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> believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using The whole point of intuitive design is to realize that you shouldn't make your

by unsui 5y ago

> believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using The whole point of intuitive design is to realize that you shouldn't make your users "think", insofar as making effortful cognition (i.e., Kahneman's "Type 2" thinking). Good design should leverage built-in assumptions of how the world, per users' intuitive mental models, to create affordances that guide users to the desired interaction and behavior. If a design promotes incoherent behavior, it's not the user that's wrong; getting users to change intuitive behavior requires training and cognitive effort. Sadly, why vim and emacs are still difficult for newbies to pick up. Yes, the learning curve is (arguably) minimal; that's not the point. It's that there is a learning curve at all.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> The whole point of intuitive design is to realize that you shouldn't make your users "think", insofar as making effortful cognition (i.e., Kahneman's "Type 2" thinking). Defined like this, this makes "intuitive design" a very destructive trend. There's only so far you can go trying to "leverage built-in assumptions of how the world, per users' intuitive mental models". Computing world is not like everyday experience in many important ways, and trying to pretend it is only burdens the user with inconsistent mental models that don't allow them to navigate and grow their intuition. The way I see it, it is the failure of UX design that it tries to hide the nature of computers - instead of making it apparent, so that the users can learn and internalize the important axioms of this different world. Intuition needs to be calibrated to the underlying reality for it to be useful. > Yes, the learning curve is (arguably) minimal; that's not the point. It's that there is a learning curve at all. There's few things in the world that have no learning curve. Almost everything is learned. Almost everything that's important in life is learned either through direct training, or picked up over time from exposure. This is where every UX designer inventing their own "simplifying" abstractions is hurting users: nobody is training them, but software is so inconsistent nowadays that they don't get to learn from exposure either.
- unsui 5y ago
  You're thinking like a HN reader, rather than the intended audience for the chrome omnibar (i.e., non-specialists) They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction, where they want to pull the door, when the door only works by pushing (yet the door handle basically beckons to be pulled)... Whether it's a good thing or not is besides the point. It's how people work, if you want to reach them at scale.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... > Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction (...) Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. This is not true, because computing is new, and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists. Part of the job of UI is to enable the users to build correct mental models in the first place - and to the extent they introduce bad abstractions, they fail at this job, leaving users with bad mental models that don't correspond to reality, and don't let them make sensible predictions. Note: I don't disagree with Norman. I disagree with how his work is used to justify current UX design trends.
    - jychang 5y ago
      > and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists Strong disagree. Looking at the URL bar in Firefox vs Chrome is a great example of how Chrome nailed an "obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists". We can look at things like the design of door handles, and clearly see how the shape of the human hand influences the design. If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different. The same thing applies to human minds (as opposed to hypothetical alien minds, or AIs). Humans all have a hippocampus, a prefrontal cortex, and other universal biological factors in cognition which influences HOW thoughts are formed.
ryantgtg 5y ago
Re vim: As a hobby developer (a perpetual newbie) the learning curve is an issue for me simply because I don’t yet understand the value in overcoming the curve. “Efficiency” is not one of my programming goals, and so reasons like “vim is great - it’s super fast” have no appeal. So, remembering 80 unintuitive shortcuts just so I can do what I do in Kate, but a little faster? Eh…
- burnished 5y ago
  Have you ever seen an experienced user demonstrate some use cases? I'm in the same boat as you but that convinced me because some of it was like magic. I don't think the value is in uniqueness of function, right, but the sort of swiftness of expression you can get. More like having you workbench set up just perfectly, less like having irreplaceable tools. But the start up cost is what keeps me out - learning it, trying to integrate it into other tools that I don't fully understand anyway (VSCode in my case), etc etc.
  - ryantgtg 5y ago
    Only brief glimpses. And I have no doubt it’s amazing in capable hands. My interest in learning vim is likely solely rooted in some vague jealousy of these skills. I keep having to remind myself to be happy with what I have and stop spending what little time I have gazing at greener pastures.
- Karellen 5y ago
  The value is that your fingers stay in the same place for typing, and for editing/commands. But also, once the commands aren't just in your actual memory, but are partially in your muscle memory, you don't even really have to think about what key sequence you're using; it just happens. Your fingers know. The advantage of both of these factors combined is that you don't have to think about editing, or the user interface. You don't have to break the flow of thinking about your code. You type code, you edit code, you rearrange code, and you only ever have to think about the code. You don't have to spare brain cycles to think about editing, your fingers just do it. It's like learning to touch type. There are two fingered typists who can type almost as fast as I can touch type. Or even six-fingered typists who might be able to go a bit faster. But even though they know where the keys are, they still need to keep an eye on the keyboard to type. They still need to think about the keyboard. But once you learn to touch-type, you don't need to think about typing any more. You just... type. Being able to keeping your eyes on the screen all the time just allows you to concentrate on your code, rather on the way you're entering it. By turning some conscious actions into muscle memory, it leaves your conscious mind able to spend more time on the things you want to think about.
presentation 5y ago
I take a middle ground - I agree that intuitive design is good especially for the typical non-techy user, but I also love designs that marry that with expressing the truth of the underlying system and not getting in the way of people who do actually want to leverage their understanding of the conceptual model of a program for power use. Most UIs fail to achieve both, and end up either too dumb to be useful or too complex to be widely usable.

