[HN Gopher] Free software scares normal people
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Free software scares normal people
Author : cryptophreak
Score : 385 points
Date : 2025-10-30 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danieldelaney.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (danieldelaney.net)
| wolfejam wrote:
| i enjoyed your post, those remotes are too funny!!
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| Some reasons for this:
|
| 1. Free software is developed for the developer's own needs and
| developers are going to be power users.
|
| 2. The cost to expose options is low so from the developer's
| perspective it's low effort to add high value (perceiving the
| options as valuable).
|
| 3. The developer doesn't know who the customer is and rather than
| research/refine just tries to hit all the boxes.
|
| 4. The distribution of the software itself means anyone who
| successfully installs it themselves really is a power user and
| does like the options. Installing it for family and friends
| doesn't work.
|
| Probably many other factors!
| doug_durham wrote:
| It takes a lot of time and energy to refine and maintain a
| minimalistic interface. You are intentionally narrowing the
| audience. If you are an open source developer with limited time
| you probably aren't going to invest in that.
| cryptophreak wrote:
| That's one of the great things about the approach
| demonstrated in the post. The developers of Handbrake don't
| need to invest any time or energy in a minimalist interface.
| They can continue to maintain their feature-rich software
| exactly as it is. Meanwhile, there is also a simple, easy
| front end available for people who need or want it.
| luqtas wrote:
| > 4. The distribution of the software itself means anyone who
| successfully installs it themselves really is a power user and
| does like the options. Installing it for family and friends
| doesn't work.
|
| i have seen many comments, by lay people, out of Sonobus [0]
| being superb on what it does and impressive by being 100% free.
| that's a niche case that if it was implemented on Ardour, could
| fit the same problem OP describes
|
| [0] https://sonobus.net/
|
| however i can't feel where the problem of FOSS UX scaring
| normal people is. someone getting a .h264 and a .wav file out
| of a video-record isn't normal after all. there are plenty of
| converters on the web, i dunno if they run ffmpeg at their
| server but i wouldn't get surprised. the problem lies on the
| whole digital infrastructure running on FOSS without returning
| anything back. power-user software shouldn't simplify stuff.
| tech literacy hopefully can be a thing and by quickly learning
| how to import and export a file in a complex software feels
| better to install 5 different limited software over the years
| because your demands are growing
| yawnxyz wrote:
| > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest
| from them and you'll make them more productive and happy. That's
| really all it takes.
|
| For those of you thinking (which 20%) following that article from
| the other day -- this is where a good product sense and knowing
| which 80% of people you want to use it first. You could either
| tack on more stuff from there to appeal to the rest of the 20% of
| people, or you could launch another app/product/brand that
| appeals to another 80% of people. (e.g. shampoo for men, pens for
| women /s)
| jaggs wrote:
| >> 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest
| from them and you'll make them more productive and happy. That's
| really all it takes.
|
| One of the truest things I've read on HN. I've also tried to
| visit this concept with a small free image app I made
| (https://gerry7.itch.io/cool-banana). Did it for myself really,
| but thought others might find it useful too. Fed up with too many
| options.
| cjbarber wrote:
| *Software with UI designed for people who aren't the median user
| scares the median user
|
| Therefore: If you want lots of users, design for the median user;
| if you don't, this doesn't apply to you
| squeedles wrote:
| Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a
| simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for
| writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a
| shorter one.
|
| Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble,
| but figuring out what that use case _is_ difficult. And defending
| that use case from the line of people who want "that + this
| little extra thing", or the "I just need ..." is difficult. It
| takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of onerous
| management structure, to prevent the interface from quickly
| devolving back into the million options or schizming into other
| projects.
|
| Simply put, it is a desirable state, but an unstable one.
| dayvid wrote:
| The contributors of free software tend to be power users who
| want to ensure their use case works. I don't think they're
| investing a lot of thought into the 80/20 use case for
| normal/majority or users or would risk hurting their workflow
| to make it easier for others
| zeroq wrote:
| > contributors of free software tend to be power users
|
| or, simply put, nerds
|
| it takes both a different background, approach and skillset
| to design ux and interface
|
| if anything FOSS should figure out how to attract skilled
| artists so majority of designs and logos doesn't look so
| blatantly amateurish.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| I have been beating this drum for many years. There are
| some big cultural rifts and workflow difficulties. Unless
| FOSS products are run by project managers rather than
| either developers or designers, it's a tough nut. Last I
| looked, gimp has been really tackling this effort more
| aggressively than most.
