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The ultimate litmus test for any GUI is to ask a relative with average computer skills to perform basic tasks in your program. If he/she asks questions like "w

The ultimate litmus test for any GUI is to ask a relative with average computer skills to perform basic tasks in your program. If he/she asks questions like "why the fuck is the Confirm button up with on the window handle?" Or "Where are the small previews when I'm selecting images?" you have failed. In its current state GTK is not only a footgun, but a footgun factory with the biggest manufacturing throughput in the GUI library world. And I'm not writing this out of spite. I want GTK to be successful and I do believe some of the underlying tech is great but the actual ui/ux choices it want's to steer you towards are consistently terrible almost to the point of "want to do $THING? Check how gnome apps do it and do the complete opposite."

marcodiego 5y ago
> The ultimate litmus test for any GUI is to ask a relative with average computer skills to perform basic tasks in your program. I strongly disagree! People with "average computer skills" expect that "to perform basic tasks" things must be done EXACTLY the way they are used to. It doesn't matter if the different way is better, faster, more efficient, more intuitive... if it is different they will likely complain.
- handrous 5y ago
  1) Actually intuitive (this is rare—if you think your novel idea is, it likely isn't), 2) The same way the user's used to or expects, 3) Everything else GUI approaches, ranked best to worst. Something from #3 should always strongly demonstrate that it's actually in category #1 before displacing something from category #2, or otherwise provide immense value. UI churn keeping interfaces mostly stuck in #3 is a curse on computing. [EDIT] Oh, and, an adjacent principal: consistency of placement & behavior beats everything else. Which is another strong point against modifying UIs without very good reason.
  - cuu508 5y ago
    What would be some examples of actually intuitive? To me, intuitive ~= familiar, similar to something you already know how to use.
    - jeppesen-io 5y ago
      You are 100% correct - intuitive only makes sense from a particular frame of refrence Guestures on phones are considered intuitive, but take my phone to 1980 and it would be considered quite difficult to use.
      - handrous 5y ago
        I think the concept that one can touch a screen and make something happen would be alien enough to throw people off (it might simply not occur to them to try), but I'm pretty sure there are at least examples of UI elements on touchscreen phones—though not entire systems—that would be fairly intuitive even to someone in the 1960s, let alone the 1980s. Modern "slide (or swipe) screen to unlock" would throw them (what the fuck does it mean to "slide" or "swipe" the screen"?) but (to pick an example I used in another post) I bet an iOS6 "slide to unlock" would be very easy for them. What do you slide? The thing that looks like it slides. Easy. How do you do it? Exactly the way you'd guess you do. I may not know what it means to "unlock" in this context, but there's not much else to do, so trying it... ta da, something happened, and there's a bunch more stuff on the screen now.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Entirely true. In computing, making something intuitive has a lot to do with leveraging familiarity with he physical world, and avoiding making things too abstract or "computery", and with making the effect be what one would expect for the action based on prior experience, especially outside computing. This is hard to do well, and often complexity of what software needs to do makes it practically impossible, so it's not always achievable (I noted that it's rare). Heavy users of computers develop intuition for more computery, abstract interfaces through exposure, but this is a small slice of people—the rest follow tried & true patterns but just hope for the best, with little confidence or understanding, which is why UI changes are so damaging for them—and is kinda related to how various conventions in video games can read as intuitive and pick-up-and-play to seasoned gamers but are not at all to newbies—watch a young kid with no gaming experience struggle with Super Mario Brothers 1-1 with a D-Pad (four discrete directions) and just 2 buttons. This is a level that acts as a natural tutorial to the game, but it's still a bunch of trial-and-error as an experience, and is difficult because the mapping of the six button presses to actions on the screen is (I think this isn't well-enough appreciated) very abstract. Compare with watching a kid learn to drive an electric kids' car (like a Powerwheel) with forward, reverse, and steering. Similarly complex, but in my experience they pick it up faster. The controls map more closely to the effect, I think is the reason, even though the wheel is fairly abstract. Stick forward, you're going forward. Stick back, you're going back. Push pedal, go. Turn wheel right, go right. Turn wheel left, go left. The least-intuitive thing is easily the brake pedal (if there is one—often they just stop when you let off the "gas"), and of course reversing messes up adults, even, by switching everything around (right to go left, push