4 ms·

Sorry for the rant but posts like this piss me right off. Usability seems to mean low entry barrier and pretty looking these days rather than functionally eleg

Sorry for the rant but posts like this piss me right off. Usability seems to mean low entry barrier and pretty looking these days rather than functionally elegant, normalised and reusable. Usability now means giving dumb people pretty looking things and not bothering to write a manual or relying on their understanding of the domain or having any compromises between the machine and the meat sack using it. Also stop blogging and fix it if it's a problem - that's the joy of open source. If they don't want the 'fix', then its not a fix for the supposed problem or the problem didn't exist to start with.

lazerwalker 14y ago
> Also stop blogging and fix it if it's a problem - that's the joy of open source. If they don't want the 'fix', then its not a fix for the supposed problem or the problem didn't exist to start with. A flaw of many open source software projects is that they tend to be inhospitable to designers coming in and attempting to contribute in a meaningful manner. Usability shouldn't just mean "dumbing things down", no, but if a program is well-designed then improving its accessibility to newcomers need not be at odds with elegant and efficient operation for more advanced users. There are many projects where attempting to submit a patch that improved usability would be met on deaf ears, even if it was a change that solved a legitimate design problem or improved on a current solution, because the maintainers of the project have a mindset of "the design works for me, therefore it works for everyone". In this case, "fixing the problem" doesn't mean actively contributing to an open source project (since that in itself is the problem), it means attempting to change the approach people take to managing open source projects. This article in particular is a messy jumble of ineffectual buzzwords, but there is a small nugget of truth buried in there.
- jberryman 14y ago
  which projects are you talking about?
- gouranga 14y ago
  Open source projects are inhospitable to designers because they come in and arrogantly blast their opinion into an establishment. The establishment knows its userbase better than a designer will. The designers then crawl off and blog whinge about it. Open source doesn't work the same as 'business' where change drives sales. That's the misunderstanding.
  - joelanman 14y ago
    Wow - a very 'us and them', aggressive attitude you've got there. It's clear that for any app, site or OS to have mainstream success, it needs to have a well-designed interface, a good user experience. Apple, Google and others have all invested heavily here, and the big winners all have interfaces that are easy for a non-technical user to use. If open source projects want to gain mainstream usage, they also need to invest in usability, and like any skill, there are people who have more ability and more experience. As these people are not necessarily programmers, it can be hard for them to contribute to open source processes that are centred around code contribution.
    - gouranga 14y ago
      You miss the point: success in the traditional form at least is 100% irrelevant. Consider Linux, tex, emacs, vim, apache, mutt, x, postfix. All successful, yet no traditional form of usability.
      - agilebyte 14y ago
        All those you mentioned are highly configurable and accessible through the command line interface. For the target audience, they are highly usable. 'Traditional' (if we speak of the same thing) does not care if your users are general users or engineers.
      - aidenn0 14y ago
        Many of these are very usable for their target audience: Vim: adds such user-friendly features as syntax highlighting and WIMP while keeping an interface (vi) that is already well known to it's users, thus preventing them from having to learn a new set of commands from scratch Emacs: Clearly the most programmable text-editor currently used. The ease of usability for extending it is the reason it is adopted. mutt: synthesized interface from several already existing mail clients, most notably pine and elm Apache: If you consider the user to be web developers, it (NCSA HTTPd which is what Apache grew out of) introduced CGI, which was a huge usability step for making dynamic web-pages. Linux: Not sure. It's essentially a clone of SVR4; probably just the fact that among it's always had the best driver-support on commodity hardware is the win here. Postfix: It's more usable than sendmail; not really a glowing review though. X: Yeah, I can't think of a single good thing to say about X. I've heard that Motif was the "killer app" for it that kept it around, but I wasn't there so not sure.
ionforce 14y ago
You're assuming the gatekeeper of the fix is a perfect judge of usability, which may or may not be true.
- gouranga 14y ago
  There is no perfect judge of usability, even from supposed experts (an arrogant title which noone should hold). The gatekeeper is entitled to his or her opinions. If you don't like them, fork it.
  - agilebyte 14y ago
    Yeah, "usability expert" is not a pretty job title. I guess it means the person focuses on usability testing and is an expert in the user's domain.
bratsche 14y ago
> Also stop blogging and fix it if it's a problem In case you don't know who mpt is, he's actually one of a handful of people out there who is trying to fix these problems. He worked on usability for Mozilla for awhile, and now he works for Canonical. I used to work on the Ubuntu desktop experience team at Canonical, and I can attest (as much as my opinion is worth anything) that mpt was easily the most valuable person there in working towards usability. He's not one of the "make things look pretty" kind of designers, it's definitely one of the "functionally elegant" types. Part of his work is designing new Canonical-led features in Ubuntu, and part of it is proposing better interaction designs for apps that came from the community; some of that work is then coded by developers at Canonical, or by the upstream project maintainers, or random community developers, and sadly some of it is just put off or ignored. But the point is, he's the guy who is working to fix design problems. I think the point of his post was to try to encourage more thought towards the design process by the open source development community, and maybe to encourage more non-developers to get more involved in the design process. He's only one guy, there's only so much he can re-design on his own. You know, days having limited hours and all. So if he spends a couple hours doing some "community outreach" type blog posts and manages to get even one other person to start working on interaction design then he has accomplished more with those couple hours than if he had used them redesigning a part of some app.
- gouranga 14y ago
  if he's partially responsible for the current Ubuntu desktop and the current Firefox, I stand by my comments. Change over substance.
billpatrianakos 14y ago
This isnt as much about the misuse of the term design as you make it seem. The author is right that free software is generally not as well designed as its non-free counterparts. Most of the time bad design manifests itself as too much complexity, strangely organized settings menus, way too many settings to begin with. You seem to have this "screw the average user" mentality which I'm guessing comes from the fact that average folks don't tend to use free software (mostly referring to Linux the OS and Linux software but it does apply to other platforms some of the time too). If you're making software for the power user set then the status quo is probably just fine but if the free/open source community really is committed to winning the hearts and minds of users of the standard platforms (Windows and Mac obviously) and really do want to get a bigger piece of the market share pie then developers will have to dumb things down a bit and simplify. The attitude you seem to have towards users, calling them dumb people and meat stacks, is exactly the thing keeping those dumb meat stacks from using free software. Programmers also seem to hold a sort of bigot attitude toward designers which your comment also exemplifies. Functionality, elegance, resuability, and everything you mentioned are great and necessary but there's no reason it can't be prettied up a bit and simplified. The bottom line is that if you're developing software for people just like you then you can ignore the dumb meat stacks and the pesky designers and still be successful but don't ever expect average users to educate themselves in order to use your software. They don't care about the limitations of technology and how everything works together nor do they care to learn. They just want to press button X and have action Y happen with the least possible friction in between. If button X doesn't get action Y to occur as fast or easily as they want then they're uninstalling your app. That is, unless uninstalling involves more than a click or two otherwise it'll just collect dust and consume disk space. Until you design and develop with dumb meat stacks in mind only programmers and power users will use your software. Now im not saying this will be easy nor am I saying free software developer have to start doing this. After all, they work for free I'm their spare time and create amazing amazing products and alternatives to non-free software. What I am saying though is that this is the reality of dealing with users. It's not ideal and they certainly act like an entitled lot but it won't change especially now with the proliferation of prettified and dumbed down apps everywhere you turn.
- jiggy2011 14y ago

