The GUI should be a lot better [video]
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95 was focused on a spatial metaphor like old school MacOS and 98 started the switch to a browser metaphor.
"Why do we have lists of tiny icons to click on instead of hiding big ones until we need them"
It's called putting the parts on the floor, it's why Lego is intuitive.
When you ship a product like Windows you have to be very mainstream, you can offer options to customise the UI, fair enough, but honestly the best option is to be dead boring. Maybe once in while you can bring in a new UX concept. Thinking out of the box and trying to reinvent the wheel like they did in 8 doesn't work.
I'm not trying to defend Windows, I think it's been going downhill in term of UI since 7 but not for the reasons he mentioned.
As the video actually explores at some length, Linux, or more accurately, the world of X11 window managers and develoment libraries, shows some real exploration, most notable with wheel/pie menues.
“Hi! One of the things I like about the Internet is the long tail, which means everybody has specific interests that won’t appeal to most people, but for the people who are interested, it really delivers!”
[...]
”Plus what a wonderful choice I’m being given! Choosing between a more secure system, or being able to use my GUI the way I want to!”
“Yeah, I get it! I’m a freak and I’m the only person who’s doing this!”
”But riddle me this: why do security updates need to screw with the graphics like this‽”
He says upfront he's not an expert and he's not. I thought it was close to worthless. YMMV.
[0] true but unhelpful
I see what you mean. In my case it’s useful because I went into it expecting not answers, but questions, and that’s what I got.
> After 20 minutes of being shouted at,
:-D For me it felt as if I was sitting next to him, both yelling at the TV.
He, fairly, criticises how long it takes for the filename to show up when he hovers over an icon on the task bar. However, I think the vast majority of people at his level would use Alt+Tab which immediately brings up not only larger icons for active applications to swap between, but the filename above.
Win+Tab is the 'replacement' but is slower and riddled with bugs - one annoying one is that some times it doesn't show the preview of half the apps. Also, the order of the windows is always changing, so you waste time scanning for the app you just used.
You can also type Win+<num> where <num> is 1-9 and that number icon activates from the taskbar. Which is great if you have 10 sticky icons down there, but if like me you don't 'stick' icons to the taskbar, it not as fast (muscle memory etc) or as useful as it could be.
I totally agree with the first part of his video (the main Windows 10 rant). Each iteration of Windows makes it slower for the power user. When the Year of the Linux Desktop is finally upon us, I guess I'll eventually switch. ;)
I'm not fully opposed to mice, and having each of trackpoint, trackpad, mouse, trackball, and tablet could be a plus.
Overly dismissive of CLI, but I'll excuse that.
>The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI (pronounced gooey).[11][12]
It is also Gif not Jif or Gee I eff. :-p
(Just kidding. But I’ll say it with a hard G until the day I die. Because...G)
So is at least one third of the English language…
people also pronounce "GAN" (Generative Adversarial Network) with a hard G even though Generative is a soft G (J).
and how do you pronounce "MUA" (Mail User Agent)? I'd go with moo-ah, even though it's not a Mail Oozer Ahgent :)
I think the version shown at 59m9s is complete:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AItTqnTsVjA&t=59m9s
Editing lightly:
1. The GUI should be asthetically acceptable with heavy and long use.
2. There is no perfect GUI for everyone.
3. There are many features that are ideal for the majority of users.
4. The GUI should get out of the way when you don't need it.
5. The GUI should be as efficient as possible if you know what you're doing.
6. The GUI should activate when you want it and not when you don't.
7. It shouldn't be easy to do things you don't want by accident.
8. Switching between mouse and keyboard should be minimised.
9. Use multiple mouse buttons for maximum efficiency.
10. Both low-contrast textual and stark contrast graphical elements should be avoided.
I'm not in full agreement (#3 may be debatable) and would add a few items (especially: preserve user state if at all possible). But it's a good starting point for discussion.
When I first moved to Japan I was appalled by all the old GUIs used everywhere and the never renewing systems (still using fax for example), now I think that changing styles every few years without good reason should be a crime.
I like in the video is touching on Science fition interfaces, I found this video[1] you might ejoy, the author Chris Noessel has a google talk[2] about intefacing with AI in different ways and touches on interaction design, I'm trying to learn more about this.
There was a link posted on HN that I can't find anymore, it was about better UI metaphors dropping breadcrumbs to traceback your path when you navigate across different sites and some 3D desktops with piles of documents ... I know is vague description, if annyone knows that link, please share :)
I don't buy that there is "good" GUI design in any absolute sense. "intuitive" is thrown around with too little thought in GUI discussion even though it is ambiguous.
When disassembling the meaning of intuition is turns into familiarity - but there is a whole spectrum of familiarity. At the most fundamental there is _innate_ familiarity e.g direction, which is why arrow keys and cursor input are innateley intuitive. At the other end of the spectrum we have high level design mimicry or historical use, skeumoprhism, e.g the floppy disk save icon, checkboxes, 3D relief in UI elements as a reference to physical input devices.
