5 ms·

I have two criticisms of the article: 1. Every story is a 'just so' story where the way the system works is exactly the way the user wants the system to work.

by fatbird 14y ago

I have two criticisms of the article: 1. Every story is a 'just so' story where the way the system works is exactly the way the user wants the system to work. Great, it's like putting a button front and center on your app and the user wants to push that button and look! It's right there! Awesome. Except I don't want to push that button, I want to push the other button that's now hidden away because the designer is striving for "No UI". The new minimalist interface is now actively fighting me. What if I don't want my car to unlock when I approach it? 2. Using AI is a "step 2: ???" solution, and the flaw with it is best exemplified by the columnist who bought a pregnancy book for a pregnant friend on Amazon... and now his Amazon suggestion stream is now still filled with baby clothes that are age appropriate for his friend's baby, years later. For every adaptive step the non-interface takes on the basis of past behaviour, it's a step away from future behaviour that's different than past behaviour. I suppose my criticisms come down to the fact that the article doesn't seem to acknowledge that design trade-offs are a normal part of interface work. It strongly implies there's a hallowed land where every use case is obvious and accounted for and we all just "do". Annoying, in the same way that we all get annoyed when another framework comes along and is in its silver bullet phase where it's the awesomest solution to everything you need it to do.

jbrennan 14y ago
>2. Using AI is a "step 2: ???" solution, and the flaw with it is best exemplified by the columnist who bought a pregnancy book for a pregnant friend on Amazon Flaws like this might exist right now, but that's really a "bug". It's a failure on our part (the software designers and engineers) to build a system that actually works for the human. So sometimes when we try to make our software smart, it ends up being [maddeningly] stupid. But again, this is only because we don't do our jobs right, not that they can't be done right. So with a little more smarts from us, we could make a system that's a lot more flexible and allow for these sorts of things. We have to acknowledge that a user shouldn't have to fit our system exactly and we should allow for "Buying a friend some baby clothes but not have it think we have a child" cases by being smarter about how the system learns. We need to provide it with better context.
- fatbird 14y ago
  Doesn't "provide better context" just push the problem one turtle away? How could I communicate to the website that the item for which I'm shopping is for a friend, not for me, and that I don't want the current actions to figure into future adaptive behaviour? Perhaps a checkbox? But now we're adding interface, which we were trying to eliminate in the first place. I suggest that this is an intractable problem just because there's a fundamental tension between ease and flexibility. 'Optimize for the common case' always seems like a good idea (and the AI suggestion is just 'allow past history to determine the common case'), but we all have different common cases, and this heuristic helps us not all when we don't want to execute the common case, which is the hardest part of the design problem anyway. I agree with the idea, generally, that we need to be smarter about how things work for people. I think "No UI" is like "No SQL": An appropriate solution in a certain set of cases, but nothing like a general solution for all.
  - jbrennan 14y ago
    >Doesn't "provide better context" just push the problem one turtle away? How could I communicate to the website that the item for which I'm shopping is for a friend, not for me, and that I don't want the current actions to figure into future adaptive behaviour? That's part of the implementation, again, I think. It would be silly for the implementation to treat just once instance of a behaviour so seriously. If the user buys it once, but then never shows any interest in such products again, then they should slowly be ranked less and less relevant. If the user instead continued to purchase or look at baby items, then the system could have more certainty of desire in them. Again, it's not just the products themselves, but the behaviour surrounding them. Temporal context is important, too. I agree fully that just heaping on more interface for "special cases" is a bad idea. We just need to be smarter about...how our software is smart.
  - camtarn 14y ago
