[LAD] Experience driven design and Linux Audio

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2014 at 11:32:47AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:

> it doesn't have to mean that, but it often does, especially if the program
> has a lot of options - people get scared of presenting them all and so they
> hide most of them.

Exactly. Good example is Chromium's settings page. It shows almost nothing.
Some more are available if you dare clicking 'advanced', but even those are
as basic as the default set.

The very term 'advanced' is often used to scare people away from touching 
certain options - don't touch these or you make break something.

Hiding options or settings in order to be 'convenient' *is* dumbing
down, no matter how you turn it. And the real reason for doing that
is often another one, for example to try and hide shortcomings or
defects. Or in the case of Chromium to scare the user setting any
options that would enhance his privacy or whatever remains of it.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)