Re: Draining the Swamp: A Technical User's Experience

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

On 07May2002 04:39PM (-0500), Linas Vepstas wrote:
> 
> The "MacIntosh" solution is "make nothing configurable".  That makes
> configuration real easy: you can't, and you don't. 

I think this is a parody of the Macintosh approach. My System
Preferences has more panels in it than GNOME2's control center right
now, although admittedly it has hardware- and system-related settings
that GNOME is not covering right now.

I would say the Macintosh approach goes more like this:

1) Try to solve problems in such a way that everything works properly
without the user having to configure anything.[1]

2) Recognize that user preferences have a cost, and weigh that cost
against the benefit of having the preference.

3) In some cases, provide a backdoor inconvenient way to tweak some
setting rather than exposing it to the user, if it's the sort of thing
that only highly technical users or enthusiasts are likely to be
interested in.

> Unfortunately, this philosphy is contradicted by the common
> knowledge of application developers: its the sum total of obscure,
> rarely used features that make an application popular.  That is, if
> you remove 1% of the features, you loose 10% of the users.  It
> doesn't take much to loose all of your users.

I don't really buy the 1% ==> 10% mapping. However, even conceding
that, not every feature has to map to a discrete visible element in
the user interface. Sure, it's not easy to get an application to do
more without showing more and putting more in your face. But no one
ever said programming was going to be easy. And it is possible.

If you'd like to improve the UI of your app, I'm sure lots of the
friendly GNOME usability people will be glad to help with suggestions.

Regards,

Maciej

[1] For example, have you heard about Apple's ZeroConf initiative?
This is a setup where computers connected on a private LAN that's not
on the global Internet will automatically form their own private
network with hostnames and everything, and publish their services. If
you have ever been at a conference desperately trying to copy a file
from one laptop to another with nothing to use but a crossover cable,
you'll understand how much better this is than the current Linux
approach to the problem. :-)