On Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:56:15 -0700, DaveC wrote:

In the future, I expect things to become more and more complicated. I
also see devices, like printers, engaging in a dialog with the user
and with other devices, to determine what the user wants to do. It
then negotiates the parameters and settings automatically between
devices. Put the iPad and printer next to each other, yell "connect
me", and they will. Send the printer some data, and it's a fair
assumption that one wants it to power on in preparation for printing.
Don't do anything for a few minutes, and it's a fair assumption that
the printer should power down. AI (artificial intelligence) was the
big thing in the late 1970's, but where is it today?

Ok, I've had my rant.
[Jeff L.]

Most of my frustrations were unloaded in the original thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.repair/browse_thread/thread/a1ebf6c32667db31/

IMO, user interface is designed by people who probably wouldn't use the
product.

In a past life, I helped design several marine radios. The user
interface was designed by a genuine industrial designer, with input
from literally everyone that could possibly render an opinion. That
included the janitor and random visitors. Part of my responsibility
was to document all these great ideas for the industrial designer so
that he could concentrate on the aesthetics and ergonomics. As a
result, usability took third place behind feature bloat and artistic
packaging. By the time the front panel was presented to engineering,
it was obvious that we were in trouble. There weren't a sufficient
number of buttons to handle all the features. So, each button had
multiple functions, depending on whether it was tapped, held for 1
second, or held for more than 3 seconds. Considerable effort and wine
went into crafting said interface, but the inevitable result was a
miserable compromise. Marketing insisted that the radio with the most
features would sell best, so there was no way to remove features or
add buttons. We built a mockup and tried my usability test on various
non-technical employees including the marketing manager. Nobody could
operate it. There was even some difficulty in turning it on and off.
Someone suggested that we have 3 modes (crude, basic and advanced)
where some of the obscure functions were simply disabled. Everyone
could operate it in crude mode, but the others required both RTFM and
practice. We shipped a data logger with several radios, and found
that 99% of the wiz-bang functions were never used.

Lesson learned: Features, functions and complexity sell products, but
drive the users nuts.

When I worked at Apple (tech writer, decades ago) we would do a draft of a
manual and then get a prospective customer -- "target audience" -- (someone
from HR or such in this example) and put them in a room with a new product,
in box, and let them go to it, videotaping the experience. The feedback is
what made Apple's documents receive awards on top of awards.

Any product that is worthwhile should be intuitive and not require a
manual. These daze, manuals are shipped on CD's and never read until
something goes wrong. If the product needs a manual to use, there's
something wrong. Besides, today's manuals are mostly legal
disclaimers, court ordered warnings, and patent notices.

Lesson learned: Assume that users are NOT going to RTFM.

If companies (ANY manufacturer) would do this for their UI, most issues would
be resolved before the product hit the shelf. But being "a race to the
bottom", I don't hold much hope.

You're optimizing whale oil and sealing wax. Manuals and static user
interfaces are dead, or at least should be dead. A proper user
interface adjusts itself to what the user is doing, offering only
those choices which are involved in whatever the user is trying to
accomplish. A banking machine is a good example. You are presented
with a minimum number of selections, all of which are appropriate to
the current operation or mode. This results in more menus, but fewer
choices.

I had the displeasure of proving the point when my father, the
original permanent computer beginner, was trying to learn how to use
his shiny new 1981(?) Altos AOS business computer system. I
translated the menus from English to Polish, which was a big help, but
he was still lost when presented with 20 menu choices per page. When
I reduced it down to 5 choices, he was elated.

You can demonstrate how it works by asking someone to add a column of
numbers, first with a 4 function calculator, and then with a
scientific calculator. The 4 function is easy, but the scientific
will usually cause a beginner to panic. Yet, they have the same
numeric keypad and arithmetic buttons, usually in similar locations.
The difference is the scientific calculator has far too much static
clutter in the form of unused buttons, which add confusion.

Lesson learned: The purpose of a user interface is to REDUCE the
number of choices, not bury the user in irrelevant over choice and
complexity.

About 10 years ago, I designed a user interface for a radio. It was
sufficiently unique that the company engineers and marketing people
were afraid that users would not intuitively understand how to operate
the radio. A few tests confirmed their suspicions. So, I now have to
wait until some clueless competitor produces something similar, so my
client company doesn't need to take any risks being innovative. If
you're wondering why you're seeing the same broken user interfaces
repeated ad infinitum, this is why.

Lesson learned: Innovative user interfaces are risky.

OK. End of yet another rant...

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558