unity-design team mailing list archive

[Martín Soto <donsoto@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 6:55 AM, Diego Moya <turingt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...

I'm the first one to defend a simplified design for entry-level to
> average users even if it doesn't support expert features. But this
> kind of design should be only for new features and never, ever be put
> in place of a previous design already in use. This is the golden rule
> of computing - if ain't broke, don't fix it.
>

But our current UI is broken in many respects! Thing is, motivated users can
wrap their heads around almost any UI, as shown by the fact that vi and
emacs still have such a strong following, to mention just one example.

The fact that human brains posses such a high plasticity, however, is no
excuse for us not getting our act together. Whenever you change a UI, you
will break someone's habituation to that UI. Unfortunately, habituation is a
very complex issue: For example, people can be very creative while working
around a program's limitations, and this often involves using the program in
ways that were never taken into account by its original designers. This
means that, given a large enough user base, even changes that appear
completely innocuous will likely end up irritating at least some users.

Braking people's habituation will always cause problem, but absolutely
necessary if you want to make progress.

Cheers,

Martín