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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Clipboard
From:       Dave Leigh <dave.leigh () cratchit ! org>
Date:       2002-08-06 12:32:45
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On Monday 05 August 2002 23:22, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
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> On Monday 05 August 2002 11:35, you wrote:
> > Comprehensible metaphors are important... *more* important, IMHO, as
> > consistent metaphors. If there's nothing else I convey in this post I
> > want to stress the point that you should not continue to saddle a future
> > generation of users with the bad metaphors that have been inflicted on
> > past users simply BECAUSE they were inflicted on past users. THAT, after
> > all, has been the meat of your argument, and it's spoiled meat.
>
> actually, that wasn't the meat of my argument. the meat of my argument was
> that the new proposed icons need to be vastly more intuitive than the
> current ones to be a win. the new icons are not anymore immediately obvious
> than the old, therefore you are sacrficing a learned interface for an
> equally puzzling but unlearned one.

That may have been your intent, but based on flawed assumptions as it is your 
argument distills into, "because we've always done it that way." The fact is 
that real-world experiences, both computer related and non-computer-related 
(i.e. traffic signs) do prove that you have overstated your case. For 
example, The triangle-in-circle traffic sign WAS a standard icon (the most 
critical, as it happens). It was changed for another, and the problems you 
predict for such an event simply did not occur. Nor did the problems you 
mention occur when people switched from earlier GUIs to Windows.

But seeing that most of your arguments are so far from the point, let's go 
directly there (to the point). Obviously there is no hardship for new users, 
as they have no knowledge of the "old icons" to unlearn, so the crux of your 
complaint is that there is undue hardship for established computer users:

> assume 10 million users. assume that each spent 12 minutes learning the
> relationship between icons and their actions. you have 2 million hours.

You make a very basic mistake here. Users DON'T spend that time learning the 
relationship between the icon and the action. People spend the time learning 
the ACTION ITSELF, not the icon representing that action. When you train a 
user to cut and paste, the bulk of the time is spent explaining CUT and 
PASTE... NOT explaining the icons! Once the concepts of cut and paste are 
clear in the users' heads, you can put the user in front of a new GUI and the 
learning curve for these functions is trivial. This is simply fact: I've 
moved myself and hundreds of users from DOS (no icons) to GEM, GEOS, Mac, and 
Windows with nary a comment, much less a problem (at least when it comes to 
icon selection). What happens in practice is that you simply note the new 
icon and move on.

In other words, there isn't undue hardship for established users because they 
already grasp the concepts represented by the icons. They do NOT have to 
re-learn those concepts, merely the association, which is trivial. You're not 
only overstating your case, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. 

There are many other areas your rebuttal is flawed: for example, you confuse 
the time taken to learn the positions of buttons on a remote with the time 
taken to learn their function. People don't examine the new remote to learn 
what the buttons do... they need to know where they are. The reason is that 
unlike a toolbar, users tend not to look at a remote. Learning a remote is 
more properly equated to learning keyboard shortcuts. Remotes from the same 
time period look similar not because of collusion between manufacturers (a 
glance at any two remotes kills that idea) but because ideas that give a 
competitive advantage are soon adopted by competitors. Note that the 
competitive advantage cannot exist if you refrain from introducing it simply 
to be UI-compatible with your competitor. Introduce a good idea and your 
competitor will become UI-compatible with you!

We could go through the rest of your mail point-by-point, but I simply don't 
have the time (I've got deadlines), and the important stuff is covered above.

-- 
Dave Leigh, Consulting Systems Analyst
Cratchit.org
  http://www.cratchit.org
  864-427-7008 (direct)
  AIM or Yahoo!: leighdf
  MSN: leighdf29379@hotmail.com
  ICQ: 37839381

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

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