Suggested reading

["gavin hurley" <gadge47 hotmail com>]

I don't mean to be a brat but I'd like to recommend www.asktog.com as
recommended reading for any UI designers and would-be UI designers. Bruce
"Tog" Tognazzini did a lot of UI work in the early days of Apple's Mac and
now runs a website with editorials and criticisms of various UI related
stuff. He's pretty smart, usually right and often a tad sanctimonious. But
what sells me is his belief in user testing. Even the best ideas profit from
testing and refinement and usually the worst ones will be spotted for what
they are. Of course everyone has an opinion about what makes a good UI, but
more often than not those ideas tend to be based on aesthetic preference
rather than known principles, research, and testing.

I think this misguided approach to design is now at the root of bad UIs from
both Apple and Microsoft.

At one point, Microsoft seems to have cared about making a more useable
product than Apple's; they just didn't know the right way to go about
getting it. The result is a UI that's a collection of guesswork, borrowed
ideas and a compulsion to make a product that looked different than the
competition. Whoever made the decisions (if there even was such a person)
didn't seem to know much about what makes a good and useable UI (to say
nothing of a good looking one). Unfortunately, Microsoft makes most of their
money from selling Office and Windows to OEMs and that largely insulates
them from having to do anything with the complaints and suggestions of their
users.

Meanwhile, Apple seems to have just stopped caring about usability
altogether. Their latest contributions to the field have been so totally
dominated by concessions to graphic designer prettiness that the UI as a
whole ends up being one step away from worthless junk (I'm thinking
specifically of the QuickTime player and the portions of OSX that I've
seen).

My fear is that Gnome will end up going somewhere between. Borrowing and
differentiating without really stopping to figure out what it is that makes
UIs good or bad. Making everything nicer-looking than Microsoft without
realizing the deleterious effects those changes may have.

This fate would be especially lamentable because Gnome has so much
potential. They're in a position to not only correct the mistakes of others
but to explore new exciting possibilities. They're not tied down by
backwards compatibility. They're not reliant on OEMs and they have to make
something that will appeal to people directly. They're not controlled by
someone with an unhealthy respect for graphic design. Just wanting to make a
really good UI is so much of the battle and on this front Gnome has already
succeeded.

Ug. Sorry. I don't really know if this is the right outlet for this sort of
thing. I kind of ran on longer than I intended.

Anyway, I should mention that I'm very happy to see that Gnome has a group
devoted to UI concerns and I'm full of constructive criticism if you want to
hear it.

-gsh