    The funny thing is, in Amazon's case, there are multiple ways to do that - tell the website you're buying something as a gift during checkout, or when you get bad recommendations, click 'fix this recommendation'. Of course, even though I work there * , I never remember to do the former, and usually can't be bothered to do the latter ... and I reckon the majority of people don't know that either option exists (in a couple of cases I've even had people ask me why the option didn't exist!) It's a pretty good case study: even though the UI is there, front and center (the 'fix this' link is usually right underneath recommendations), it doesn't get used because most users would rather do 'Step 1: get good recommendations' rather than 'Step 1: get mixed-quality recommendations; Step 2: take action to improve recommendations; Step 3: get good recommendations'. * And, of course (standard disclaimer) I don't speak for or represent Amazon in any way...
Negitivefrags 14y ago
With the Amazon example, just remember that they don't show you product suggestions for help you, they are showing them to sell more product. If on average the technique works across the entire customer base, then they will apply it. While it would certainly be better if they were more accurate in that fringe case as well, if it would take 4x the effort to eek out a 20% improvement, that might not be a good trade off for them.
tetha 14y ago
I am wondering if the unix shell is the no UI approach to the first problem. The unix shell doesn't provide a discoverable, nice interface. On the other hand, it is a minimalist interface which caters the task "Manipulate files in a multitude of ways" very well.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  A CLI is not graphical, but still a user interface - and a very opaque one, you can't use it at all without any prior knowledge. It's the complete opposite of the ideal interface in this context.
  - spc476 14y ago
    I've found the CLI on Cisco routers (and some other, non-Cisco routers) to be very discoverable. At any point, you can type a '?' (even on a half-typed command) and get a list of commands/options with descriptions. Okay, it's a summary, and it helps to have some context, but it's not opaque as a Unix command line. Then there was Lotus, which (at the time it was written) driven by a text-based command line. Type '/', and the cursor would drop to the penultimate line; a list of valid commands/options would appear on the bottom line. You could either type the command/option, or use the arrow/tab keys to select it. And as you typed, the bottom line would change to always list valid options (or a description of what to type next, like "(type a number)"). Heck, even VMS had an extensive help system available at the command line (type 'help'---it was interactive). Please don't judge all CLIs by Unix and MS-DOS. Don't judge all CLIs by Unix or MS-DOS.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    But isn't that the point? Being presented with a blue screen in WordPerfect is a minimal interface, but to do anything you have to learn how to use it. You have to learn how to get the menus up and etc. And while good design is important, and tends to reduce interface clutter, it's also important to let users have easy access to the stuff they need. Reducing the interface to what users need is a tricky skill, and risks angering power users. (Google dropping + to force inclusion is a notable example.)
DenisM 14y ago
>It strongly implies there's a hallowed land where every use case is obvious and accounted for That land might not exist, but for every problem we try to solve, we should search for that land relentlessly, as if it did actually exist. It's a not a framework, not means to an end, it's a goal, an end in itself.
jasonlotito 14y ago
1. What if I don't want my car to unlock when I approach it? Disable it and choose to use the smart phone app. They are not mutually exclusive, and you've already used services just like this. Automatic doors that open as you approach them at a store? And when they aren't powered, you can still open them manually. Bad implementations won't open if they aren't powered. 2. it is best exemplified If that's your best example, I feel bad. It's merely a flaw in the system, easily resolved. It's the powered door that won't open without power. Designing these intelligent interactions is not easy. And dealing with exceptions is challenging. They are, after all, exceptions. But don't assume that designing these interactions should account for every exception. Rather, it should make normal easy and make exceptional resolvable.

