Scott Adams on Bad Interfaces
dilbert.com
dilbert.com
My old microwave oven had one control, a dial. Just put the food in and turn it. The whole dial represented 12 minutes, so just estimate how far to turn it. My new microwave has 22 buttons. I forget which is which. I have to turn on the lights and get my glasses.
The previous owner installed vertical blinds on the double hung windows. Think about that. Impossible to have open windows without endless noise and movement.
An office where I work is near an airport. They have a key card system that beeps with a successful swipe. So you can't hear the beep when an airplane is passing overhead (every 5 minutes) and have to wait until it's gone to get into the building.
Another office has "gone green" and installed motion sensors everywhere to turn off lights not being used. Good luck finishing up in the restroom if you've been sitting too long.
Some of my software asks "Save before exit?" whether I've changed anything or not. I got so tired of trying to remember if I had updated or only viewed, I just click "Yes" every time. Pointless.
Every time the garbage truck drops the dumpster back down next door, 3 car alarms go off. No one ever responds, because they assume that it's a false alarm. Not that big a deal until the garbage truck shows up at 4:00 a.m. on Saturday.
My TV remote has 33 buttons. So they're so small, you have to stop and look at it to hit "Mute" or "Last Channel", the only 2 buttons I ever use. Who designed this thing, a munchkin?
The airports in Orlando, Philadelphia, San Jose, and Miami put the restaurants (not counting junk food) outside of security. So you have to wonder, "Do I have enough time to eat and then get through the line?" (Pittsburgh, Tampa, and Chicago Midway did it right.)
The trunk release and gas cap release levers in my car are next to each other but not visible. It's hard to pull one without the other. Seems like my gas cap door is always open.
A theater we went to the other night only had aisles on the sides with 50 seats in between. Do your really want that great seat in the center knowing you may have to climb over 25 people if you need the restroom before the movie is over?
Intersections that gridlock because of traffic from the next light. Too many to mention.
Microsoft Windows.
hahaha!
(I know I will be down-voted for that comment but I'm ready to risk 4 karma points to display my appreciation of that last point)
Vista. When I need a new PPTP connection, I open "Network Connections" (where PPTP connections are listed), then go looking for File -> New (which doesn't exist), then File -> Connect which is greyed out and irrelevant, I glance longingly at at the temptress of File -> New Incoming Connection which is available - if only it was for Outgoing connections - then try Right Click -> New..., which also doesn't exist.
After cursing for a bit I remember to go to the Network And Sharing Center (where PPTP connections are not listed) and click "Connect to Network".
Am I the only PuTTY user who opens it, connects to a host, types the wrong username and then gets annoyed when on a failed login it only re-prompts for a password, not for both username and password?
If you are opening a connection that is not saved in your session list, you might consider choosing "Duplicate Session" from the window menu at the top left and avoid retyping the server address in the putty dialog. The annoying thing is that the "Restart Session" command is not available when the connection is still open, so you will need to close the dysfunctional one after launching the duplicate.
If it is a saved session, you can store the user name under Connection->Data so that you do not need to type it on each launch.
Install Cygwin, and use OpenSSH from your shell in MinTTY (which uses the PuTTY's terminal emulator implementation, but doesn't fuck up the UI and adds all the missing options).
PuTTY is almost as good a program can get - no install, basic use case just works, good default colour scheme, proper full screen option available. Fast, simple, minimal fuss until you hit some stupid terminal quirks.
Cygwin is almost as bad as a program can get - massive install, with confusing nonresizable large package choice dialog, masses of files everywhere, services, ugly stuck in a command prompt by default, hacks to bring everything unpleasant about nix onto Windows.
Get many good things from command line nix from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net, put them in a folder in your PATH and leave the CygWin swamp a long way away.
Maybe I'll try it again with MinTTY, it does look like a good terminal for CygWin. It's not an easy decision though, I predict it wont be at all fun.
Store username password and anything else you tend to do once logged in (such as tailing a log file) and save as a launch sequence - bam, one click to check any random server log, without having to remember and type in long forgotten usernames, passwords and file paths.
I think a good solution would be to use a Wii-like remote, that just has a handful of buttons on it. Put the common options (volume, on/off, last channel, menu) on the remote, and everything else as an on-screen menu, which you would point to with the Wii-mote.
Maybe using a scroll-wheel, like the one on the iPod, would be a better solution. You'd be able to quickly scroll through on-screen options with the wheel.
Ooops. I made some like that.
This looks like there's three trade-offs to putting restaurants in the secure zone:
- If a group is traveling together, and only a member or two is taking a flight, putting the restaurants behind security will prevent the group from dining together.
- Put restaurants behind security will lock out local customers who live/work near the airport, but not actually needing to fly. In my experience, some restaurant chains will make better or more interesting locations at high traffic areas than more "locally" focused places.
- Finally, putting these places behind security will increase potential bottlenecks in the way system, since now more employees will need to be monitored or tracked. Even with IDs and extra employee-only entrances, the increased chances of something going wrong with a forged ID, vengeful or absentminded employee, or "hidden" entrance increases risk of exposure to a terminal shut down event.
