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"But the place for such experimentation is in the lab." That's a silly, elitist statement. No matter how much testing you do in the lab, the ultimate test is i

"But the place for such experimentation is in the lab." That's a silly, elitist statement. No matter how much testing you do in the lab, the ultimate test is in the hands of end users. Lots of dumb WIMP UI ideas, like modal dialogs, MDI windows, and nested menu hierarchies, survived the labs at Xerox, Apple, and Microsoft, but fell out of favor over years of real user experience. On the other side of the coin, lots of now-popular desktop and web UI elements were conceived by run-of-the-mill developers far from any research campus. As the new-car smell wears off touch devices, plenty of touch UI conventions will get drop-tested in the wild, the stupid ones will get discarded, and the good ones will get copied by everyone and become taken for granted. This will happen far faster in the cutthroat app marketplace, under the eyes of millions of customers, than in any HCI lab.

ahoyhere 16y ago
I love Don Norman's books, but you have to understand: He's a consultant. He runs a usability lab. That's his business. Get it? This is not a pure critique, although it certainly has valid points. It's a drum-up-money speech. You don't drum up money by saying "Yes, it has these problems, but hey, when personal computers were only 3 years old, we all had to swap floppies to move to the second half of our program!" Being fair and pragmatic doesn't get you massive clicks and money, unless you are very, very skilled at delivering pragmatic advice in a delicious and entertaining package. (And Norman is not.) EDIT: And neither does it do to undermine your business by admitting that, regardless of these flaws, people love the crap out of the damn things.
JadeNB 16y ago
Judging from the evidence of my browser, and every other common browser out there --including new IE's!-- I'm not so sure the S- vs. MDI debate is completely settled. I think that a lot of the text editors for the Mac --TextMate, maybe?-- have tabbed interfaces, too; vim and emacs certainly do. (I don't know anything about mobile browsers, so the statement may well be false for them.)
- deleted 16y ago
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- jerf 16y ago
  Tabs are still SDI. MDI was a full windowing environment inside of the program itself, including icons and sub windows and a separate, distinct notion of maximization, minimization, window position, and... well, it was as if it were designed to be as confusing as possible by adding a second unnecessary dimension of potential confusion to virtually every core concept in the UI. Tabs are just tabs, nowhere near as complex on any level while still accompling pretty much everything you could want.

ahoyhere 16y ago

I love Don Norman's books, but you have to understand: He's a consultant. He runs a usability lab. That's his business. Get it? This is not a pure critique, although it certainly has valid points. It's a drum-up-money speech. You don't drum up money by saying "Yes, it has these problems, but hey, when personal computers were only 3 years old, we all had to swap floppies to move to the second half of our program!" Being fair and pragmatic doesn't get you massive clicks and money, unless you are very, very skilled at delivering pragmatic advice in a delicious and entertaining package. (And Norman is not.) EDIT: And neither does it do to undermine your business by admitting that, regardless of these flaws, people love the crap out of the damn things.

JadeNB 16y ago

Judging from the evidence of my browser, and every other common browser out there --including new IE's!-- I'm not so sure the S- vs. MDI debate is completely settled. I think that a lot of the text editors for the Mac --TextMate, maybe?-- have tabbed interfaces, too; vim and emacs certainly do. (I don't know anything about mobile browsers, so the statement may well be false for them.)

deleted 16y ago
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jerf 16y ago
Tabs are still SDI. MDI was a full windowing environment inside of the program itself, including icons and sub windows and a separate, distinct notion of maximization, minimization, window position, and... well, it was as if it were designed to be as confusing as possible by adding a second unnecessary dimension of potential confusion to virtually every core concept in the UI. Tabs are just tabs, nowhere near as complex on any level while still accompling pretty much everything you could want.