| graemep wrote:
| I am not convinced bad UI is either a FOSS issue, or
| solved by having project managers. I know very non-tech
| people who struggle with Windows 11, for example. I do
| not like MS Office on the rare occasions I have used it
| on other people's machines. Not that impressed by the way
| most browser UIs are going either.
| Cotterzz wrote:
| gimp has been my goto when I want to explain bad ui,
| developer designed ui, or just typical foss ui I'm glad
| they're fixing it. It's also my image editor of choice.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I'm optimistic that the rise of vibe coding will allow the
| people who understand the user's wants and needs to fix the
| world's FOSS UIs.
| WD-42 wrote:
| My guess is that, as has always been, the pool of people
| willing to code for free on their own time because it's fun
| is just much larger than the people willing to make icons
| for software projects on their own time because they think
| it's fun.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Much larger but not non-existent, people post their work
| (including laborious stuff like icon suites and themes)
| on art forums and websites for no gain all the time.
| keyringlight wrote:
| Going back to the winxp days there was a fairly vibrant
| group of people making unofficial themes for it, although
| I think that was helped by the existence of tools (from
| Stardock?) specialized on that task and making it
| approachable if your skill set didn't align perfectly.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| UI != icons.
|
| UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is
| sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and
| watching people use their app...
|
| This is how we get UI's that work but suck to use. This
| is how we allow dark patterns to flourish. You can and
| will happily do things your users/customers hate if it
| makes a dent in the bottom of the eye and you dont have
| to face their criticisms directly.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is
| sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and
| watching people use their app...
|
| Which is also why UI/UX on open source projects are
| generally going to suck.
|
| There's certainly no money to pay for that kind of
| experiment.
|
| And if you include telemetry, people lose their goddamn
| minds, assuming the open source author isn't morally
| against it to begin with.
|
| The result is you're just getting the author's intuitive
| guesswork about UI/UX design, by someone who is likely
| more of a coder than a design person.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Unless you get super invasive, telemetry will tell you
| how often a feature is used but I don't think it'll help
| much with bad and confusing layouts.
| cwillu wrote:
| The dependency on telemetry instead of actually sitting
| down with a user and watching them use your software is
| part of the problem. No amount of screen captures,
| heatmaps or abandoned workflow metrics will show you the
| expression on a person's face.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Graphic designers and artists get ripped off, _all the
| time_ ; frequently, by nerds, who tend to do so, in a
| manner that insults the value of the artist's work.
|
| It's difficult to get those kinds of creatives to donate
| their time (trust me on this, I'm always trying).
|
| I'm an ex-artist, and I'm a nerd. I can definitively say
| that creating good designs, is at least as difficult as
| creating good software, but seldom makes the kind of
| margin that you can, from software, so misappropriation
| hurts artists a lot more than programmers.
| some_furry wrote:
| This is a weird thread for me to read, as someone who a)
| works primarily with developer tooling (and not even GUI
| tooling, I write cryptography stuff usually!), b) is very
| active in a vibrant community of artists that care about
| nerd software projects.
|
| I don't, as a rule, ever ask artists to contribute for
| free, but I still occasionally get gifted art from kind
| folks. (I'm more than happy to commission them for one-
| off work.)
|
| Artists tragically undercharge for their labor, so I
| don't think the goal should be "coax them into
| contributing for $0" so much as "coax them into becoming
| an available and reliable talent pool for your community
| at an agreeable rate". If they're enthusiastic enough,
| some might do free work from time to time, but that
| shouldn't be the expectation.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's a long story, in my case.
|
| There's a very good reason for me to be asking for
| _gratis_ work. I regularly do tens of thousands of
| dollars' worth of work for free.
| galagawinkle489 wrote:
| Why should they work for pay on free software? Nobody
| expects to be paid to work on the software itself. Yet
| artists expect to be treated differently.
|
| If it is your job, then go do it as a job. But we all
| have jobs. Free software is what we do in our free time.
| Artists don't seem to have this distinction. They expect
| to be paid to do a hobby.
| nemomarx wrote:
| It's just more common for artists to do small commission
| work on the side of a real job. 30 dollars for something
| is basically a donation or tip in my view, and the
| community can crowd fund for it the same way bug bounties
| work I think?
| some_furry wrote:
| > Yet artists expect to be treated differently.
|
| Because it's a different job!
|
| Your post is like asking, "Why is breathing free but food
| costs money?"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Either you're implying that people should code for free,
| or your analogy is so vague as to be useless.
