::scr Drooling GUI

[celia romaniuk]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Simon Batistoni wrote:

> On 07/03/02 08:03 -0800, celia romaniuk wrote:
> > 
> > First up: one of my pet hates is the word 'intuitive'. 'Familiar' is
> > much more descriptive. This article explains well:
> > http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html
> > (apologies to those who have heard me go on about this before, and had me
> > death-stare them when they say the forbidden word).
> 
> Okay, death stare me next time we meet, but I don't think it's the word
> "intuitive" you hate, but the frequent misuse of it.

I was thinking about this before. I think what really annoys me is its use
by other people when I'm doing design work. What irritates me, I think, is
that 'intuitiveness' is not something you can measure or ensure or design
for in the same way you can design for 'expectation' or 'visibility' or
'memorability' or 'consistency' or 'affordance'. But if you add up all
those things (and more) people will go, 'ooh, it's intuitive'.

Which is fine, really. Except when we're all smart people and we're
working on building something together, it doesn't hurt to be specific. In
fact, it's damaging to be sloppy.
 
> If I'm to understand the Raskin piece correctly, the problem is that people
> talk about something being intuitive when they mean "familiar in the context
> of a user's previous experience". 

Yeah. For instance, a magazine described pogo's interface as "incredibly
intuitive" and I laughed so hard I almost dropped my sandwich. It turns
out what they were referring to was the icons - e.g. for mail, the icon is
an envelope, as most GUIs tend to use. So it was familiar. 

> I think that intutiveness is a laudable goal for software. If I can sit down
> in front of something, and with minimal reference to anything but the
> software, learn how to use it, then all is well with the world.

Yep. But again, we get something that's easy to use by making sure it
matches the attributes above. And then testing it to check.
 
> I don't know whether it's a realistic goal, but the following occurs to my
> painkiller-addled brain:
> 
> A mallet is pretty intuitive. I mean, "Whack". What else can you do with
> it?[0] 

Yep. But as I said, these are results of certain attributes of the object
e.g. it looks like it's going to do what it does. See also Design of
Everyday Things.

> [0] - Don't answer that. Just nod sagely and ignore the flaws in my
> argument.

Death stare or sage nod? Goddamnit, I can't decide which one to go for :)

Aren't you all lucky people - I have a meeting to go to and therefore will
shut up for the rest of day.

Celia