pickingdinner

> making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and ignoring all others

I literally just stated how you should observe "all others". With everything important considered, you should then "count your bodies" and optimize. McNamara would agree with that.

Most UIs don't. Just take any app or program you use daily, and imagine better paths to the goals you repeat on a daily basis. If you're a UI person, you should be focused on optimizing these paths.

This is just math, so I will continue to elaborate.

Mouse clicks and distance are two of the most basic metrics. And straight forward. So why wouldn't you optimize there?

But what you're referring to is that which can offset and add to those metrics. "Mouse click" in and of itself means nothing in the context of the program. So it's the "other stuff" that pushes against the goal being accomplished in 1 click.

So the answer is, considering that "other stuff", what is the most efficient, as in, fewest clicks and shortest distance possible?

The gripe that should be had is not even optimizing on this level, and even worse, prioritizing "fancy" animations as if that's a good thing and as if that's your main job.

> The most efficient path for a person is not necessarily the one with the fewest clicks/shortest mouse travel.

The most efficient path for that person is necessarily the one with the fewest clicks/shortest mouse travel (for that person).

And that is the optimization process of 1 use case (user usage case path).

The goal of UI is to optimize efficiency across most use cases (and hence users) as measurably possible.

(all the fancy animations can be added after that, so you can bill for those hours, and add an obvious "animations off" button, and you'll literally make everyone happy).

This contradicts the premise.

> hard (and therefore slow) to use.

You assess the use case, as in each case the user goes from want to finish. If it's slow and hard, you fix that.

1 click is the fastest.

An obvious button that does exactly what you want is the easiest.

There is nothing slow or hard about an interface optimized based on a complete understanding of what the user wants to the point that they can distill it in one button.

Elaborating on details, yes. Slowing it down, no.

If the user is confused as to what happened, you haven't communicated what happened. If you need them to stop and read it, let that notice appear instantly with a next button.

And nothing can happen too fast on a computer. If it's done it's done. Just show "done".

> can be confusing

Confuse who?

An instant "success" notice beats waiting every single time, regardless of user level, if we're even classifying that.

> quickest,

And this can be scientifically measured by mouse distance and clicks.

> most optimal workflow to accomplish a user's tasks

And this can be scientifically assessed by taking all use cases and refactoring over them.

List all the available goals at any given "location" in the program. List all the steps users take to get accomplish their goals. Consolidate and refactor, then optimize on the shortness, obviousness, and fault tolerance of every flow.

This is more fundamental to the user experience than colors or animations or the availability of any single feature.

I disagree. That isn't even an interface. And this is the source of so much trouble. The "developer knows best" mindset. The developer will never know exactly when I want coffee, yet so many programs assume my coffee needs are just an algorithm that I secretly obey and just don't know it yet.

The best interface does nothing. It's idle and listens. Everything automatic must be fully transparent and be opt-in. Fully explained if not self-explanatory.

User instruction beats developer assumption every single time. If the user is "wrong" as arbitrarily defined by the developer, the least they can do is kindly instruct and point the user in the "right" direction, not assume, let alone assume they know better than the user about what they want.

The perfect UX is one obvious button that obviously does exactly what you need, that presents itself exactly when you need it. And all you need is to be able to read it.

Ya, sounds dark, as in dark pattern.

That won't work, because most copyrighted material is worthless, and we can't predict what retains value in the long run, and most don't. Mickey is a rare example of value surviving to the point it was worth (in dollars) protecting.

That's why I prefer a flat tax.

15% goes to the copyright/patent distribution system. Anyone can copy and profit off anything, but just pays 15% into the system.

The system then pays out based on the rules and registration information.

Public domain is then redefined as whatever is tax free.

And, you can also buy anything directly from the government.

Prices are determined by market value if it's a physical product. For digital goods, some rules may have to be defined, and maybe rules to define rules defined. Copies of songs could all just be 25 cents, etc. Books 2.99. But this is to own a copy (defined as having a copy on your system plus having paid for it). Just listening to a copy could be free.

At least this is the direction I wish the world were headed.

If you don't believe in the work, it's just a job. Most of us have a job, which really is just low hanging money. Belief can be motivation to start something, but this wasn't something he started, either.

Trying to get off dropbox.

1) Anyone try Backblaze for photo backups? Is it worth trying?

2) Why is immich photo and video only?

3) Why docker? I miss the days of just files and scripts on any host.

A stream of random events is life =)

Not to get too philosophical, but does profanity measure the children in the room, or does it measure the adults in the room?

Schrodinger's chat (room).

Especially another facebook app. Those in the category of "app only heavy social media consumers" have been addicted to tiktok for too long already. Any offering less than that by the place they left is not good enough.

And those like myself who are no longer interested in the current iteration of social apps do not need another offering from this iteration of social apps.

Even better better just <html src="" /> or even <div src="" />

Functionality should be considered based on potential utility. Not sure what politics are involved at the w3c, but if it's not that, then maybe it's their philosophy and approach that has them not going for that which is most useful.

Ya, or any server side scripting language. You just want the ability to refactor your site, as in, name, save, and load data and code blocks.

And if html allowed inserting html as it does css or js from external files, even that would be mostly be redundant. If only it let you use <html src="" /> at will.

It's hard to imagine the economy of your hobby and all else that goes into any business. Taxes, marketing, customer service, and if you hire people, management. Very few enjoy these activities, let alone excel at them, especially with a hobbyists's mindset.

The influencer is the closest to a marketing hobbyist, but from the many I've met, it often crosses the line into addiction and narcissism, which some see as talent.

His point is:

Don't wait for a vision as a reason to practice. Practice does not require vision. With practice comes vision.

A highly pragmatic philosophy for artists.