lazerwalker 14y ago

> Also stop blogging and fix it if it's a problem - that's the joy of open source. If they don't want the 'fix', then its not a fix for the supposed problem or the problem didn't exist to start with. A flaw of many open source software projects is that they tend to be inhospitable to designers coming in and attempting to contribute in a meaningful manner. Usability shouldn't just mean "dumbing things down", no, but if a program is well-designed then improving its accessibility to newcomers need not be at odds with elegant and efficient operation for more advanced users. There are many projects where attempting to submit a patch that improved usability would be met on deaf ears, even if it was a change that solved a legitimate design problem or improved on a current solution, because the maintainers of the project have a mindset of "the design works for me, therefore it works for everyone". In this case, "fixing the problem" doesn't mean actively contributing to an open source project (since that in itself is the problem), it means attempting to change the approach people take to managing open source projects. This article in particular is a messy jumble of ineffectual buzzwords, but there is a small nugget of truth buried in there.

jberryman 14y ago
which projects are you talking about?
gouranga 14y ago
Open source projects are inhospitable to designers because they come in and arrogantly blast their opinion into an establishment. The establishment knows its userbase better than a designer will. The designers then crawl off and blog whinge about it. Open source doesn't work the same as 'business' where change drives sales. That's the misunderstanding.
- joelanman 14y ago
  Wow - a very 'us and them', aggressive attitude you've got there. It's clear that for any app, site or OS to have mainstream success, it needs to have a well-designed interface, a good user experience. Apple, Google and others have all invested heavily here, and the big winners all have interfaces that are easy for a non-technical user to use. If open source projects want to gain mainstream usage, they also need to invest in usability, and like any skill, there are people who have more ability and more experience. As these people are not necessarily programmers, it can be hard for them to contribute to open source processes that are centred around code contribution.
  - gouranga 14y ago
    You miss the point: success in the traditional form at least is 100% irrelevant. Consider Linux, tex, emacs, vim, apache, mutt, x, postfix. All successful, yet no traditional form of usability.
    - agilebyte 14y ago
      All those you mentioned are highly configurable and accessible through the command line interface. For the target audience, they are highly usable. 'Traditional' (if we speak of the same thing) does not care if your users are general users or engineers.
    - aidenn0 14y ago
      Many of these are very usable for their target audience: Vim: adds such user-friendly features as syntax highlighting and WIMP while keeping an interface (vi) that is already well known to it's users, thus preventing them from having to learn a new set of commands from scratch Emacs: Clearly the most programmable text-editor currently used. The ease of usability for extending it is the reason it is adopted. mutt: synthesized interface from several already existing mail clients, most notably pine and elm Apache: If you consider the user to be web developers, it (NCSA HTTPd which is what Apache grew out of) introduced CGI, which was a huge usability step for making dynamic web-pages. Linux: Not sure. It's essentially a clone of SVR4; probably just the fact that among it's always had the best driver-support on commodity hardware is the win here. Postfix: It's more usable than sendmail; not really a glowing review though. X: Yeah, I can't think of a single good thing to say about X. I've heard that Motif was the "killer app" for it that kept it around, but I wasn't there so not sure.