This is why "good" and "efficient" GUI design is also highly subjective, not because we don't all share a history that can be tapped for familiarity, surfacing conventions which are hard to escape - but because it's possible to be more efficient, more effective if we abandon those short term shortcuts and only hold onto the innate intuitions.
For example I use a tiling window manager, I get to define my own shortcuts - all of them. I find it intuitive to alt+arrow-key to change window focus, and shift+alt+arrow-key to move a window - this comprises innate intuition + artificial almost contextless fabrication - i.e no normal user would be able to figure it out without reading a manual or defining it for themselves.
This would also not generally be considered good GUI design, because it's not discoverable by people who are already familiar with historical GUIs, you have to put in effort to learn it - as would an alien using windows UI. and yet it is more efficient...
In summary, "good" GUI design for the masses is highly constrained and dictated by history, not ability to conjure up good metaphors.
Long ago, in the primitive time of the 1980s, people actually did studies to show what worked and what didn't in GUI design. Almost all the lessons learned from those studies have been thrown away and replaced by... I don't even know. Gut feeling? Ease of implementation? Prettiness? Certainly not usability studies.
If I could somehow activate a menu with maximum 8 choices in each keyboard direction (that are NOT subject to automatic moving around, so that a given motion is repeatable)... and cascade that as many levels deep as required.... I could get a lot more done, a lot faster.
It was worth the watch time, thanks!
I agree that Windows is far from perfect (I'm mostly a Mac user) but IMO the biggest issue is complexity. For tech savvy users all these are non issues, but for my Mom it would be impossible.
OTOH she can operate an iPhone just fine.
Fitt’s law is a good guidepost for efficient GUI design.
Don’t break backwards compatibility.
The GUI should immediately show the information the user demands when he commands it to.
Unnecessary UI elements should be hide-able.
Mouse gestures are underutilized and should be standardized.
The UI shouldn’t interfere with the user’s tasks; hitting the Windows key shouldn’t kill your game.
GUI is actually pronounced “Gee-you-eye” and not “gooey”.
Steve Jobs was actually GUI Hitler and Microsoft killed baby GUI Jesus.
I always thought acronyms were pronounced phonetically whenever possible, like NASA, SCUBA, etc.
Even if that's not the case, "gooey" has become ubiquitous enough to be the colloquial pronunciation.
Consistency is not our strong suit.
> goes into channel
Hey, this is the Freeman's Mind guy!
Some of the problems ("why are these resources in DLLs and not files") are there because if Microsoft changes them, loads of programs break for many more people. As opposed to the people behind many shell customisation tools, other programs do use the APIs that were intended to be used by developers and Microsoft actually tries to keep compatibility with those above some kind of quick launch menu some guy customised back in the XP days.
I think this guy would be excellently at home on Linux, although he picked some of the more fancy distros as examples in his video. His Windows setup reminds me of LXDE and XFCE. The dock, the floating panels, everything can be replicated and practically guaranteed to work despite updates. Now, program compatibility for stuff like video editors is an entirely different subject so I don't expect this person to switch, but as far as GUI problems go, Linux is the best place to solve them to prove your point.
There's one problem though, and that's that nobody cares about you and your long tail. Linux people used to be all about this stuff and that's why Linux was always considered arcane and unusable. Linux shell developers used to develop a lot of their software for themselves and their usage patterns instead of for others, making their only usable for people with the same expectations. Because of the lack of a unified GUI, there will never be centralised settings for the entire system, there's always long text files. If you are in the long tail, pick up Arch and go ham. But please, for the love of God, leave the GUI for normal people alone.
I used to do tech support over the phone, which most commonly consisted of getting people to launch Teamviewer and fixing whatever problem they had. Every fancy, smart, helpful feature that some whizzkid installed to help their parents made it completely impossible to help those people. They don't know what a start button is, they can't describe their screen to you, there's no standard buttons, labels or anything to help people, manuals are suddenly all wrong ("I've got the start menu open but I don't see control panel" because the shell renamed it to "settings") and auto hiding task bars made people think their computer was broken.
There's improvements to be made, but most people require simplicity over customisability. Custom icons break software, break expectations and often break metaphors. Custom task bars break old, buggy business software that hundreds of thousands of people rely on. Hell, I've seen some tools break because I decreased the width of window borders by a few pixels. Every customisability option needs to be tested for functionality and compatibility and developers' time is much better spent at making features normal people care about.
You want a perfect shell no matter the cost? Build one. The shell launch API is there in Windows, changing most system icons is supported through the registry. Window theming for most of the OS can still be used through the Windows 2000 theming system. Even more is possible by passing certain system messages to windows of other programs like explorer. You'll break stuff, but you'll break them just the way you like it. Don't expect anyone to build a GUI for you if you know your requirements don't matter for the vast majority of people.
Oddly enough, a domain in which CLI can really shine.
"Open a terminal" (give the hotkey sequence if necessary). "Type ..." (say or spell commands).
If all else fails, SSH in directly.
Yes, remote desktop offers somewhat similar capabilities, but with far higher bandwidth requirements.
+ the only date available on the site is 2012. Is it maintained?
Have there been any remastered editions created by the community that are worth the experience?