On Jul 12, 2012 11:24 AM, "david" <gnome@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

On 07/11/2012 11:21 PM, Simon Wise wrote:

On 12/07/12 03:30, david wrote:

I'm firmly convinced that the GNOME design team begins every session
with the
question, "What more functionality can we remove from users today?"
Eventually,
the GNOME UI will consist of a single button in the middle of the screen
reading, "Shutdown computer". ;-)

Perhaps its a matter of what users and platforms they are catering for
... a UI that works well on the smaller, hand held devices with touch
interfaces rather than a mouse and keyboard is very important if that is
what you are using, and lots of devices are like that now. It is
becoming the most familiar interface.

It is easy to confuse 'intuitive' with 'familiar' and believe that what
one has learned is somehow the natural way to do things, but this newer
style of interface is becoming the most common one => familiar =>
'intuitive'. The Gnome version isn't the result of a collection random
decisions along the way, it was described and planned in detail years
ago, when the work building it was starting to get serious. Looking
closely at UI habits derived from hardware with particular limits and
histories, then deciding what is just habit and what really contributes
to a good working environment, is a very important part of making a good
UI. See this 2009 document:

http://www.gnome.org/%7Emccann/shell/design/GNOME_Shell-20091114.pdf

it predicts the Gnome 3 interface fairly accurately, and is clearly the
origin of their current design principles page a couple of years down
the track:

https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Principles

Just shows me that they've been practicing their bad design philosophy for many years. I have tried GNOME3 and KDE4. I found both got in the way far more than they helped. I also have used GNOME2, and didn't like it, either. While there is value in simplifying things, there is also the danger of simplifying too much.

"Nothing is 'intuitive' in its fullest sense." Everything you think is "intuitive" about any computer interface is something you learned about that interface - and have forgotten you learned. Interfaces that violate well-established, well-learned user expectations and experiences are not intuitive. They are rude and make users feel stupid. They make users feel dictated to by "I know better than you how you should do this task" "designers" who far too many times are more wrapped up in being "kewl" and buffing up their egos than in producing a good, functional UI for others. (Same phenomenon occurs amongst graphic designers pretending to be web designers.)

But then, I'm weird. People blog about how tablet/smartphone UIs will take over the desktop. I think the whole idea of coming up with a common UI that is perfect for both desktop and tablet/smartphone use is a grand exercise in misguided stupidity. Fortunately for Linux, Windows 8 seems to be making that great mistake for us. Now I just hope Linux desktop environments won't do their usual thing and imitate it ... At least Libre/OpenOffice seem to have refused to imitate the idiotic MS Office "ribbon" interface.

For audio users, there's the added layer of user expectations and usage modes that arises from their musical training and experience. If you're a musician who doesn't read music, you might consider sheet music completely useless: "Why are the developers wasting their time on that?" Someone who's trained and reads music would respond, "How could you possibly do without it?" and find it difficult (as I do) to work with a bunch of musicians who don't read music, yet want everything tightly rehearsed and planned and well-prepared ahead of time. Case in point: lead guitarist of my church band. He's terrified of improvising. (He suffers from severe perfectionism.) He works very hard on his solos. But if something happens and he has to suddenly add an extra measure or two - he's lost. His only option is to go back and repeat his entire solo from the beginning. We have a violinist in our band who used to play in classical orchestras, yet she can't read a note.

My guess for most "intuitive" UI for audio users? The primary instrument they play! ;-)

--
David
gnome@hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/
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