Hacker News Reader

> I can't see how the New menu is a particularly good solution because it doesn't seem any more discoverable than the list of document-authoring programs in the Start menu.

I think you’ve missed the key point of this article, which is that a lot of people use computers without a clear idea what programs are. They know they can double-click a spreadsheet file and have a window open that lets them do things with that spreadsheet; but to them, I guess, that’s just “what a spreadsheet file is like” and there is no notion of this thing called Excel which is mediating their experience of the file. To a person like this, “discovering the program in the Start menu” is not something that can happen within the bounds of how their ontology of computers works.

It’s a credit to the designers of Windows that they design to accommodate users like this, though it also goes a long way to explaining why Windows is so annoying to many professional computer users.

I understand that completely, and my response again is that discovering the New menu doesn't seem easier to me than discovering the list of programs in the Start menu. I don't think the person's knowledge about what a "program" is is particularly relevant, especially since most of the items in the New menu are of the form "{program name} Document". I think it's pretty clear that in most cases the person must (and likely will) be aware of the names of programs they want to use (like Microsoft Word) even if they don't have explicit knowledge of what a "program" is. (Granted, a couple of the options do not contain the name of the program used to author them, like "Bitmap image" and "Rich text document," but those are the exceptions.)

Most likely, a user of the New dialog was shown “right-click here and select this and now ‘Word Document’ and then…” and thenceforth has followed these instructions essentially as a mystic ritual which achieves a necessary result, without a real understanding of what the steps mean. They don’t know that they’re running a program, they just know they’re making a document appear on the screen. Though they could probably guess the phrase “Microsoft Word” is pertinent to the ritual, they don’t know what it refers to, so transferring that insight would be a matter of guesswork.

You could just as easily show them the steps on the Start menu, it’s true- but then you have the separate question of saving the file somewhere and being able to find it again later. I know from helping elderly relatives with their computer problems that “directories” are another confusing concept for a lot of people. Pointing to the Desktop and saying “save it here” makes intuitive sense and makes the file easy to find later, but to e.g. “Save As” to the Desktop from inside Word requires an understanding of the occult dual nature of the Desktop-as-a-directory and the Desktop-on-the-screen, which is an insight reserved for enlightened wizards. Using the New menu lets the user restrict all their interactions with the file system to, at worst, Windows Explorer, which is a huge simplification!

(Example of where this is coming from; once when my father, a practicing medical doctor in his 70s, needed to e-sign a PDF on an unfamiliar computer I spent about half an hour trying to explain the concept of “close the document in this app and open it in this other (e-signing enabled) app.” I could about as well have been speaking Greek, or telling a Flatlander about flying.)

This is actually an interesting assessment for me, since smartphones are pretty much the exact opposite (can't even see the filesystem on some of them): There's only apps, and the apps have stuff in them. Sure there's ways of exchanging data between apps, but documents/files aren't really a thing.

Conceptually, that means I feel like I'm using services/tools to interact with this abstract 'data.' By keeping 'data' abstract, it feels less solid who owns it, who's responsible for it, and where it is. Now I'm interested in the opposite system where the 'documents' are the core concept of the device, and programs are just "things your computer/smartphone can do with this document." Really make the data feel like it's /there/ you know?

Yes, exactly this!

Jef Raskin's Humane Interface is like that:

"An end to stand-alone applications - every software package should be structured as a set of tools available to users on any document."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface

I'd love to see a popular device that was done that way round.

Real world comparisons don’t help you here - creating a new digital document from an existing document is a very simple four step process. Duplicate, open, select all, delete. If it were that easy in the real world, perhaps we would.

Especially for things like letterhead or forms. Who wants to go to a room filled with thousands of different forms, if they could just get a fresh and clean one with four simple gestures?

It seemed to me that the author was claiming that people copy existing documents on computers only because it's the only (or easiest) way they know of to create a new document of a given type, not because it is actually the easiest way to create a new document of a given type. It seemed to me that the author was decrying the fact that so many people copy existing documents and delete all the contents, and was providing that as justification for why the New menu exists.

Wow, I would never have thought of doing that to get to a new state. I can't think of the number of times that I have opened an existing document to make alt versions of, but forget to Save As before making those changes so my alt is the version. Hopefully undo buffer allows me to go back to start, Save As, redo back to where I was. Too many times.

I love/hate when I hear about the covoluted ways that users use a computer in the most illogical way that apparently makes perfect logical sense to them. It's like the Stupid Criminals bit on the Tonight Show. All you can think at first hearing is surely nobody is that dumb, but yet, here we are looking at someone being that dumb. One co-worker was often heard saying "I can't fix stupid"

Actually in the past people really did re-use paper (and papyrus, vellum, slate etc) documents that way!

They would scrape off or erase or whitewash what was on there previously and write on top.

People wouldn't create a new file if they could just reuse an existing one.