7 ms·

Good points, but to add to the sources of instability ... a first time user of a piece of software may be very appreciative of its simplicity and "intuitiveness

Good points, but to add to the sources of instability ... a first time user of a piece of software may be very appreciative of its simplicity and "intuitiveness". However, if it is a tool that they spend a lot of time with and is connected to a potentially complex workflow, it won't be long before even they are asking for "this little extra thing". It is hard to overestimate the difference between creating tools for people who use the tools for hours every day and creating tools for people who use tools once a week or less.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Right. For most people, gimp is not only overkill but also overwhelming. It's hard to intuit how to perform even fairly simple tasks. But for someone who needs it it's worth learning. The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting. Silksong Daily News went from videos of a voiceover saying "There has been no news for today" over a static image background to (sometimes) being scripted stop-motion videos.
- LiquidSky 1y ago
  But the linked article addresses that. They're not advocating for removing the full-feature UI, they just advise having a simple version that does the one thing (or couple of things) most users want in a simple way. Users who want to do more can just use the full version.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    Users don't want "to do more". They want to do "that one extra thing". Going from the "novice" version to the "full version" just to get that one extra thing is a real problem for a lot of people. But how do you address this as a software designer?
    - LiquidSky 1y ago
      Progressive disclosure? If you know your audience, you probably know what most people want, and then the usual next step up for that "one extra thing". You could start with the ultra-simple basic thing, then have an option to enable the "next step feature". If needed you could have progressive options up to the full version.
    - devilbunny 1y ago
      I'm not a coder, so I'm not going to pretend that this solution is easy to implement (it might be, but I wouldn't assume so), but how about allowing you to expose the "expert" options just temporarily (to find the tool you need) and then allow adding that to your new "novice plus" custom menus? I.e., if you use a menu option from the expert menu X number of times, it just shows up even though your default is the novice view.
      - cestith 1y ago
        That’s harder than static menus, but it’s not really anything harder once you have customizable hot list menus.
        devilbunny 1y ago
        It seemed that way to me but I have done enough work with computers (I am on HN, after all) to know that things people in general think should be easy often are not, and things they think are hard may be simple. Thanks.
    - sjamaan 1y ago
      I don't know if this works well in general, but for example Kodi has "basic", "advanced" and several progressively more advanced steps in between for most of its menus. It hides lots of details that are irrelevant to the majority of users.
galagawinkle489 1y ago
And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? I see people using DAWs, even "pro" ones made by companies presumably interested in their bottom lines. In all cases I have no idea how to use it. Do I complain about intuitiveness etc? Of course not. I don't know how to do something. That's my problem. Not theirs.
- Qem 1y ago
  > And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? Well, if people fail at that first five minutes, the subsequent thousand hours most often never happens.
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    The inverse is also true. If you prioritize the first five minutes, your software is worthless in any industry that matters. And that's why designers are using Photoshop and not Microsoft paint.
    - csin 1y ago
      See, I feel this is where programmers just don't "get" good UI design. Photoshop is good UI design. A normie can use photoshop the same way they use MS paint. Albeit it just loads slower. A normie doesn't need all the bells and whistles. They can just use photoshop like a glorified MS paint. You can't do that with GIMP. It's actually really fucking annoying, if you try to use GIMP to do a MS paint job.
      - galagawinkle489 1y ago
        Clearly this is not true. Photoshop is difficult to use. I have opened it and tried to use it many times. Its UI is super complicated. There are endless buttons and I have no idea how to do anything. There are heaps of Photoshop tutorials on YouTube, which wouldn't be necessary if what you said were true. I used GIMP to do MS paint stuff years ago when I used it fairly regularly. GIMP is always a whipping boy for UI design on forums like this and I think it is pretty unfair. It is a pretty good program comparatively. If you want to see bad UI design a much better example is something like Visual Studio. What a mess.

SoftTalker 1y ago

Right. For most people, gimp is not only overkill but also overwhelming. It's hard to intuit how to perform even fairly simple tasks. But for someone who needs it it's worth learning. The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
> The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting. Silksong Daily News went from videos of a voiceover saying "There has been no news for today" over a static image background to (sometimes) being scripted stop-motion videos.
LiquidSky 1y ago
But the linked article addresses that. They're not advocating for removing the full-feature UI, they just advise having a simple version that does the one thing (or couple of things) most users want in a simple way. Users who want to do more can just use the full version.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  Users don't want "to do more". They want to do "that one extra thing". Going from the "novice" version to the "full version" just to get that one extra thing is a real problem for a lot of people. But how do you address this as a software designer?
  - LiquidSky 1y ago
    Progressive disclosure? If you know your audience, you probably know what most people want, and then the usual next step up for that "one extra thing". You could start with the ultra-simple basic thing, then have an option to enable the "next step feature". If needed you could have progressive options up to the full version.
  - devilbunny 1y ago
    I'm not a coder, so I'm not going to pretend that this solution is easy to implement (it might be, but I wouldn't assume so), but how about allowing you to expose the "expert" options just temporarily (to find the tool you need) and then allow adding that to your new "novice plus" custom menus? I.e., if you use a menu option from the expert menu X number of times, it just shows up even though your default is the novice view.
    - cestith 1y ago
      That’s harder than static menus, but it’s not really anything harder once you have customizable hot list menus.
      - devilbunny 1y ago
        It seemed that way to me but I have done enough work with computers (I am on HN, after all) to know that things people in general think should be easy often are not, and things they think are hard may be simple. Thanks.
  - sjamaan 1y ago
    I don't know if this works well in general, but for example Kodi has "basic", "advanced" and several progressively more advanced steps in between for most of its menus. It hides lots of details that are irrelevant to the majority of users.

galagawinkle489 1y ago

And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? I see people using DAWs, even "pro" ones made by companies presumably interested in their bottom lines. In all cases I have no idea how to use it. Do I complain about intuitiveness etc? Of course not. I don't know how to do something. That's my problem. Not theirs.

Qem 1y ago
> And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? Well, if people fail at that first five minutes, the subsequent thousand hours most often never happens.
- array_key_first 1y ago
  The inverse is also true. If you prioritize the first five minutes, your software is worthless in any industry that matters. And that's why designers are using Photoshop and not Microsoft paint.
  - csin 1y ago
    See, I feel this is where programmers just don't "get" good UI design. Photoshop is good UI design. A normie can use photoshop the same way they use MS paint. Albeit it just loads slower. A normie doesn't need all the bells and whistles. They can just use photoshop like a glorified MS paint. You can't do that with GIMP. It's actually really fucking annoying, if you try to use GIMP to do a MS paint job.
    - galagawinkle489 1y ago
      Clearly this is not true. Photoshop is difficult to use. I have opened it and tried to use it many times. Its UI is super complicated. There are endless buttons and I have no idea how to do anything. There are heaps of Photoshop tutorials on YouTube, which wouldn't be necessary if what you said were true. I used GIMP to do MS paint stuff years ago when I used it fairly regularly. GIMP is always a whipping boy for UI design on forums like this and I think it is pretty unfair. It is a pretty good program comparatively. If you want to see bad UI design a much better example is something like Visual Studio. What a mess.