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Comment by nevinera | Hacker News Reader

He's missing the point. That calculator app isn't there for him, it's there for new users.

If you sit down at a computer for the first time, and need to do a calculation, you want something that behaves exactly like you're used to - a calculator that works just like the one in your desk, a painting program that works as much like a set of paints and brushes as can be managed.

That's not 'overdoing the interface metaphor', it's being faithful to expectations. Sure, there's a better interface for the calculator available, but people that would want one generally know how to install one.

The Java interface metaphor is a telling one: an interface is a promise to the user. Changing the interface forces the user to change as well, and people seldom want to.

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By following this way of thinking, the designer of the first calculator should have made his product look as much like an abacus as possible, so he wouldn't confuse the new user.

What you're saying is reasonable, but it misses the fact that you have to find a balance between being familiar and exposing the capabilities of the software you're using.

The calculator is a good example, because it's actually very painful to use such a calculator on a computer. And saying new users can't grasp the way a proper computer calculator works mean you didn't try hard enough to explain to them. It's really taking the easy road.

On a side note, i always wondered why we don't see the same kind of walkthrough you have got in many videogames in software. There should be an interactive walkthrough mode in every packed application in windows/osx. It would be a much better solution than trying to mimic real world objects by providing an interface that imperfectly behaves like the users preconceptions make him expect.

I'm often told that people are resistant to change, but I think this isn't entirely true. People are resistant to sudden and dramatic change. Small changes over time often go unnoticed, like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water.

You want your first calculator to look a lot like an abacus, but have a few new features which introduce the user to the new capabilities of the new technology and ease them into change.

> People are resistant to sudden and dramatic change. Small changes over time often go unnoticed, like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water.

This is true, but the physical calculator interface is so old that it would take decades of careful enhancement and deployment to move its users up to a modern interface. Most of its users just want to multiply large numbers, or add a column. The word processor is a great example of the incremental interface changes you describe though.

>first calculator should have made his product look as much like an abacus as possible, so he wouldn't confuse the new user.

No, he should have made it look as much like a calculation sheet as possible, and he did (calculators were made for accountants initially). The point was that you should use the interface your user expects, unless you are attempting to fill a demand that hasn't been met.

>And saying new users can't grasp the way a proper computer calculator works mean you didn't try hard enough to explain to them. It's really taking the easy road.

It's not. Saying new users 'cant' grasp it would be insulting - it would be much more accurate to say that they don't have the inclination to. If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet.

>There should be an interactive walkthrough mode in every packed application in windows/osx.

That would be useful in a lot of cases, and we're starting to see more of them now that producing video isn't so damned difficult. But they still take time and effort to read; they still make demands on the user.

>it's actually very painful to use such a calculator on a computer.

'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only thing I showed him that didn't need explanation.

> 'Painful' is a perception. It's painful to you, because you're used to something else - it is blessedly familiar to my grandfather; it was the only thing I showed him that didn't need explanation.

Well no i was not talking about the perception. Even your or mine grandfather would agree that an actual calculator is better than the calculator you have in windows, because you have real keys instead of drawed ones. And if you start using the ones on your keyboard, which actually makes much more sense, the drawed ones become useless suddenly. The workflow you have with one of those fakes calculators is not only worse than with a well designed one, it's way worse than with a real one, and that's the whole point.

> If I'm going to use a tool once per month on average, then a slow, clunky interface is far superior to a faster one that I don't know how to use yet.

This deserves to be quoted because it's very true, but i still think, in the case of the calculator, and maybe in the case of other apps, that a way better compromise could be made.

However, if your tour is longer than 2 minutes, you're doing something wrong.

The designers of the original Macintosh had this goal in mind: a person should understand how to use a Mac after watching over another user's shoulder for 3 minutes.

For the iPhone, the tour consists only of their 30 second TV spots.

Just the other day I watched a very experienced programmer who already had an IRB session open (not to mention a bash shell and the availability of a python repl, I'm sure) start up that very calculator to do some quick calculations.

While I agree about being faithful to expectations and see value in that, I also believe that metaphors can sometimes continue to live past the time they should be expired due to sheer laziness. There's only been one generation (ish) exposed to that physical interface for a calculator- it's not like it's a permanent beginner metaphor.

>start up that very calculator to do some quick calculations.

I suspect that had more to do with purity of work flow - I often open up a second python shell to do math in so I won't have to scroll the stuff I'm working on off the screen.

>I also believe that metaphors can sometimes continue to live past the time they should be expired due to sheer laziness.

How so? It's obviously not laziness in this case - there are dozens of alternatives developed, and Apple is particularly good about making conscious decisions about interfaces. I can't debate that statement in the literal sense (obviously they "can sometimes"), but I don't think it applies here - they left the calculator app as-is because presenting a familiar interface to the majority of users is more important for their experience (and therefore Apple's bottom line).

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