tlug: Easy-to-use =? good

[Matt Gushee <matt@example.com>]

Just a few semi-random thoughts related to the ease-of-use issue:

"Easy to use" is in the eye of the beholder. Take, for example, the
Win95 Start Menu. Okay, you can say it's easy to use because
everything is there and you always know where it is. But the X
Windows-style root menu is arguably easier to use because you don't
*need* to know where it is. Arguably but not provably; I'm sure there
are those who would argue that the root menu is harder because it's
usually invisible. They're no more right or wrong than I am.

Taking this just a little further: what evidence is there to support
the notion that the Windows interface is easy to use? Obviously it is
what most people are now used to, but what would happen if
inexperienced users were given the choice between a Windows style
interface and ... something different? Something that doesn't exist
yet? Actually, one (minor but still significant) reason I now use
Linux is that I found the Win95 interface hard to use *in comparison
to other GUIs* I've tried or could imagine. Maybe I'm unusual in that
respect; maybe not. I doubt anyone knows for sure.

Maybe the big mistake is trying to use one box for so many different
purposes. Until the Mac and Windows became universal, I'd never heard
of a professional tool that required virtually no skill to
operate. Unfortunately, software companies have popularized the
dubious notion that we can have our cake and eat it too: efficiently
produce high-quality documents and presentations using a tool that
behaves more like a toy ... and which (coincidentally?) comes with all 
sorts of distracting games included. Maybe the best long-term solution
is to devolve the computer from a single box that does everything to a 
family of more specialized machines.

Expecting serious users to have some skill seems perfectly reasonable; 
on the other hand, current OSes include features that are neither
interesting (to most people), nor have any relation to the reason why
the user is using a computer ... and Linux, for better or worse,
exposes many of them.

Take hierarchical filesystems, for example: we're all used to them,
and I have no doubt they make good sense from a programming point of
view. But really, when you consider how human minds work and how
people would like to use computers, the typical tree structure seems
like a very awkward and primitive abstraction.

Suppose the filesystem were hidden and we accessed the stuff on our
disks by means of a very sophisticated and fast search engine --
something like Glimpse, maybe, only better. Sure, it would take some
skill to find things, but textual searching skills are arguably more
interesting and more applicable to everyday life than browsing through
the weirdly-named branches of an imaginary tree for that document you
wrote in a hurry last month.

I really don't see any good reason why you should have to know where
things are in the file system ... other than the obvious fact that
current systems are designed so that that's the only reliable way to
find them.

Finally, what about documentation? Seems to me the quality of manuals
and help pages has something to do with the usability of any
software. I'm aware that many people don't read the docs; some of them 
never will no matter how good they are, but others don't read them
because the authors (a) are lousy writers who (b) have little
understanding of their audience. No need to belabor this point.

I saw some interesting ideas about user interfaces in 

The Anti-Mac Interface
by Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen

http://www.acm.org/cacm/AUG96/antimac.htm

Well, enough from me for today.

Matt Gushee
Oshamanbe, Hokkaido
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