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On 8/4/2015 5:34 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 07:51:05 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>
>>>
>> I spent a whole five minuets thinking about this. And have come to the
>> conclusion that I have turned into the older generation, already.
>
> LOL
>
You think that is funny?
Wait a couple of years and you will start to sound like your dad or his
mates. ;-)
>> Physically Apple products beat everything else hands down. IMO
>> Interfaces, they are not intuitive to me, too much thought has gone into
>> them and I feel that they are over engineered. But then when technology
>> morphs into consumer products. Something has to change to let the little
>> darlings use it without straining their capabilities.
>> So I will sit back, keep my gob shut, if I can, and wait for the sky to
>> fall.
>
> Well, think about the original iPod interface as an example. One button,
> one dial, intuitive to use.
That was a mp3 player, wasn't it?
Ah dinnae ken, then.
> My mother learned how to use it, and she's
> not the most technical person in the world (she would be the first to say
> it). :)
>
I married your mother?
My wife is a devote of King Ludd. :-)
But that is my point. Apple is very good for people that just want to
use it for what it does. I find it is a pain the the butt as it works
differently from PCs.
BTW do you know how I can downgrade her iPad 2. I updated it a couple of
months ago and she does not like the way it behaves. (It is an iPad 2
and had not been upgraded since I bought it for her, when it came out.
>
> Properly designed technology is a joy to use. The problem is that most
> user interaction is not designed by people trained in UX design - it's
> designed by developers who have had to run with the "design" mantle as
> part of the job.
>
No argument with that. But it is not what I am used to.
> When you build a building, you don't just start putting steel and
> concrete together - you start with a blueprint, and that blueprint
> defines a lot about what the final product looks like. There are design
> elements that cover the infrastructure used, certainly - and those are
> designed by competent designers of those infrastructure components.
>
And here is me thinking that you start with the clients requirements.
> But the exterior isn't designed by the person who also designed the
> electrical system or the plumbing system.
>
> Modern software UIs are typically designed by the electrician - which
> means that the light switches and outlets are all really well placed, but
> the things the user cares about are often not where the user would
> intuitively look.
>
> That's not the fault of the proverbial electrician - it's a management
> issue.
Fee fi fo fum. I smell the blood of someone who believes what he is saying.
It is more complex than that. IMO
--
Regards
Stephen
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On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 21:25:09 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> On 8/4/2015 5:34 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Aug 2015 07:51:05 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>
>
>>> I spent a whole five minuets thinking about this. And have come to the
>>> conclusion that I have turned into the older generation, already.
>>
>> LOL
>>
>>
> You think that is funny?
> Wait a couple of years and you will start to sound like your dad or his
> mates. ;-)
I've already started doing that, and I've embraced it. ;)
>>> Physically Apple products beat everything else hands down. IMO
>>> Interfaces, they are not intuitive to me, too much thought has gone
>>> into them and I feel that they are over engineered. But then when
>>> technology morphs into consumer products. Something has to change to
>>> let the little darlings use it without straining their capabilities.
>>> So I will sit back, keep my gob shut, if I can, and wait for the sky
>>> to fall.
>>
>> Well, think about the original iPod interface as an example. One
>> button,
>> one dial, intuitive to use.
>
> That was a mp3 player, wasn't it?
Yes, gramps. ;)
> Ah dinnae ken, then.
>
>> My mother learned how to use it, and she's not the most technical
>> person in the world (she would be the first to say it). :)
>>
>>
> I married your mother?
> My wife is a devote of King Ludd. :-)
>
> But that is my point. Apple is very good for people that just want to
> use it for what it does. I find it is a pain the the butt as it works
> differently from PCs.
That's part of my point, though - these are devices that are designed to
be used. Just because a system is more complex doesn't mean it needs to
look like the Space Shuttle. That's why it's important to start with
interaction design and understand how a user is going to use it.
> BTW do you know how I can downgrade her iPad 2. I updated it a couple of
> months ago and she does not like the way it behaves. (It is an iPad 2
> and had not been upgraded since I bought it for her, when it came out.
No idea, I have a Samsung tablet (just received today, in fact).
>> Properly designed technology is a joy to use. The problem is that most
>> user interaction is not designed by people trained in UX design - it's
>> designed by developers who have had to run with the "design" mantle as
>> part of the job.
>>
>>
> No argument with that. But it is not what I am used to.
Sure, it's not what *anyone* is used to - and so we're all apologists for
poor user interaction/interface/experience design.
But that can't be fixed if we're not willing to change things in software
design and development. What's the old definition of 'insanity' again?
>> When you build a building, you don't just start putting steel and
>> concrete together - you start with a blueprint, and that blueprint
>> defines a lot about what the final product looks like. There are
>> design elements that cover the infrastructure used, certainly - and
>> those are designed by competent designers of those infrastructure
>> components.
>>
>>
> And here is me thinking that you start with the clients requirements.
LOL - well, yes, that's where you start. Design aesthetic is an
important consideration.
>> But the exterior isn't designed by the person who also designed the
>> electrical system or the plumbing system.
>>
>> Modern software UIs are typically designed by the electrician - which
>> means that the light switches and outlets are all really well placed,
>> but the things the user cares about are often not where the user would
>> intuitively look.
>>
>> That's not the fault of the proverbial electrician - it's a management
>> issue.
>
> Fee fi fo fum. I smell the blood of someone who believes what he is
> saying.
>
> It is more complex than that. IMO
I don't think it is, actually - if you leave a software engineer to
design a user interface, they're going to design one that mimics the
underlying structure of the software - because they're *intimately*
familiar with the way those internals work.
