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I appreciated his complaints, but not his solution. Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. Most people are happy waiting fo

I appreciated his complaints, but not his solution. Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. Most people are happy waiting for a few seconds for their webpage to load, if it means they can do it without learning anything new. Programming is a profession, and we design software for people who have other interests than software. Many of us would be better off if we got better at empathizing with people who are not like us.

mlyle 7y ago
> Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. He goes too far and his suggestions are nebulous. But it sure would be nice to go back somewhat to the keyboard. There are so many apps with broken tab-orders; so many common operations without common shortcuts; so many badly tuned completion engines; bad interactions with autofill, etc. There's a whole lot of stuff that I could do faster on the keyboard, but I am being constantly trained to not dare assuming I can fly through and the right things will happen. In any application that I am not positive will do the "right things", I am slow and tentative. It's bad for accessibility, too. A vision deficit or dexterity deficit impacts mouse use harshly. We need to go back to making the keyboard experience good. Not just in individual applications, but across the board. While we're at it, we should realize that being too free in design choices has negative impacts to user. There was a time that Apple really cared about this stuff, for instance, and usability on Apples excelled because you knew that there was a lot of effort in the developer community to do the right things and conform to common standards.
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  And you have to have 3 browsers because 2 of them are broken on some field. I wonder how often updates cratered green consoles back in the day. Curses could be tricky at times. The path for many commercial UIs seems to be to map out complex processes into the most linear common path so that anyone off the street could do it. All that mouse action kneecaps productivity, and as soon as you come to an exception you enter a hell of popups or bazaar of UI elements. Then of course they chop out all the keyboard ahortcuts. Great UX is sort of like fusion, it’s always 30 years away.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    Great UX is worse than fusion - at least once we get fusion done it'll be worked out, but UX will always be on the brink of regression.
coldtea 7y ago
>I appreciated his complaints, but not his solution. Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. Or anybody that has to deal with frequent input work -- anybody at a POS, a factory control center, an air traffic control tower, a ship, a library, and thousands of other such cases. Those people would very much want to go back to keyboards if they used such an interface, and would very much would resist taking one from them for a mouse based interface. And most of us are not that alike those people for many of our program uses, we just change between different programs, many of which could be modelled like the programs mentioned above (like TFA describes) and be far easier/faster to use.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  That's true and actually that's a good point because I sometimes design software for people who key in stuff at a warehouse. I should ask them if they'd like those features. It's funny I read the article without thinking I could apply the results at my job! But going that extra mile is hard. In most shops like mine, what people need is more features and fixes, and elegant UI isn't a high priority. It's not all laziness, there is wisdom in satisficing.
gsich 7y ago
>Most people are happy waiting for a few seconds for their webpage to load, if it means they can do it without learning anything new. Ignorance is bliss. Show them a fast way and they don't want to go back. Unless your software has a "fast" and a "slow" mode you can't make assumptions that those users are "happy" with that delay.

mlyle 7y ago

> Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. He goes too far and his suggestions are nebulous. But it sure would be nice to go back somewhat to the keyboard. There are so many apps with broken tab-orders; so many common operations without common shortcuts; so many badly tuned completion engines; bad interactions with autofill, etc. There's a whole lot of stuff that I could do faster on the keyboard, but I am being constantly trained to not dare assuming I can fly through and the right things will happen. In any application that I am not positive will do the "right things", I am slow and tentative. It's bad for accessibility, too. A vision deficit or dexterity deficit impacts mouse use harshly. We need to go back to making the keyboard experience good. Not just in individual applications, but across the board. While we're at it, we should realize that being too free in design choices has negative impacts to user. There was a time that Apple really cared about this stuff, for instance, and usability on Apples excelled because you knew that there was a lot of effort in the developer community to do the right things and conform to common standards.

hindsightbias 7y ago
And you have to have 3 browsers because 2 of them are broken on some field. I wonder how often updates cratered green consoles back in the day. Curses could be tricky at times. The path for many commercial UIs seems to be to map out complex processes into the most linear common path so that anyone off the street could do it. All that mouse action kneecaps productivity, and as soon as you come to an exception you enter a hell of popups or bazaar of UI elements. Then of course they chop out all the keyboard ahortcuts. Great UX is sort of like fusion, it’s always 30 years away.
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  Great UX is worse than fusion - at least once we get fusion done it'll be worked out, but UX will always be on the brink of regression.

coldtea 7y ago

>I appreciated his complaints, but not his solution. Only a programmer would think that going back to keyboards is a good idea. Or anybody that has to deal with frequent input work -- anybody at a POS, a factory control center, an air traffic control tower, a ship, a library, and thousands of other such cases. Those people would very much want to go back to keyboards if they used such an interface, and would very much would resist taking one from them for a mouse based interface. And most of us are not that alike those people for many of our program uses, we just change between different programs, many of which could be modelled like the programs mentioned above (like TFA describes) and be far easier/faster to use.

asdfman123 7y ago
That's true and actually that's a good point because I sometimes design software for people who key in stuff at a warehouse. I should ask them if they'd like those features. It's funny I read the article without thinking I could apply the results at my job! But going that extra mile is hard. In most shops like mine, what people need is more features and fixes, and elegant UI isn't a high priority. It's not all laziness, there is wisdom in satisficing.

gsich 7y ago

>Most people are happy waiting for a few seconds for their webpage to load, if it means they can do it without learning anything new. Ignorance is bliss. Show them a fast way and they don't want to go back. Unless your software has a "fast" and a "slow" mode you can't make assumptions that those users are "happy" with that delay.