pedal forward to go backward, et c.). Examples that I used on here just the other day: the iOS 6 and earlier unlock slider (obviously interactive, looks like a familiar control from the real world that's sometimes used to undo a latch, the only obviously-interactive thing on the screen, follows the motion of your finger as if you were moving a real object—you hardly even need the instructions "slide to unlock"), and the way "folders" worked on same, mostly the way that they made them feel like a physical thing existing under the Home Screen so there was no state change across the entire screen—the screen "split apart" to reveal what was ("always") "under it", leaving part of the Home Screen visible, and sure enough, touching that still-visible part would slide the folder shut again. The folders were also limited in capacity—no abstract scrolling, they were like a physical space, with limits. Spatial finder on pre-OSX macOS is another, more subtle example. 3-pane browsing, file managers that change as one browses folders rather than opening a new window, and file managers that do open new windows but don't retain their position on the screen, are all more abstract to various degrees. They break the connection between action and effect, and the connection between what's visible and what's being operated on ("this window was that folder, but now it's this other folder? Where'd the first one go?"). In that case (and many), the more-intuitive option may be strictly at-odds with more efficient operation for seasoned users. Basically: can a user leverage what they know, or do they have to learn how their actions connect to whatever thing you've made those actions do? Everyone exists and grows up in a physical world, which remains fairly static over long periods of time, so things they know from that work well. Computer interfaces have developed some long-lived conventions, but a lot of it churns way too much to be reliably "intuitive".
  - pmontra 5y ago
    Intuitive maybe == skeuomorphic which in turns means that it builds on the training and the expectations of all a lifetime. There is little of intuitive in the UIs I used since the 80s. The first X11 windows manager I used (twm?) didn't have a menu or a dock or whatever. I stated the applications from a xterm and I could iconize them to the desktop, move the icon around, resume them by double clicking the icon. That was intuitive for me. The Windows task bar was an important improvement, more than the start menu. Virtual desktops where great and sorely missed on Windows. Anything else, less important.
    - handrous 5y ago
      > Intuitive maybe == skeuomorphic which in turns means that it builds on the training and the expectations of all a lifetime. Sure, but everyone brings some familiarity with the physical world to the table. The first things babies learn are the effects of pushing on things, some idea of weight & momentum & gravity, et c. The best UIs build on that when possible. If you push two things together and they "click", they should stay stuck together until "pulled" apart somehow. This is why touch screens can be (but aren't often, since iOS took a big shift in version 7, anyway) very intuitive—they allow more natural and direct interaction with what's happening on the screen. You can "push" two things together, you can "pull" them apart, you can "squeeze" things, you can press on them, and there's not even the abstraction of a mouse in the way. Even with a mouse, clicking is abstract (I'm clicking down here, something's happening up on the screen), motion is surrogate, "dragging" is very abstract when you think about it, et c, and that's where you start with desktop UIs, before you even throw in anything else.
  - zajio1am 5y ago
    > Actually intuitive I would say that 'discoverable' is much more important and also better defined than 'intuitive'.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Intuitiveness is about matching expectations. The more universal the expectations, or the experience they're based on, the more successful leveraging "intuitive" design will be. That's why intuitive design tends to be tied to physical metaphors or stand-ins. I agree that discoverability is great, and it's also something computer UIs tend to be terrible at. The #1 distinguishing characteristic of a discoverable UI is that the user feels very safe experimenting. If they're afraid to try things, they can't discover much. UIs rarely achieve this, and you can see the effect in how anxious most people get doing anything even slightly unfamiliar on their computer.
- no_time 5y ago
  To me it seems like GNOME apps/gtk have positioned themselves as the "GUI for the masses" as they follow all the terrible trends from others like massive padding,low content density, phone like controls. But that also means catering to the usage patterns and expectations of this demograpic.
agumonkey 5y ago
you're too harsh, you can always find an average user that will freak out on something unexpected good to think about average users, but IMO there's a balance between altruism and value of change, if that change brings a lot of benefits to the average users
pmontra 5y ago
The average person understands the Windows UI and is lost on a Mac and on any Linux. Maybe not on KDE which 7 years ago looked like Windows quite a lot, don't know now.

