computers are pretty amazing tools, but they're still just tools. yet, there's a certain mystique about them in our culture. for example, people often say, "it would be very slow for a human to calculate this, but a computer could do it almost instantly!" contrast this with how people talk about, say, hammers: "it would be very painful and slow for a human to knock this nail in, but with a hammer one could do it almost instantly!" the difference being the "with a hammer" as opposed to just the hammer by itself.
perhaps this kind of thinking promotes laziness amongst computer users. culturally, we expect computers to be autonomous, thus we don't bother learning the tools in much depth (how often do you read, much less write, software documentation?). yet if you just got a new power saw, you'd spend a few days learning the thing and reading the manual. maybe we need computers and software that could potentially cut off a limb or two if you don't use it properly. in the long run, maybe that'd save us tons of frustration and head ache?
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3 comments:
I definitely agree with you, but then there's also the usability question... when was the last time you had to learn how to use a hammer? Or a screwdriver? Or a drill or a saw even? These things are pretty darn intuitive.
But put people in front of Windows XP or Excel or whatever and it's no wonder they expect the computer to do things for them - it's entirely not obvious how it works. It's not a hammer.
But it also does a lot more than a hammer. The challenge I guess is to make it as intuitive as a hammer but do all the things a computer can do.
Then again I do love the idea of cutting stupid users' limbs off. We could go that direction instead.
haha cutting users' limbs off...that would suck for ad revenue :P
anyway, you do make a good point about obviousness and visibility. the more complicated something is, the less obvious it is, and thus the more mystical it becomes. and with software, it's very easy to make something very complicated.
so i guess, instead of blaming lazy users, we should blame software designers who make things overly complicated, thus discouraging users from ever learning it fully (cuz who has the time?). so once again, we came back to our old, elusive friend, simplicity.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame software designers for "overly complicated" designs, since software is complicated by nature. There's more software to be written out there than enough good designers to do it. Solve that problem and, well, I guess I won't be paid as much anymore.
I think visibility/transparency is the keyword here. I imagine there are plenty of power tools out there with advanced features that require the user to read the manual before using, but users are more comfortable using them because they can still see what's going on. We know that's not the case with software.
Since software is complex by nature so we'll never really achieve the simplicity we want, perhaps we should settle for more transparency.
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