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Your equivalence seems widely inaccurate to me. I too sometimes have a mental model which is "red building, third floor, left then left" because that’s spatial

Your equivalence seems widely inaccurate to me. I too sometimes have a mental model which is "red building, third floor, left then left" because that’s spatial memory. A random room number tells you absolutely nothing about where you actually have to go. I can (and sometimes do) remember one and will use one if it’s all I have but that’s just random information totally different from actual direction. I think your comment actually hits the heart of the issue. Most software developers I have met have this kind of disdain for their users familiarity and ability and act like they are above that. Most confuse their own learned familiarity when they were young and could tinker with some kind of superior ability. Well, just go read any post here about systemd, the syntax of Ocaml, or the new ux of any popular framework and you will see that we are all the same. Accepting change takes time, especially if people had no desire for the change. Most people don’t care about their computers. They are for them a necessary impediment in the way of doing what they want to do. That’s why they dislike change: it looks like work for no upside. A major part of change management is explaining to people where the upsides are for them, helping them operating in the new environment and giving them time to process.

chithanh 1y ago
> I think your comment actually hits the heart of the issue. Most software developers I have met have this kind of disdain for their users familiarity and ability and act like they are above that. That is not what I meant. I don't say those users are worse for it, rather that user interfaces of course need to accommodate such approaches. Such as placing a notice at the old location which directs users to the new location (like when a brick-and-mortar-store moves). Also when performing tasks routinely, of course I have muscle memory and will get slightly irritated when the newest function absorbed into systemd does things differently than the thing which it replaced. I have no desire for or against systemd, but I understand that this is how the world revolves and that one has get along with the times. > Most confuse their own learned familiarity when they were young and could tinker with some kind of superior ability. It is just willingness to learn. How you learn and how fast you learn is of course age dependent, but the attitude towards learning new things and breaking out of routine is what matters more.
hnbad 1y ago
> Most software developers I have met have this kind of disdain for their users familiarity and ability and act like they are above that. This is absolutely true. For what it's worth, "so-and-so department, room 123" is only a helpful mental model for navigation if you have additional knowledge not present in that description: that the department is probably contained entirely in one specific building, where that building is, that the rooms are likely numbered sequentially following a pattern that also indicates the floor they're in, etc. By itself this is an address whereas "red building, third floor, left then left" is a turn-by-turn route. In terms of UIs, the latter is more like "left-hand side of the menu bar, 'Edit' menu I think, half-way down the screen, something like 'Modify' or 'Change' or 'Transform' or something, then third item in the list, something like 'Skew' or 'Bend' or something" compared to the first just being "Transform -> Skew". The former is fuzzier and the exact labels don't really matter because you'll know them when you see them. The latter is extremely precise but tells you nothing about how to actually find what you're looking for (is it in the 'Edit' menu? is it in a right-click context menu? etc). It's only really useful by itself if you have a command palette.

chithanh 1y ago

> I think your comment actually hits the heart of the issue. Most software developers I have met have this kind of disdain for their users familiarity and ability and act like they are above that. That is not what I meant. I don't say those users are worse for it, rather that user interfaces of course need to accommodate such approaches. Such as placing a notice at the old location which directs users to the new location (like when a brick-and-mortar-store moves). Also when performing tasks routinely, of course I have muscle memory and will get slightly irritated when the newest function absorbed into systemd does things differently than the thing which it replaced. I have no desire for or against systemd, but I understand that this is how the world revolves and that one has get along with the times. > Most confuse their own learned familiarity when they were young and could tinker with some kind of superior ability. It is just willingness to learn. How you learn and how fast you learn is of course age dependent, but the attitude towards learning new things and breaking out of routine is what matters more.

hnbad 1y ago

> Most software developers I have met have this kind of disdain for their users familiarity and ability and act like they are above that. This is absolutely true. For what it's worth, "so-and-so department, room 123" is only a helpful mental model for navigation if you have additional knowledge not present in that description: that the department is probably contained entirely in one specific building, where that building is, that the rooms are likely numbered sequentially following a pattern that also indicates the floor they're in, etc. By itself this is an address whereas "red building, third floor, left then left" is a turn-by-turn route. In terms of UIs, the latter is more like "left-hand side of the menu bar, 'Edit' menu I think, half-way down the screen, something like 'Modify' or 'Change' or 'Transform' or something, then third item in the list, something like 'Skew' or 'Bend' or something" compared to the first just being "Transform -> Skew". The former is fuzzier and the exact labels don't really matter because you'll know them when you see them. The latter is extremely precise but tells you nothing about how to actually find what you're looking for (is it in the 'Edit' menu? is it in a right-click context menu? etc). It's only really useful by itself if you have a command palette.