But the average user of any software program isn't that familiar with the
internals - so the interface doesn't make a lot of sense to them.
Which means they have to take classes on how to perform basic tasks, and
they need complicated manuals that describe all the different knobs they
need to turn and settings they need to configure in order to get the
behaviour they want.
If you start with "why is the user using this software", you can design
an interaction that lets the user solve their business problem. That
doesn't mean you hide all the knobs, but you design around the most
common use cases so those tasks can be accomplished with a minimum of
fuss.
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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> On the one hand, I can see what you're saying. On the other hand, this
> clearly makes it drastically easier for the NSA to see what you're
> working on.
If you're worried about what the NSA might think about your work then I
wouldn't be connected to the internet *at all*, let alone uploading
files to American companies' servers.
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On 04/08/2015 09:25 PM, Stephen wrote:
> And here is me thinking that you start with the clients requirements.
On the other hand... was it Ford?... Said something like "If I had
*asked* people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'."
In my very limited experience, customers generally don't have the
vaguest clue what they want. (Other than "Everything. Yesterday.") They
most certainly have no idea what's easily achievable, and what will take
4 years of R&D. (Required XKCD quote: http://xkcd.com/1425/ )
This, of course, is why you're supposed to *discuss* stuff with the
customer, rather than just ask them to write it down...
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On 04/08/2015 09:13 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 8/4/2015 5:54 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> (So... that sounds basically like what most people think about Haskell,
>> then!)
>
> No. Most people have not even heard of Haskell. And I am talking about
> IT managers and the coders that I've met.
So true! :'{
I did enjoy that time I told the guy at the top about Haskell.
"What's your favourite language then?"
"Haskell."
"OK. Why do you like it?"
"You remember that feature I implemented last year? That's about 300
lines of C++ code. But in Haskell, it's 10 lines of code."
"HOLY ****!! For real? Why aren't we using this stuff?!"
"Uh, because that would seriously decrease our bus factor?"
(I don't think he knows what a bus factor is. But anyway...)
>> I don't know, man... Where I work, trying to get hold of any definitive
>> kind of design specification is basically impossible, because the boss
>> can't be bothered to *think* about the actual implications of the
>> feature we wants. He expects us clever people to just "make it work".
>> Even if that's completely self-contradictory.
>
> Sack him.
>
> Your company really needs to change the way it operates. Don't rely on
> salesmen to write the nitty gritty requirements. That has to be done by
> collaboration with someone in the clients company and someone who knows
> you product, intimately.
Uh, can you actually sack the guy who founded the business?
I could rant on about his multiple failings, but at this point I'm
starting to believe that *every* business sounds like an episode of
Dilbert. Are there *any* commercial entities out there which actually
operate sanely?
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>> More realistically, MS would never take any decision that forced a
>> significant proportion of its user base to switch away from Windows.
>
> Except that with Windows 10, they may well have done that, what with the
> privacy issues that are starting to surface.
MS know that it's only a very small proportion of people who will worry
about that. I'm on several gaming forums and there are plenty of threads
about upgrading to Win10, privacy issues simply don't come up in the
discussions, and this is fairly tech savvy people who are upgrading,
rather than just buying a new PC from a shop. It's all about frame rates
(which actually seem much better in Win10 for some reason), hardware
compatibility and how to turn off the automatic updates (particularly
the automatic restarts).
> The problem is that there's no other platform that's as widely used, so
> most people will probably just accept those problems.
Indeed, MS would have to do something *really* wrong to get a
significant proportion of people to leave Windows.
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On 8/5/2015 8:15 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 04/08/2015 09:13 PM, Stephen wrote:
>>
>> Sack him.
>>
>> Your company really needs to change the way it operates. Don't rely on
>> salesmen to write the nitty gritty requirements. That has to be done by
>> collaboration with someone in the clients company and someone who knows
>> you product, intimately.
>
> Uh, can you actually sack the guy who founded the business?
>
It can be done if it is a public company but it is hard.
> I could rant on about his multiple failings, but at this point I'm
> starting to believe that *every* business sounds like an episode of
> Dilbert. Are there *any* commercial entities out there which actually
> operate sanely?
When it comes to IT, I doubt it.
Since starting working in SAP 20 years ago. I have worked at about 30
different companies. I no longer get depressed and just accept what is
company policy. No mater how much harder it makes the job.
The bar stewards have ground me down. :-(
--
Regards
Stephen
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I hope that we can agree to disagree.
I rail against the "dumbing down" I see happening.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Le 2015-08-05 03:15, Orchid Win7 v1 a écrit :
> On 04/08/2015 09:13 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> Your company really needs to change the way it operates. Don't rely on
>> salesmen to write the nitty gritty requirements. That has to be done by
>> collaboration with someone in the clients company and someone who knows
>> you product, intimately.
>
> Uh, can you actually sack the guy who founded the business?
>
Happens all the time. For example: Jobs got canned from Apple in the
late 80s. A company's founder is usually not a good executive, as
he/she will tend to micromanage things, since it's his/her baby, and
almost never a competent business person.
Once a company reaches a certain size, it should hire business people to
run the business side of things and keep the founder as head of R&D, or
CTO, or some similar job. This appeases the shareholders or investors,
as there are competent people running the company, and its vision is
retained.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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On Wed, 05 Aug 2015 10:07:28 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> I hope that we can agree to disagree.
>
> I rail against the "dumbing down" I see happening.
It is't "dumbing down" - it's designing so it isn't rocket science.
A fine distinction, but an important one. :)
Jim
--
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw
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