A really good article on software usability

[Anne Wilson]

On Friday 05 January 2007 16:18, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-01-05 at 15:15 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > > > If the user does not use their brain, then all is lost.  There's a
> > > > number of people I've come very close to telling that they're too
> > > > stupid to use a computer.  No matter how many years of instructing,
> > > > no matter how many years they complain about the same thing going
> > > > wrong, they don't learn, they don't pay attention to the
> > > > explanations, they just whinge at you while you're talking to them.
> > >
> > > Yes, that's the point.  For a lot of things, software should work
> > > like an appliance.  If the thing that needs to be done can be
> > > predicted, just do it without offering any choices.
> >
> > <scream.......>  Where have I seen that idea?  Oh yes, in systems that I
> > won't use.
>
> Does your refrigerator ask you every time you are nearby if you would
> like it to keep your food cool or not?  Instead of prompting every
> time for whether or not you'd like to save or lose all your work,
> why don't programs have a default for how many revisions you'd
> like it to keep and always save all changes unless explicitly told
> to exit without saving?  If it ends up saving work you wanted to
> throw away, then you'd have an after-the-fact way to fix the
> unusual case instead of being bothered every time selecting the
> obvious choice.  And by the way, I don't mean that programs shouldn't
> have a way to select choices, I mean that they should have the
> obvious defaults already set and a way that you can change the
> defaults if you have some unusual need.  And the rest of the time
> they should know that humans are creatures of habit.  This mode
> also sets things up for someone else to help a user make the right
> choices once or an administrator to set up a whole office without
> having to make everyone memorize the meta-alt-cokebottle magic
> keypresses that they might need every time to repeat the choices.
>
I repeat - I want to make the decisions.  I do not want anyone else to make 
them for me.  If that makes me a control freak, so be it.  My disaster plan 
saved my company precisely because I'm a control freak.  You may choose to 
save a few seconds of your life, save yourself some effort several times a 
day and take risks that are unacceptable to me.  Fine.  You have a right to 
choose that.  Just do not make me do the same.

Anne
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