DeRose: Designing pro creative apps (Part 1-3)

Posted Jul 14, 2011 16:28 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (guest, #36106)
In reply to: DeRose: Designing pro creative apps (Part 1-3) by rgmoore
Parent article: DeRose: Designing pro creative apps (Part 1-3)

It seems like the assumption here is "Users of this program will never insert a card they don't intend to immediately import." This is an assumption that is unlikely to hold true when all future users are not known.

Just because a program is *for* serious users doesn't mean it should raise unnecessary barriers to everyone else, all else being equal.

DeRose: Designing pro creative apps (Part 1-3)

Posted Jul 16, 2011 15:05 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

All things are NOT equal.

Remember the thread on Jack? Where the penny finally dropped that Jack was targeted at a corner case such that while 99 point whatever percent of people didn't need what Jack offered, those that *did* need it made up 99 percent of Jack users?

This is directly aimed at a small subset of "all users". It's aimed at users with unusual needs. If you don't want what it wants, you go elsewhere, you don't suggest that they delete the functionality that 99% of its users want.

I read the article. Seems like many people didn't. It came over quite clearly that the software designers asked themselves "what is a professional workflow? How can we automate it?". The fact that you and me as amateurs think its completely daft merely shows us up as the amateurs we are.

Bit like my brother with emacs :-) When he first used it he dismissed the UI as "totally idiotic". But the more he used it, the more he *understood*, and the more he appreciated how the UI actually was designed to make his life as a programmer easy. Emacs is a professional programming tool. You don't give it to a two-fingered typist.

Cheers,
Wol

DeRose: Designing pro creative apps (Part 1-3)

Posted Jul 27, 2011 17:04 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Emacs is a professional programming tool. You don't give it to a two-fingered typist.

A lot of programmers are two-fingered typists, because they taught themselves to type when very young and two fingers works well enough when you have young hands. It's only once the RSI hits that they're forced into proper typing. (Speaking from experience here...)