ionforce 14y ago

You're assuming the gatekeeper of the fix is a perfect judge of usability, which may or may not be true.

gouranga 14y ago
There is no perfect judge of usability, even from supposed experts (an arrogant title which noone should hold). The gatekeeper is entitled to his or her opinions. If you don't like them, fork it.
- agilebyte 14y ago
  Yeah, "usability expert" is not a pretty job title. I guess it means the person focuses on usability testing and is an expert in the user's domain.

bratsche 14y ago

> Also stop blogging and fix it if it's a problem In case you don't know who mpt is, he's actually one of a handful of people out there who is trying to fix these problems. He worked on usability for Mozilla for awhile, and now he works for Canonical. I used to work on the Ubuntu desktop experience team at Canonical, and I can attest (as much as my opinion is worth anything) that mpt was easily the most valuable person there in working towards usability. He's not one of the "make things look pretty" kind of designers, it's definitely one of the "functionally elegant" types. Part of his work is designing new Canonical-led features in Ubuntu, and part of it is proposing better interaction designs for apps that came from the community; some of that work is then coded by developers at Canonical, or by the upstream project maintainers, or random community developers, and sadly some of it is just put off or ignored. But the point is, he's the guy who is working to fix design problems. I think the point of his post was to try to encourage more thought towards the design process by the open source development community, and maybe to encourage more non-developers to get more involved in the design process. He's only one guy, there's only so much he can re-design on his own. You know, days having limited hours and all. So if he spends a couple hours doing some "community outreach" type blog posts and manages to get even one other person to start working on interaction design then he has accomplished more with those couple hours than if he had used them redesigning a part of some app.

gouranga 14y ago
if he's partially responsible for the current Ubuntu desktop and the current Firefox, I stand by my comments. Change over substance.

billpatrianakos 14y ago

This isnt as much about the misuse of the term design as you make it seem. The author is right that free software is generally not as well designed as its non-free counterparts. Most of the time bad design manifests itself as too much complexity, strangely organized settings menus, way too many settings to begin with. You seem to have this "screw the average user" mentality which I'm guessing comes from the fact that average folks don't tend to use free software (mostly referring to Linux the OS and Linux software but it does apply to other platforms some of the time too). If you're making software for the power user set then the status quo is probably just fine but if the free/open source community really is committed to winning the hearts and minds of users of the standard platforms (Windows and Mac obviously) and really do want to get a bigger piece of the market share pie then developers will have to dumb things down a bit and simplify. The attitude you seem to have towards users, calling them dumb people and meat stacks, is exactly the thing keeping those dumb meat stacks from using free software. Programmers also seem to hold a sort of bigot attitude toward designers which your comment also exemplifies. Functionality, elegance, resuability, and everything you mentioned are great and necessary but there's no reason it can't be prettied up a bit and simplified. The bottom line is that if you're developing software for people just like you then you can ignore the dumb meat stacks and the pesky designers and still be successful but don't ever expect average users to educate themselves in order to use your software. They don't care about the limitations of technology and how everything works together nor do they care to learn. They just want to press button X and have action Y happen with the least possible friction in between. If button X doesn't get action Y to occur as fast or easily as they want then they're uninstalling your app. That is, unless uninstalling involves more than a click or two otherwise it'll just collect dust and consume disk space. Until you design and develop with dumb meat stacks in mind only programmers and power users will use your software. Now im not saying this will be easy nor am I saying free software developer have to start doing this. After all, they work for free I'm their spare time and create amazing amazing products and alternatives to non-free software. What I am saying though is that this is the reality of dealing with users. It's not ideal and they certainly act like an entitled lot but it won't change especially now with the proliferation of prettified and dumbed down apps everywhere you turn.

jiggy2011 14y ago