They've marginalized "the offering" as a hybrid office/consumer product with a fragmented vision, as shown by their uninspired rebranding/marketing efforts.

Google Cloud could just create their project folders in drive, let drive open the code editors, and let you do all your coding from there, but that team knows how bad the UI is, and this team is excused because they're the "office/consumer" offering. Both are paid to make separate UX, neither trusts the other, and it's categorical, so not even a conflict. Except, then there's the user that is forced to be incompatible members of two categories when they're not.

In an ideal googleverse, you'd login to chrome and it'd have everything. It would be one service, metered by resource consumption, and you'd never have to leave any single window opened for a purpose, to get that "computational" thing done.

Loneliness has nothing to do with alone-ness. Most of us are perfectly happy alone, being left alone, and may even prefer it.

Similarly, depression has nothing to do with alone-ness. It's being perfectly sad. Depression is the only cause of perfect sadness, and sadness is never the cause of depression. Healing depression cannot be done by healing sadness. Your triggers and the cause of your condition could be many things, but until you figure those things out, nothing will undo your depression or sadness.

It really isn't that complicated. You could just lie too if it isn't beneath you.

If I am looking to update a site for a client and see software that I need, and the author is asking for $$ for commercial use, and the client is willing to pay, I will respect that.

Presumption of conflict and safeguards against it, or just giving up, has caused a lot of great projects to be abandoned in my opinion.

If you go to github and the source is already there, the source is open. Any definition of open source beyond that is political and legal. And with that source being open, you could just copy it without even reading the license.

I was under the impression "scrollbar = more to see" has been somewhat of a standard for a while now. The Mac example is just one of those classic UI fails.

The worst are the pages where the scroll wheel doesn't work, even when you can see the scrollbar just fine. I'm always baffled, since no simple page would have that problem. Clearly they developed it and didn't care for breaking it.

In html I would sometimes force the scrollbar to always show to prevent layout stuttering. But otherwise, changing the color of the scrollbar to match the fg and bg colors of the page shouldn't be too big of a deal. And I wouldn't mind if some browser skins would change the default scrollbar colors to match, either.

Scrollbars are already stylized across the web and across programs. Most users don't mind it. With options come the bad choices, which anyone can list on one page.

This is in response to your latest response. Not sure why the reply link isn't showing.

Take adobe student discount. They license at a discount if you're a student.

The rights holder can restrict who gets what license. If you're trying to be able to say "released under OSI approved rubber stamped" then sure, maybe duel licensing is not ok. But you don't need the two licenses to be in agreement, and if you're not a student you don't legally get the student discount just by identifying as one.

So you could easily and legally do, free for not-for-profit, $50 otherwise with source.

ok so you and cryptonector below are in disagreemeng.

Also I am not claiming I know any laws.

I am claiming the law needs to be adjusted, not censorship standards.

> of course I get to choose

No, you are wrong here. Maybe it's semantics or whatever but a rights owner can impose restrictions based on conditions.

Hate groups are the problem, not how they express themselves online.

I find it odd that it's perfectly legal to be a group with illegal intent. That's the only loophole that needs to be closed.

If a group is deemed to have "intent to harm and endanger others" then anyone who affiliates themselves with them should be deemed likewise, and attended to.

So the issue is of pre-crime. A crime has to happen and speech isn't a crime (although censorship should be, we censor them instead).

But if members of a group have already committed crimes and crimes of hate, then that should be enough to legally impose restrictions on the group and its members, including those that haven't. Maybe not arrest them immediately, but monitoring etc should be perfectly legal (and maybe done already).

All any member has to do is unaffiliate themselves to free themselves from being high risk and attended to by law enforcers.

Just adding to this for the record since this was silently downvoted.

Most businesses make decisions based on $$. And they are happy to buy anything that helps their business. It's the cost of doing business. Think shopify apps. Most of those apps could be open source even if the only way to install them instantly was buying them through the app site. So having a paid for app for an open source project would be a great way get paid (or fund raise). Kind of like Linux being packaged for sale on the shelves of bookstores. That wasn't free, but people would buy it.

For business transactions, adding virtues and missions and meaning doesn't really come into play unless the marketing department has some plans that coincide with whatever virtues being sold. If the business is small, then maybe the founder. But again, it's not directly relevant to the product and use of it. Activism can be distracting when all you want to do is take care of business.

"If you agree with me, help me (or don't, you can still have it)" is a tougher sell compared to "this is $100, thank you, btw i believe in this" especially to the person/entity that could easily afford it (and pays for proprietary licenses already).

It's clear that if more OSS projects did better at making themselves money, they'd survive and maybe afford the price of continuing to improve and get better. This is in the interest of open source. I never took os to mean non-profit, although it has been synonymous with not-able-to-profit for quite some time now.

If OSI is an authority, maybe it would be in the best interest of "the community" if more help (in the form of guidelines and best practices) was provided in recouping development costs.

Some the consumer can freely choose. Others are imposed. eg. Adobe's student discount. You can word it or structure it however you want, but you're perfectly capable of imposing stipulations on specific groups. They're licensing the product to students at a discount.

For example:

If you plan on billing a client for this software or claiming it as an expense for your business, this software is provided with source for a one time fee of $50 with future upgrades provided at $25, after which will be under the MIT license. Otherwise this software is provided free of charge under the MIT license.

> A dual license is not IF/THEN/ELSE, it's pick $mit or $commercial--your call.

No, it can be both. As the originator of the work, you are free to grant licenses based on qualifications. It's done all the time. I can't choose Adobe's student licence because I'm not a student.

So is this what's held back dual licensing and OS authors profiting? If the buyer could just freely choose of course it's broken.

(edit)

Just to add, even Oracle's license isn't completely free for the user to choose. Depending on the plans or policies of the buyer, they are restricted to their choices. So an IF statement exists.