by fatbird 14y ago

jbrennan 14y ago

>2. Using AI is a "step 2: ???" solution, and the flaw with it is best exemplified by the columnist who bought a pregnancy book for a pregnant friend on Amazon Flaws like this might exist right now, but that's really a "bug". It's a failure on our part (the software designers and engineers) to build a system that actually works for the human. So sometimes when we try to make our software smart, it ends up being [maddeningly] stupid. But again, this is only because we don't do our jobs right, not that they can't be done right. So with a little more smarts from us, we could make a system that's a lot more flexible and allow for these sorts of things. We have to acknowledge that a user shouldn't have to fit our system exactly and we should allow for "Buying a friend some baby clothes but not have it think we have a child" cases by being smarter about how the system learns. We need to provide it with better context.

fatbird 14y ago
Doesn't "provide better context" just push the problem one turtle away? How could I communicate to the website that the item for which I'm shopping is for a friend, not for me, and that I don't want the current actions to figure into future adaptive behaviour? Perhaps a checkbox? But now we're adding interface, which we were trying to eliminate in the first place. I suggest that this is an intractable problem just because there's a fundamental tension between ease and flexibility. 'Optimize for the common case' always seems like a good idea (and the AI suggestion is just 'allow past history to determine the common case'), but we all have different common cases, and this heuristic helps us not all when we don't want to execute the common case, which is the hardest part of the design problem anyway. I agree with the idea, generally, that we need to be smarter about how things work for people. I think "No UI" is like "No SQL": An appropriate solution in a certain set of cases, but nothing like a general solution for all.
- jbrennan 14y ago
  >Doesn't "provide better context" just push the problem one turtle away? How could I communicate to the website that the item for which I'm shopping is for a friend, not for me, and that I don't want the current actions to figure into future adaptive behaviour? That's part of the implementation, again, I think. It would be silly for the implementation to treat just once instance of a behaviour so seriously. If the user buys it once, but then never shows any interest in such products again, then they should slowly be ranked less and less relevant. If the user instead continued to purchase or look at baby items, then the system could have more certainty of desire in them. Again, it's not just the products themselves, but the behaviour surrounding them. Temporal context is important, too. I agree fully that just heaping on more interface for "special cases" is a bad idea. We just need to be smarter about...how our software is smart.
- camtarn 14y ago
  The funny thing is, in Amazon's case, there are multiple ways to do that - tell the website you're buying something as a gift during checkout, or when you get bad recommendations, click 'fix this recommendation'. Of course, even though I work there * , I never remember to do the former, and usually can't be bothered to do the latter ... and I reckon the majority of people don't know that either option exists (in a couple of cases I've even had people ask me why the option didn't exist!) It's a pretty good case study: even though the UI is there, front and center (the 'fix this' link is usually right underneath recommendations), it doesn't get used because most users would rather do 'Step 1: get good recommendations' rather than 'Step 1: get mixed-quality recommendations; Step 2: take action to improve recommendations; Step 3: get good recommendations'. * And, of course (standard disclaimer) I don't speak for or represent Amazon in any way...

Negitivefrags 14y ago

With the Amazon example, just remember that they don't show you product suggestions for help you, they are showing them to sell more product. If on average the technique works across the entire customer base, then they will apply it. While it would certainly be better if they were more accurate in that fringe case as well, if it would take 4x the effort to eek out a 20% improvement, that might not be a good trade off for them.

tetha 14y ago

I am wondering if the unix shell is the no UI approach to the first problem. The unix shell doesn't provide a discoverable, nice interface. On the other hand, it is a minimalist interface which caters the task "Manipulate files in a multitude of ways" very well.

ricardobeat 14y ago
A CLI is not graphical, but still a user interface - and a very opaque one, you can't use it at all without any prior knowledge. It's the complete opposite of the ideal interface in this context.
- spc476 14y ago
  I've found the CLI on Cisco routers (and some other, non-Cisco routers) to be very discoverable. At any point, you can type a '?' (even on a half-typed command) and get a list of commands/options with descriptions. Okay, it's a summary, and it helps to have some context, but it's not opaque as a Unix command line. Then there was Lotus, which (at the time it was written) driven by a text-based command line. Type '/', and the cursor would drop to the penultimate line; a list of valid commands/options would appear on the bottom line. You could either type the command/option, or use the arrow/tab keys to select it. And as you typed, the bottom line would change to always list valid options (or a description of what to type next, like "(type a number)"). Heck, even VMS had an extensive help system available at the command line (type 'help'---it was interactive). Please don't judge all CLIs by Unix and MS-DOS. Don't judge all CLIs by Unix or MS-DOS.
- DanBC 14y ago
  But isn't that the point? Being presented with a blue screen in WordPerfect is a minimal interface, but to do anything you have to learn how to use it. You have to learn how to get the menus up and etc. And while good design is important, and tends to reduce interface clutter, it's also important to let users have easy access to the stuff they need. Reducing the interface to what users need is a tricky skill, and risks angering power users. (Google dropping + to force inclusion is a notable example.)

DenisM 14y ago

>It strongly implies there's a hallowed land where every use case is obvious and accounted for That land might not exist, but for every problem we try to solve, we should search for that land relentlessly, as if it did actually exist. It's a not a framework, not means to an end, it's a goal, an end in itself.

jasonlotito 14y ago

1. What if I don't want my car to unlock when I approach it? Disable it and choose to use the smart phone app. They are not mutually exclusive, and you've already used services just like this. Automatic doors that open as you approach them at a store? And when they aren't powered, you can still open them manually. Bad implementations won't open if they aren't powered. 2. it is best exemplified If that's your best example, I feel bad. It's merely a flaw in the system, easily resolved. It's the powered door that won't open without power. Designing these intelligent interactions is not easy. And dealing with exceptions is challenging. They are, after all, exceptions. But don't assume that designing these interactions should account for every exception. Rather, it should make normal easy and make exceptional resolvable.