that hasn't been met. >And saying new users can't grasp the way a proper computer calculator works mean you didn't try hard enough to explain to them. It's really taking the easy road. It's not. Saying new users 'cant' grasp it would be insulting - it would be much more accurate to say that they don't have the inclination to. If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet. >There should be an interactive walkthrough mode in every packed application in windows/osx. That would be useful in a lot of cases, and we're starting to see more of them now that producing video isn't so damned difficult. But they still take time and effort to read; they still make demands on the user. >it's actually very painful to use such a calculator on a computer. 'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only thing I showed him that didn't need explanation.

Raphael_Amiard 17y ago
> 'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only thing I showed him that didn't need explanation. Well no i was not talking about the perception. Even your or mine grandfather would agree that an actual calculator is better than the calculator you have in windows, because you have real keys instead of drawed ones. And if you start using the ones on your keyboard, which actually makes much more sense, the drawed ones become useless suddenly. The workflow you have with one of those fakes calculators is not only worse than with a well designed one, it's way worse than with a real one, and that's the whole point. > If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet. This deserves to be quoted because it's very true, but i still think, in the case of the calculator, and maybe in the case of other apps, that a way better compromise could be made.

Raphael_Amiard 17y ago

> 'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only thing I showed him that didn't need explanation. Well no i was not talking about the perception. Even your or mine grandfather would agree that an actual calculator is better than the calculator you have in windows, because you have real keys instead of drawed ones. And if you start using the ones on your keyboard, which actually makes much more sense, the drawed ones become useless suddenly. The workflow you have with one of those fakes calculators is not only worse than with a well designed one, it's way worse than with a real one, and that's the whole point. > If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet. This deserves to be quoted because it's very true, but i still think, in the case of the calculator, and maybe in the case of other apps, that a way better compromise could be made.