unity-design team mailing list archive

[Martín Soto <donsoto@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 3:22 PM, mac_v <drkvi-a@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The users cant/shouldnt expect everything to be spoon fed! The Option is
> there! just because the user forgets ,it isnt a design flaw.
>

I wonder what sort of design philosophy you're advocating here. One where we
refrain from automating things that can be automated just so that our users
don't become too lazy?  If this is the case, I don't think I would identify
with your ideas, anyway.

A crash is not the error of the car manufacturer but the driver, the
> manufacturer has provided the breaks its upto the user to use it! Only
> faulty breaks are design flaws.
>

This is not a matter of legal or moral responsibility. This is rather about
preventing user errors, or at least mitigating their consequences when they
happen, which, for me, would be a guiding design principle. Given you're
using the car example, let me continue with it: Since a few years ago,
engineers have been working on different types of sensor systems (such as
radar or sonar) that could automatically operate a car's breaks before it
crashes into something. Would you advocate *not* installing such systems in
commercial cars because "the pedal is there! if the user just fails to press
it on time and kills himself against a wall, it isn't a design flaw!"?


>
> If we start to make a too complex program , it can ,as Mark said, only
> lead to more bugs.
>

I will just refrain from falling into the "Mark said" type of argumentation
(see *argumentum ad verecundiam [1])*


>
> How do we differentiate a presentation done for an audience , and a
> rehearsal? we cant!
>

This is just a particular example, but I would say *in most cases* people
rehearse in front of their normal screen, but they present using a
projector. If we can differentiate between those two cases, we'll have
probably dealt with more than 90% of the practical situations. As I already
said, and this is possibly the most important point, no solution will be
100% reliable, but this is no reason to discard it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority