HP's "Good UI" article. [LWN.net]

HP's "Good UI" article.

Posted Aug 18, 2005 17:38 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: GNOME and the way forward by hp
Parent article: GNOME and the way forward

Regarding http://ometer.com/free-software-ui.html

There's no such thing as a universally "good" UI. That's like saying yellow is a "good" colour. The only definition of a "good" UI that counts is:

A good UI lets the user get things done quickly, easily, accurately and with a minimum of fuss.

By that definition, a good UI for me is the Nirvana of a Bash prompt, whereas for others, a good UI might be Windows 3.1 (because that's what they're used to, dammit!)

So trying to design an objectively good UI is doomed to failure. The best we can do is design a UI that's "OK" by default, but that lets individual users tune it until it becomes their personal "good" UI.

The way GNOME is going, we'll all be using an OK-by-default UI without the ability to make it a good UI.

(Log in to post comments)