[Sigia-l] Linus on usability

[Stewart Dean]

On 13/12/05 7:50 am, "Listera" <listera at rcn.com> wrote:

> An interesting POV on usability from the father of Linux:
> 
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Till Kamppeter wrote:
>> 
>> Frederic told that the options from the PPD file are intentionally mot
>> listed in the printing dialog, the usability team of GNOME was against
>> listing these options. They clutter the dialog and can be more confusing
>> than useful to the user.
> 
> I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
> 
> This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of
> Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
> use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
> since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
> 
> Please, just tell people to use KDE.
> 
>         Linus
> 
> <http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/2005-December/000390.htm
> l>
> 
> Is he right? :-)
> 
> ----
> Ziya


No.

'Users are not idiots' is cliché of engineers who are looking to deflate the
importance of a compelling user experience.

It's not users are idiots it's that users have only so much time to use any
given system, and even if they do use it a lot then they need to be able to
do common tasks with the minimal effort.

In short users are not idiots but they are often in a hurry to do things or
don't want to learn how to do something that should be simple.

Too much functionality can simply get in the way - the reason why the ipod
doesn't have an FM radio! One more bit of functionality can tip things from
being okay to being confusing. This is why Word is unusable, why 99% of
remote controls are confusing and why open source solutions cannot compete
with commercial software.

But what if more functionality is needed? Simple - make it easy to find but
don't put it in the main interface. Easier said than done but a clean
interface is  more important than a screen full of meaningless button bars.

Stewart Dean