unity-design team mailing list archive

[Lee Hyde <anubeon@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 16/03/11 17:16, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> You actually don't disagree with the assesment, because to do so, you
> would have to understand what I said, instead of just loading off stuff
> that is bugging you, but has nothing to do with my post.

I used my own frustrations to illustrate a point and not merely to vent
as you appear to have interpreted (were I venting there would be a *lot*
more swearing and mindless violence believe me ;-)).

The point I was trying to make is that there's unlikely to be a single
unifying or 'right way' to do things. Take the dual-boot use-case and
the left-handed user use-case. Such externalities as other operating
systems and handedness *do* factor into the user experience as a whole,
and yet I suspect little effort has been expended in trying to
understand what impact if any the new (and strict) UI design has on
these end-users. In fact I doubt that a one size fits all solution could
be found for these and/or other special cases, which is why
customisation is key to satisfying all (or the majority of) use cases.

Hence your Fosbury Flop example is frankly specious as it refers to a
technique of proven value and with a clear goal (to jump highest). The
only clear goal in UI is to improve the user experience for the majority
of end-users (a less tangible and less quantifiable goal). How one goes
about this and whether such can be achieved with a rigid and
non-customisable UI design is what I question. Especially with-in a
dual-boot setting (sorry to bring it back to this, but dual-booting is
*not* a niche phenomenon and it does, after all, constitute my own user
experience).

I still contest the notion that one can arrive at a 'how it should be
done' assessment without any data? Without any actual data any UI
designer would be forced to rely on anecdotal evidence and conjecture
and that's no way to arrive at an 'how it should be done'. As I
mentioned earlier, UI design is part art and part science; one should
not ignore the science of UI design, especially when assessing the human
component of the user experience.

> Interaction design is not all about what the computer does,
> it is also about the user side.

This is something we agree on, but it's difficult to see where any
effort has been to take on board user opinion and/or (more importantly)
gather objective data with respect to user-computer interaction (e.g.
mouse and eye tracking experiments).

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the UI design team are sympathetic to user
opinion. It's just far to often have I seen complaints and concerns
about UI changes dismissed with phrases like 'don't worry, it'll be
better this way' and 'this is how it will be done; end of discussion'.
This doesn't exactly inspire confidence. :-(

> Note that user satisfaction can absolutely be a factor
> feeding into it. It's just tricky to deal with
> "future user's satisfaction, once those who learned
> the old way got over their reluctance".

Other than bug trackers, mailing lists and forums where else exactly can
one reliably interact with developers in a way that won't boil down to a
clash of opinion. This is precisely why I admire Mozilla's science based
approach to UI design (represented by Test Pilot and LabKits), as such
approaches tend to take personal preferences and developer politics out
of the equation. Presenting developers with a valuable pool of anonymous
data with which to plan UI design. It would be excellent if (in the long
run at least) Unity/Ubuntu developers moved in a similar direction
(providing a Test Pilot like package allowing end-users to enrol in UI
studies and prototypes). All the bug trackers, mailing lists and forums
in the world can't provide the kind of irrefutable, evidence based
gleanings (of how humans interface with their computers) that such a
package could provide.

Since future users are such an unknown element, and attempting to cater
to them is tantamount to trying to create *the* perfect UI (whose very
existence I doubt) perhaps energy *should* be focused on existing users
and known use-cases. It seems to me that trying to design a UI for a
mythic future user is foolish, since as you rightly state *it's tricky*.

Kind Regards,

Lee.

-- 
"Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of
today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect
human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of
place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to
live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can
only increase, but never do away with, crime."

	-- Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it Really Stands For (1910)

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