IBM To Linux Desktop Developers: 'Stop Copying Windows' (InformationWeek)

Absolutely.  Before someone from IBM begins to lecture us on usability, I want proof that he
has personally taken the Notes UI designers out back and had them shot.  I've had to use that
poor excuse for an email program for over 13 years at work.  I've rambled on about it in the
past, but it really seems to be a "for PHBs by PHBs" type of program.  More recent versions
are a case study in bloat for bloat's sake.

Like "quality" (anyone who has read Zen, and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will understand),
"usability" is a nebulous concept.  What I find easy to use may be an enigma to someone else
and vice versa.

What annoys and bothers me is when people start bleating that the Free Desktop must sacrifice
its range of choice in the name of "usability".  A very poorly thought out strategy, IMO.  A
toolbox with only one tool in it isn't terribly useful for a variety of situations.

Just remember, Notes were from Lotus, and Lotus were quite a pioneers in their era, e.g. with
their Lotus123 software. Mitch Kapor is from Lotus, he develops "Chandler" PIM now.

Until, of course, IBM bought them, after which the UIs had been kept frozen in 80s style and
this seems not going to change :>

I don't know the Sugar interface - but I'd suggest looking at the old OS/2 Warp 3 for some
fairly radical ideas. It took me some getting used to, but I really liked it, once I got the
idea.

Heh. I think you have described the problem succinctly.

Usability comes from control.

Free software abhors control.

When free software projects attempt to impose control, the end result is the
worst of both worlds.

Derek

The main thing about cars is they're mostly homogeneous. And for the non-superficial
differences (say, the type of transmission) people often prefer one way over the other for
often the same reason as other people prefer is the opposite way.

Don't forget that cars also aren't something that people jump into (the driver seat) without
any training (like most everyone has done with computers); I'm not sure about all countries,
but it's often illegal to drive a car without taking a test that generally covers the normal
interface for the car (as well as using the interface).

IMO, cars make a better example of a (mostly) homogeneous interface than being an intuitive
interface.

> If you go US<->UK, the whole UI is flipped left for right.  People manage to get around
reasonably well and not kill anybody.

A whole load of people from the UK get themselves and others killed on everyone else's roads
every year, though, from forgetting which side they're supposed to be driving on... the car's
UI is the least of the problems.

In any case, a car's UI is a lot simpler than a computer's UI - hell, most car stereos are
more complex than the cars they're in - and it also provides the kind of immediate physical
feedback that people are still missing on computers; when you turn, you can see and feel how
much you're turning in real time.

I take issue with your model :-)     
     
Graham Nelson, who developed Inform 7, described why the dev process     
wasn't open to everybody:     
      
<quote>Had Inform 7 been developed in open source, I am fairly sure it      
would now be an elaborated version of the superficial prototype, and that      
it would be much the poorer. </quote>     
     
Someone who puts out the first model will have people elaborating on the     
prototype, not necessarily refining or disrupting the model to produce a     
new one.  I think this is because developers don't have respect for what    
it takes to produce these models, and will complain about not being able    
to write code against a continuously changing model such as (dare I say    
it) the Linux Kernel ABI, to provide an even more concrete example.    
    
Frankly, I think there should be a universally accepted handful of books    
about UI design that developers point new developers towards; just 
validating the ideas of measuring number of clicks, time-to-task, facts 
about human visual and motor processing would be valuable.  These are 
something I'll bet very few developers get encouragement from the 
community as something valuable to learn.  
  
And my two cents about existing UIs; I really like what KDE has done in  
centralizing keyboard shorcuts, mime-typing, etc into the control panel   
in such a way that they can be accessed across all applications, probably  
even non-kde ones.  With KDE 3, they provided a slider bar to match level  
of UI effects to the power of your computer; AFAIK, to do this in Vista  
you need to buy a whole different version of the software or start hacking  
the registry.  So in that regard, KDE itself is a set of good models that  
can be complained about or improved.  So yeah, it could work :-)