by unsui 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> The whole point of intuitive design is to realize that you shouldn't make your users "think", insofar as making effortful cognition (i.e., Kahneman's "Type 2" thinking). Defined like this, this makes "intuitive design" a very destructive trend. There's only so far you can go trying to "leverage built-in assumptions of how the world, per users' intuitive mental models". Computing world is not like everyday experience in many important ways, and trying to pretend it is only burdens the user with inconsistent mental models that don't allow them to navigate and grow their intuition. The way I see it, it is the failure of UX design that it tries to hide the nature of computers - instead of making it apparent, so that the users can learn and internalize the important axioms of this different world. Intuition needs to be calibrated to the underlying reality for it to be useful. > Yes, the learning curve is (arguably) minimal; that's not the point. It's that there is a learning curve at all. There's few things in the world that have no learning curve. Almost everything is learned. Almost everything that's important in life is learned either through direct training, or picked up over time from exposure. This is where every UX designer inventing their own "simplifying" abstractions is hurting users: nobody is training them, but software is so inconsistent nowadays that they don't get to learn from exposure either.

unsui 5y ago
You're thinking like a HN reader, rather than the intended audience for the chrome omnibar (i.e., non-specialists) They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction, where they want to pull the door, when the door only works by pushing (yet the door handle basically beckons to be pulled)... Whether it's a good thing or not is besides the point. It's how people work, if you want to reach them at scale.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > They don't want the abstraction punctured to see the inner workings... > Anything less than that creates a Norman Door conflict, whereby their inner mental models conflict with the intended interaction (...) Here I disagree, because the underlying assumption is that those "intuitive" interfaces are exploiting an existing mental model of the users, like door handles in the physical world. This is not true, because computing is new, and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists. Part of the job of UI is to enable the users to build correct mental models in the first place - and to the extent they introduce bad abstractions, they fail at this job, leaving users with bad mental models that don't correspond to reality, and don't let them make sensible predictions. Note: I don't disagree with Norman. I disagree with how his work is used to justify current UX design trends.
  - jychang 5y ago
    > and there is no obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists Strong disagree. Looking at the URL bar in Firefox vs Chrome is a great example of how Chrome nailed an "obvious preexisting mental model shared by non-specialists". We can look at things like the design of door handles, and clearly see how the shape of the human hand influences the design. If we had tentacles, door handles probably would look more different. The same thing applies to human minds (as opposed to hypothetical alien minds, or AIs). Humans all have a hippocampus, a prefrontal cortex, and other universal biological factors in cognition which influences HOW thoughts are formed.

ryantgtg 5y ago

Re vim: As a hobby developer (a perpetual newbie) the learning curve is an issue for me simply because I don’t yet understand the value in overcoming the curve. “Efficiency” is not one of my programming goals, and so reasons like “vim is great - it’s super fast” have no appeal. So, remembering 80 unintuitive shortcuts just so I can do what I do in Kate, but a little faster? Eh…

burnished 5y ago
Have you ever seen an experienced user demonstrate some use cases? I'm in the same boat as you but that convinced me because some of it was like magic. I don't think the value is in uniqueness of function, right, but the sort of swiftness of expression you can get. More like having you workbench set up just perfectly, less like having irreplaceable tools. But the start up cost is what keeps me out - learning it, trying to integrate it into other tools that I don't fully understand anyway (VSCode in my case), etc etc.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  Only brief glimpses. And I have no doubt it’s amazing in capable hands. My interest in learning vim is likely solely rooted in some vague jealousy of these skills. I keep having to remind myself to be happy with what I have and stop spending what little time I have gazing at greener pastures.
Karellen 5y ago
The value is that your fingers stay in the same place for typing, and for editing/commands. But also, once the commands aren't just in your actual memory, but are partially in your muscle memory, you don't even really have to think about what key sequence you're using; it just happens. Your fingers know. The advantage of both of these factors combined is that you don't have to think about editing, or the user interface. You don't have to break the flow of thinking about your code. You type code, you edit code, you rearrange code, and you only ever have to think about the code. You don't have to spare brain cycles to think about editing, your fingers just do it. It's like learning to touch type. There are two fingered typists who can type almost as fast as I can touch type. Or even six-fingered typists who might be able to go a bit faster. But even though they know where the keys are, they still need to keep an eye on the keyboard to type. They still need to think about the keyboard. But once you learn to touch-type, you don't need to think about typing any more. You just... type. Being able to keeping your eyes on the screen all the time just allows you to concentrate on your code, rather on the way you're entering it. By turning some conscious actions into muscle memory, it leaves your conscious mind able to spend more time on the things you want to think about.

presentation 5y ago

I take a middle ground - I agree that intuitive design is good especially for the typical non-techy user, but I also love designs that marry that with expressing the truth of the underlying system and not getting in the way of people who do actually want to leverage their understanding of the conceptual model of a program for power use. Most UIs fail to achieve both, and end up either too dumb to be useful or too complex to be widely usable.