4 ms·

The issue I have with this is that design is typically domain specific. What works for an everyman-search engine might not be a perfect fit for an accounting so

by atoav 4y ago

The issue I have with this is that design is typically domain specific. What works for an everyman-search engine might not be a perfect fit for an accounting software, an professional team managment tool or an powerplant control software. A design targeted to the occasional user can spectacularily fail for power users that use the thing 4 hours every day. Sure it is easy to understand and self explainatory. But this is an advantage once at the beginning and might cost your users every day after that. Having a steep learning curve is not a feature, but sometimes easy to use means a UX sacrifices fast and efficent workflows (cue notepad.exe vs vim). Sure, notepad.exe is easier to use (and probably has more users in absolute numbers) than vim, but if your target group is power users, guess which one might feel more worth investing into for them?

bluGill 4y ago
VIM should be compared with an editors that has a bit more power. Kate (from KDE) perhaps (there are other choices, Kate is one I've used)? If all you need is the features of notepad, then notepad is strictly better than vim - highlight-copy-paste and save being the only features, and notepad using standard key shortcuts is easier to learn than the vim keys. (note that gvim has menu options for those so you don't have to use the vim keys - I'm not sure if it supports the standard control key shortcuts). However if you are programming all day vim has a lot of powerful features that notepad cannot touch, so if notepad is your other choice of course it is worth learning. However if your other choice is something more powerful - it turns out there are programmer editors that are just as powerful and a lot easier to learn. The question then becomes is it worth spending hours learning all the commands - including for things you rarely use - for the few ms it saves you each time you use them. (make sure you check with a stopwatch - people often feel that something is faster when the stopwatch says otherwise - as any UX engineer should know, but most vim advocates do not admit)
- atoav 4y ago
  Good comparison there. My point was only that some things need to be simple and self explainatory, even if it creates friction and reduces the power, because: A) they are not used all that often so the friction does not matter B) the thing is public and must be usable by potentially everyone On the other hand some things that are meant to be used for hours at a time should make the same tradeoff between reducing the one-time mental burden vs reducing the friction in daily use by power users. A cash register that is operated 8 hours a day by one person for 5 days a week for years at a time can (and I argue should!) be designed differently than a check out register that is used by new unexperienced customers for example. If an action the cashier does 200 times a day takes five seconds longer it makes a difference of 17 minutes a day or 83 minutes a week. That is a workday wasted on nothing in a month. The same workday could have been spent to train the cashier on a faster cash register that has a tiny bit more powerful user interface. Five seconds are a tad bit much, but even if you take one second, that number would add up to day in five months of work. And that is the capitalist efficiency perspective — it also annoys cashiers if they are slow to do the one thing they have to do 200 times a day.

by atoav 4y ago

bluGill 4y ago

VIM should be compared with an editors that has a bit more power. Kate (from KDE) perhaps (there are other choices, Kate is one I've used)? If all you need is the features of notepad, then notepad is strictly better than vim - highlight-copy-paste and save being the only features, and notepad using standard key shortcuts is easier to learn than the vim keys. (note that gvim has menu options for those so you don't have to use the vim keys - I'm not sure if it supports the standard control key shortcuts). However if you are programming all day vim has a lot of powerful features that notepad cannot touch, so if notepad is your other choice of course it is worth learning. However if your other choice is something more powerful - it turns out there are programmer editors that are just as powerful and a lot easier to learn. The question then becomes is it worth spending hours learning all the commands - including for things you rarely use - for the few ms it saves you each time you use them. (make sure you check with a stopwatch - people often feel that something is faster when the stopwatch says otherwise - as any UX engineer should know, but most vim advocates do not admit)

atoav 4y ago
Good comparison there. My point was only that some things need to be simple and self explainatory, even if it creates friction and reduces the power, because: A) they are not used all that often so the friction does not matter B) the thing is public and must be usable by potentially everyone On the other hand some things that are meant to be used for hours at a time should make the same tradeoff between reducing the one-time mental burden vs reducing the friction in daily use by power users. A cash register that is operated 8 hours a day by one person for 5 days a week for years at a time can (and I argue should!) be designed differently than a check out register that is used by new unexperienced customers for example. If an action the cashier does 200 times a day takes five seconds longer it makes a difference of 17 minutes a day or 83 minutes a week. That is a workday wasted on nothing in a month. The same workday could have been spent to train the cashier on a faster cash register that has a tiny bit more powerful user interface. Five seconds are a tad bit much, but even if you take one second, that number would add up to day in five months of work. And that is the capitalist efficiency perspective — it also annoys cashiers if they are slow to do the one thing they have to do 200 times a day.