Egg or tuna on a plane? Sheesh, give me a break, both will stink, and one will make you fart. Now who thought that would be a good combo for people getting on a plane?
If you have an hour or more layover it's nice to have a decent meal if your hungry. If you have to leave the departure area and then go through security again, a meal may not be possible.
The last thing I want to deal with is hungry cranky travelers.
Other fun thing about the way we do it here in Pittsburgh, though: If you go to TGI Friday's and get a steak... they give you a steak knife.
Makes me really appreciate the hassle of going through the huge security process.
"I can't get past the fact that it's sitting there wasting energy while its only function is to confuse me up to three dozen times per day."
"Lately I have been wondering whether online reviews should remain legal."
"I can't help seeing world affairs as essentially a bunch of middle managers sitting around a rectangular table coming up with clever ways to convince the masses that turds are diamonds."
"Humans are obsessed with their weight. I think a big part of that obsession is the simple fact that weight is easy to measure."
"What the world needs is software that makes it easy for senior citizens to use e-mail."
Now imagine them being read by an angry Andy Rooney.
I'm just putting that out there.
I look at it this way: when the Apple Macintosh made the mouse popular in 1984, it was with a 9 inch, 512x324 resolution display. I got started computing on a 17 inch, 640x480 resolution display, so not that much larger in terms of usable screen real estate. Now, I have two 22 inch, 1680x1050 resolution displays, one turned vertically. For comparison, I made this image http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/thOvKDvamA7iCeQLCdyGIw?...
The red box in the middle is the old Macintosh display. It looks roughly 5 inches across the diagonal. Mousing interfaces haven't changed in any significant way in the last 30 years, but displays have grown astronomically in that time. If arguments against the mouse over text interfaces were contentious back-in-the-day, it's even worse now. My wrists can't take this anymore.
This is on Windows - haven't switch to Mac to test it - maybe the OS X acceleration is linear and hence a bit sucky?
So it's not just cursor speed, but acceleration that matters. And if it's implemented properly, I don't think your issue would be an issue at all.
When it's not right, the end result is moving the mouse quickly to get near a button, then slowing down and the cursor slows down more and you both miss the button and get annoyed that it's only creeping ever more slowly towards it like a digital Zeno's arrow.
Really, most of the screen real estate is completely uninteresting from the perspective of the mouse. Contextual gestures, where sliding the mouse changes the selected control point, I think has potential.
- Light switch used as apartment doorbell. Mine sits right beside the hall lightswitch.
- Light switch used as door opener. Of course put right beside one of the hall's light switches.
- Light switch used as control for the office-wide motorized blinds. Of course put right inbetween the other proper light switches used for controlling light.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that uses this "opposite of normal logic" trick in order to remember how things work sometimes.
I haven't thought about it much, but it occurs to me after reading that post that garbage disposers might best be operated with a footpedal.
Mostly I think a big point here is why everyone thinks of the residential power switches as strictly for lights? The are other things I turn on with "light-switches". These include: ceiling fans, wall sockets, vent fans and all power to my garage. I have never thought of this as unexpected, and no guest at my house has ever complained that I should take the fans off of 'lights only' switches.
I usually end up washing my hands a half dozen times while preparing food just to avoid spreading bacteria to switches, faucets, and surfaces. I've had food poisoning a couple of times (from restaurants), so I might be a bit germophobic. :)
Anyway, as several of you have pointed out, the possibilty of spurious activation is a real safety concern, so bad idea.
When it's a matter of handed-or-maimed, don't rely on a label!
If his sole reason for disliking this particular interface was that he couldn't remember which switch was which, I too am quite surprised that his first thought was to have a new countertop switch installed rather than stick a label on it or grab a sharpie.
[1] http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDi...
A few years ago, the software was so fussy that we broke a Windows install past our ability to fix it merely by installing in the wrong order. After install it needed to be run as an administrator then as a user, then configured with custom profiles choosing which kinds of devices you might have. It was a mess.
Today I had to install the latest version and wasn't looking forward to it. Plugged the device in, it appeared as a USB stick with an installer. Ran the installer, ran the program - on first launch it quietly detected and installed some drivers and presented with a 'connect' button which ... worked.
I wish there was some standard way I could give feedback to the development team for their excellent work and to the company management for encouraging (or at least, permitting and subsequently getting out of the way of) such improvement and customer focus.
In short, I'm not sure they deserve that much praise.
If they could be open and still be like that, even better.
You know what I mean, you come to a door and you don't know if you should push or pull. It happens to me almost everyday at work when I'm deep in thought.
"The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, nicely sums up a lot of design problems. Even tho the book was written in 1990 or earlier, we're still facing many of the same design problems.
Everything2 sums up the book nicely: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=140365
What I'd like:
When the alarm is going off, any button should snooze. A later "off" button press (ie, a minute or so) should be what turns off the alarm. This way, a literal "whack" would silence the alarm, without fear of falling asleep after turning it off.