marcodiego 5y ago

> The ultimate litmus test for any GUI is to ask a relative with average computer skills to perform basic tasks in your program. I strongly disagree! People with "average computer skills" expect that "to perform basic tasks" things must be done EXACTLY the way they are used to. It doesn't matter if the different way is better, faster, more efficient, more intuitive... if it is different they will likely complain.

handrous 5y ago
1) Actually intuitive (this is rare—if you think your novel idea is, it likely isn't), 2) The same way the user's used to or expects, 3) Everything else GUI approaches, ranked best to worst. Something from #3 should always strongly demonstrate that it's actually in category #1 before displacing something from category #2, or otherwise provide immense value. UI churn keeping interfaces mostly stuck in #3 is a curse on computing. [EDIT] Oh, and, an adjacent principal: consistency of placement & behavior beats everything else. Which is another strong point against modifying UIs without very good reason.
- cuu508 5y ago
  What would be some examples of actually intuitive? To me, intuitive ~= familiar, similar to something you already know how to use.
  - jeppesen-io 5y ago
    You are 100% correct - intuitive only makes sense from a particular frame of refrence Guestures on phones are considered intuitive, but take my phone to 1980 and it would be considered quite difficult to use.
    - handrous 5y ago
      I think the concept that one can touch a screen and make something happen would be alien enough to throw people off (it might simply not occur to them to try), but I'm pretty sure there are at least examples of UI elements on touchscreen phones—though not entire systems—that would be fairly intuitive even to someone in the 1960s, let alone the 1980s. Modern "slide (or swipe) screen to unlock" would throw them (what the fuck does it mean to "slide" or "swipe" the screen"?) but (to pick an example I used in another post) I bet an iOS6 "slide to unlock" would be very easy for them. What do you slide? The thing that looks like it slides. Easy. How do you do it? Exactly the way you'd guess you do. I may not know what it means to "unlock" in this context, but there's not much else to do, so trying it... ta da, something happened, and there's a bunch more stuff on the screen now.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Entirely true. In computing, making something intuitive has a lot to do with leveraging familiarity with he physical world, and avoiding making things too abstract or "computery", and with making the effect be what one would expect for the action based on prior experience, especially outside computing. This is hard to do well, and often complexity of what software needs to do makes it practically impossible, so it's not always achievable (I noted that it's rare). Heavy users of computers develop intuition for more computery, abstract interfaces through exposure, but this is a small slice of people—the rest follow tried & true patterns but just hope for the best, with little confidence or understanding, which is why UI changes are so damaging for them—and is kinda related to how various conventions in video games can read as intuitive and pick-up-and-play to seasoned gamers but are not at all to newbies—watch a young kid with no gaming experience struggle with Super Mario Brothers 1-1 with a D-Pad (four discrete directions) and just 2 buttons. This is a level that acts as a natural tutorial to the game, but it's still a bunch of trial-and-error as an experience, and is difficult because the mapping of the six button presses to actions on the screen is (I think this isn't well-enough appreciated) very abstract. Compare with watching a kid learn to drive an electric kids' car (like a Powerwheel) with forward, reverse, and steering. Similarly complex, but in my experience they pick it up faster. The controls map more closely to the effect, I think is the reason, even though the wheel is fairly abstract. Stick forward, you're going forward. Stick back, you're going back. Push pedal, go. Turn wheel right, go right. Turn wheel left, go left. The least-intuitive thing is easily the brake pedal (if there is one—often they just stop when you let off the "gas"), and of course reversing messes up adults, even, by switching everything around (right to go left, push pedal forward to go backward, et c.). Examples that I used on here just the other day: the iOS 6 and earlier unlock slider (obviously interactive, looks like a familiar control from the real world that's sometimes used to undo a latch, the only obviously-interactive thing on the screen, follows the motion of your finger as if you were moving a real object—you hardly even need the instructions "slide to unlock"), and the way "folders" worked on same, mostly the way that they made them feel like a physical thing existing under the Home Screen so there was no state change across the entire screen—the screen "split apart" to reveal what was ("always") "under it", leaving part of the Home Screen visible, and sure enough, touching that still-visible part would slide the folder shut again. The folders were also limited in capacity—no abstract scrolling, they were like a physical space, with limits. Spatial finder on pre-OSX macOS is another, more subtle example. 