Distribution quotes of the week

[Posted September 19, 2012 by ris]

The Fedora carbon footprint is getting larger:-)

If by "intuitive" you mean "the same as the old interface" then I must agree. Otherwise, I think you are just trying to hold on to what you know.

-- David Lehman

I start to think that Enterprise Software is an alias for broken packages and bad software installations.

-- Jens Kuehnel

Alpha does not mean 'finished'. Alpha does not even mean 'nearly finished'. Alpha means 'here's this thing that will probably eat your babies and burn down your house, we want you to tell us exactly where the teeth marks were on the babies and what the fire smelled like'.

-- Adam Williamson (Thanks to Don Waugaman)

to post comments

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 20, 2012 16:45 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (3 responses)

> If by "intuitive" you mean "the same as the old interface" then I must agree. Otherwise, I think you are just trying to hold on to what you know.

Is it not the definition of "intuitive"? What can be the source of intuition outside what you know ? The UI goddess influencing your dream ? (Maybe she does for UI designer, that would explain lots of things.)

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 9:46 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] (2 responses)

Is it not the definition of "intuitive"?

no, it's not. that definition precludes the idea that new types of user interaction can ever be "intuitive" if they do not conform to an existing one, which is, in itself, an absurdity.

the whole idea of "intuitive" interfaces is an absurdity in and of itself, and it's more marketspeak than real user interaction design lingo.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Sep 28, 2012 21:28 UTC (Fri) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link] (1 responses)

> that definition precludes the idea that new types of user interaction can ever be "intuitive" if they do not conform to an existing one, which is, in itself, an absurdity.

The definition I've always liked is: An intuitive user interface is one that works in the way the user expects it to.

If the user is already used to an old version of your software, this can be achieved by making it work in the same way as that - but that's not the only way. As long as it works as you expect it to, whether that's due to user memory, or well-thought-out visual metaphors, or analogy with another piece of software the user has used, or just good design, the definition is satisfied. If the new software works in a way that violates the user's expectations, and reacts in ways the user doesn't expect, it fails it.

Distribution quotes of the week

Posted Oct 2, 2012 20:59 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

That's much closer to what I want in UIs. I call it "making sense" and I find it to be more important than what is called "intuitive" these days. As an example, vi "makes sense" (via mnemonics mainly) but is not "intuitive". To be fair, Vim adds things that no longer have good mnemonics if only because there are only so many keys available on a standard keyboard, but that falls under "user memory" for the large part since I doubt I use more than maybe 50 distinct key pattern sequences day-to-day[1].

[1]Number pulled roughly from nowhere, but it sounds about right. I should really keylogger myself to find it out and then try to learn things that minimize those (I'm prone to scrolling by holding j/k lots of times when skimming code).