Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

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And?

I don't understand this kind of criticism.

I get into my car. The accelerator doesn't have "Press here to move more quickly" written on it. The brake doesn't have "Press here to stop". The horn doesn't have "Press me if the big light outside is green but the aluminium box with wheels in front of you is stationary"

If you lower your standards to silly degrees, people will mill around that lower standard. I've seen tertiary students reach for the calculator to find out what 3 x 0.2 is, simply because they can get away with not putting in any effort. Naives that need more help should get specialised help to get them over the hump - normal users shouldn't have to deal with UX chaff just on the off chance some random person might choose one day to pick up a computer and try to learn it without asking anyone for any help.

No-one learns to drive all by themselves. Or cook. Or read. Or dress themselves. Would we really want pants to come with a permanently attached set of instructions on how to wear them, just in case someone who always wore skirts might one day try pants on a whim?

A UI should be constructed for a userbase, and the "have never used a computer before, ever, but am trying right now and will only do this on my own" demographic for search engines is miniscule. One wonders how such a person can get to the search engine in the first place - it's certainly not like Duck Duck Go is the default homepage for any browser.

Yet our current UIs assume you are familiar with the previous UI, and that one depended upon the one before.

Early automobile-carriages (cars) had reins! So you could operate them like a horse! But fortunately smarter people invented more direct controls suitable for operating engines.

Example: the Save button looks like a floppy. WTF?

I think there is room for a UI that is direct, not a baroque collage of every UI that came before.

Some save buttons look like a 3.5" hard drive, which you could argue that an even smaller percentage of current users has ever seen :)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against change in UIs. I am against designing specifically to cater for the lowest common denominator in general use applications if it means more chaff for the user with average skills.

Example: the Save button looks like a floppy. WTF?

A bit of an off-topic: the real WTF for me is that there is such a thing as a save button. I cannot fathom that most software requires us to perform an ancient ritual lest they throw away our hard work.

You are totally right! After using my iPod Touch for a while my computer seems so archaic, forcing me to do its work, when presumably I got it to automate routine tasks...

Both with essays and coding, there've been times when I was very grateful that there was a fixed moment in the document's life that I could easily go back to. Sometimes I start making changes and then think better of it[1]. Sometimes I edit something accidentally, and am very relieved that I'm asked whether I want to save my changes upon exiting the program. A possible solution is to have both normal saving and continuous autosaving to a backup file (as Word, Vim, etc. all do), but in practice that's a bit clunky.

[1] - Yes, I could hit the undo button repeatedly, since any editor worth its salt will have a virtually-unlimited undo. But it's reassuring to know that you've undo-ed to exactly the right point--in Vim, at least, the "+" indicating a modified file disappears once you've undone all your changes.

Yeah, working with code is interesting because a source file is rarely in a “stable” state when it is being edited. The save button in this case serves as a checkpoint marker: “this here is good.” It's like doing mini-commits.

If we were to do away with the save button, the rest of the “working with files” story would have to be thoroughly rethought.

You can take away my save button, as long as you make it easy to discard my current work as well. The version control like systems we have today are ok (Time Machine, dropbox, Windows previous versions), but not ideal.

If I'm using a word processor that is automatically saving, why should I have to then explore my hard drive to find the file and examine previous versions? The app I am using needs to present this interface (even if it is ultimately supplied by the OS, like save dialogues).

Is this a criticism or just an observation?

Clearly the search engines have all weighed the tradeoffs of appearing too helpful for first-time users and cluttering the screen for regular users.

It's offering advice for change or improvement - it's criticism. Criticism doesn't have to be negative.

30.2% of the world have internet access, so it's fair to assume many have not used a computer and will not know anyone who has when they start, especially in Africa when penetration is only 11.4% (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)

The car analogy is poor because you are required by law to take lessons in most (all?) countries. It's quite common for people to struggle to afford driving lessons and it slows down the adoption of cars, are you implying that the same should be true for computers?

The search engine was the default page in the Firefox screenshot so it's safe to assume some will see it.

UI should be constructed for a userbase, however, technically literate, westerners who have spent most of their adult life with easy access to technology, are not the only userbase or even the majority in the world.

I think you missed my point. But, let's refute anyway:

30.2% of the world have internet access, so it's fair to assume many have not used a computer and will not know anyone who has when they start

Just like many "technically literate" westerners 15 years ago.

The car analogy is poor because you are required by law to take lessons in most (all?) countries.

Please, learn to understand metaphors - I was illustrating a point, not making a mathematical proof. Also, I think you mean you are required by law to pass a test, not take lessons. Certainly when I did my driver's test, they didn't grill me on the amount of time spent learning, but on how I actually drove.

The search engine was the default page in the Firefox screenshot so it's safe to assume some will see it.

Yes, Firefox's default homepage is a custom page that is a front-end for Google. It is not Google.

UI should be constructed for a userbase, however, technically literate, westerners who have spent most of their adult life with easy access to technology, are not the only userbase or even the majority in the world.

If you're honestly suggesting for a single, globally accessible webpage, you're going to run into i18n trouble long before you have to worry about alienating unmotivated users. I find this point of yours weird given that I thought I was fairly clearly indicating that I was talking about current search engine userbases, not 'all possible userbases that might ever be'

And if most of the world is not technically literate, so? They're not going to become any more so because of a simple friendly sentence on a search engine that they can't get to by themselves anyway. The same thing will happen in the developing world as it did here in the west: the motivated and eager blaze the way, and the knowledge filters down to everyone else through them.

Twenty years ago we didn't even have Mosaic. Everything the laypeople of the west have learned about using the internet has been learned in a mere 15 or so years. Pretty amazing especially considering that the internet itself was still figuring out what it was useful for during that time.

Before the 90s, laypeople in the west had access to technology in the form of tvs, remote controls, microwaves. Anywhere there is electricity, people have access to the same kind of technology - physical buttons control functions. If there's electricity, folks will have at least a similar level of understanding as pre-internet westerners (no point in providing electricity to people who don't have lights or appliances, after all). If there's no electricity... well... computers are going to have a hard time running.

In the U.K. at least you are required to have experienced driver in the car every time you drive until you pass your test, this in effect is a lesson because they are required to pay attention and point out your mistakes.

If every new computer user was required to spend every minute they used a computer with a experienced person until they took a test, then I would agree that computers do not need to be easier to use.

What of toasters? I assume that in the U.K. you do not need any sort of certification whatsoever to use a toaster. Yet nobody suggests that we go out of our way to design toasters for the portion of the population for which toasted bread is alien.

In Australia that's only the case on public roads. You don't require a license or a second person in the car on private land (such as a farm). There's no legal block to someone teaching themselves the art of driving on private land without input from anyone else; they'll get their license as long as they pass their test.

Computers on the other hand don't have the potential to maim or kill people in the hands of a naive user. Mistakes are free of cost (well, apart from a few seconds of time). And even to use said search engine, not only must you have been able to navigate to it, you also have to have an idea of using a mouse and a keyboard. The Enter key is not necessarily obvious. Neither are the control or function keys. Should computer cases be engraved with instructions on every step of the way? Apple isn't going to like having to engrave what the option key does, just in the off chance an utter naive should choose to use one of their computers. I guess what I'm getting at here is: how low do you want the bar?

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