3-pane browsing, file managers that change as one browses folders rather than opening a new window, and file managers that do open new windows but don't retain their position on the screen, are all more abstract to various degrees. They break the connection between action and effect, and the connection between what's visible and what's being operated on ("this window was that folder, but now it's this other folder? Where'd the first one go?"). In that case (and many), the more-intuitive option may be strictly at-odds with more efficient operation for seasoned users. Basically: can a user leverage what they know, or do they have to learn how their actions connect to whatever thing you've made those actions do? Everyone exists and grows up in a physical world, which remains fairly static over long periods of time, so things they know from that work well. Computer interfaces have developed some long-lived conventions, but a lot of it churns way too much to be reliably "intuitive".
- pmontra 5y ago
  Intuitive maybe == skeuomorphic which in turns means that it builds on the training and the expectations of all a lifetime. There is little of intuitive in the UIs I used since the 80s. The first X11 windows manager I used (twm?) didn't have a menu or a dock or whatever. I stated the applications from a xterm and I could iconize them to the desktop, move the icon around, resume them by double clicking the icon. That was intuitive for me. The Windows task bar was an important improvement, more than the start menu. Virtual desktops where great and sorely missed on Windows. Anything else, less important.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > Intuitive maybe == skeuomorphic which in turns means that it builds on the training and the expectations of all a lifetime. Sure, but everyone brings some familiarity with the physical world to the table. The first things babies learn are the effects of pushing on things, some idea of weight & momentum & gravity, et c. The best UIs build on that when possible. If you push two things together and they "click", they should stay stuck together until "pulled" apart somehow. This is why touch screens can be (but aren't often, since iOS took a big shift in version 7, anyway) very intuitive—they allow more natural and direct interaction with what's happening on the screen. You can "push" two things together, you can "pull" them apart, you can "squeeze" things, you can press on them, and there's not even the abstraction of a mouse in the way. Even with a mouse, clicking is abstract (I'm clicking down here, something's happening up on the screen), motion is surrogate, "dragging" is very abstract when you think about it, et c, and that's where you start with desktop UIs, before you even throw in anything else.
- zajio1am 5y ago
  > Actually intuitive I would say that 'discoverable' is much more important and also better defined than 'intuitive'.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Intuitiveness is about matching expectations. The more universal the expectations, or the experience they're based on, the more successful leveraging "intuitive" design will be. That's why intuitive design tends to be tied to physical metaphors or stand-ins. I agree that discoverability is great, and it's also something computer UIs tend to be terrible at. The #1 distinguishing characteristic of a discoverable UI is that the user feels very safe experimenting. If they're afraid to try things, they can't discover much. UIs rarely achieve this, and you can see the effect in how anxious most people get doing anything even slightly unfamiliar on their computer.
no_time 5y ago
To me it seems like GNOME apps/gtk have positioned themselves as the "GUI for the masses" as they follow all the terrible trends from others like massive padding,low content density, phone like controls. But that also means catering to the usage patterns and expectations of this demograpic.

agumonkey 5y ago

you're too harsh, you can always find an average user that will freak out on something unexpected good to think about average users, but IMO there's a balance between altruism and value of change, if that change brings a lot of benefits to the average users

pmontra 5y ago

The average person understands the Windows UI and is lost on a Mac and on any Linux. Maybe not on KDE which 7 years ago looked like Windows quite a lot, don't know now.