|
| Yeah it's a different job but _they 're both jobs_. Why
| should one be free and one not be free?
| some_furry wrote:
| Because programmers consent to programming for free. That
| fact does not, in any way, obligate anyone else to.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The question/skepticism is _why_ the programmers are
| consenting to this but not the artists.
| some_furry wrote:
| Why aten't programmers drawing furry porn?
|
| It's really not deep.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I dispute that claim but it doesn't answer the question.
| When you have multiple people involved in the community
| of an open source project, what makes them decide where
| to contribute, and what makes them decide if they'll use
| marketable skills for free or not? I think it's an
| interesting thing to look into.
| allenu wrote:
| I suspect some of this is due to the fact that the
| programmers consenting to do free work already have well-
| paying jobs, so they have the freedom and time to pursue
| coding as a hobby for fun as well. Graphic designers and
| UX designers are already having a hard time getting hired
| for their specific skills and getting paid well for it,
| so I imagine it's insulting to be asked to do it for free
| on top of that.
|
| That said, I don't think it's as simple as that. Coding
| is a kind of puzzle-solving that's very self-reinforcing
| and addictive for a certain type of person. Coders can't
| help plugging away at a problem even if they're not at
| the computer. Drawing, on the other hand, requires a lot
| more drudgery to get good, for most people anyway, and
| likely isn't as addictive.
| prepend wrote:
| Wouldn't designers consent to designing for free?
|
| This seems like a self selection problem. It's not about
| forcing people to work for free. It's about finding
| designers willing to work for free (just like everyone
| else on the project).
| cwillu wrote:
| You know that (some) people get paid to work on free
| software, right?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Doing a pro graphic design treatment is _lot_ more than
| just "drawing a few pictures," and picking a color
| palette.
|
| It usually involves developing a design language for the
| app, or sometimes, for the whole organization (if, like
| the one I do a lot of work for, it's really all about one
| app). That's a big deal.
|
| Logo design is also a _much_ more difficult task than
| people think. A good logo can be _insanely_ valuable. The
| one we use for the app I 've done a lot of work on, was a
| quick "one-off," by a guy who ended up running design for
| a _major_ software house. It was a princely gift.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Doing a pro graphic design treatment is lot more than
| just "drawing a few pictures," and picking a color
| palette.
|
| Are you quoting someone? Yeah it's a real job, and _so is
| programming_. I don 't think anyone in this conversation
| is being dismissive about either job.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| You'd be surprised, then, to know that a _lot_ of
| programmers think graphic design is easy (see the other
| comment, in this thread), and can often be quite
| dismissive of the vocation.
|
| As a programmer, working with a _good_ graphic designer
| can be very frustrating, as they can demand that I make
| changes that seem ridiculous, to me, but, after the
| product ships, makes all the difference. I 've never
| actually gotten used to it.
|
| That's also why it's so difficult to get a "full monty"
| treatment, from a designer, donating their time.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > see the other comment
|
| Which other comment?
|
| If you mean the one saying it's _not harder than_
| programming, that 's not calling it easy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It can be a _lot_ harder. Programming, these days, isn 't
| always that hard.
|
| Very different skillset. There was a comment about how
| ghastly a lot of software-developed graphical assets can
| be.
|
| Tasteful creativity does not grow on trees.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "can be" makes it a very different statement. Either one
| "can be" a lot harder than the other, depending on the
| task. The statement above is about typical difficulty.
|
| And even if they're wrong about which one is typically
| harder, they weren't saying it was easy, and weren't
| saying it was significantly easier than programming.
| prepend wrote:
| Programming is a big deal too.
|
| It's not like graphic design is harder than programming.
|
| I'd rather have crappy graphics than pay designers
| instead of programmers for free oss.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Most fields just don't have the same culture of
| collaborative everyone-wins that software does. Artists
| don't produce CC art in anywhere close to the same
| influence as engineers produce software. This is probably
| due to some kind of compounding effect available in
| software that isn't available in graphics.
|
| Software people love writing software to a degree where
| they'll just give it away. You just won't find artists
| doing the same at the same scale. Or architects, or
| structural engineers. Maybe the closest are some boat
| designs but even those are accidental.
|
| It might just be that we were lucky to have some
| Stallmans in this field early.
| bitwize wrote:
| Fonts are an interesting case. The field of typography is
| kind of migrating from the "fuck you, pay me" ethic of
| the pure design space into a more software-like "everyone
| wins" state, with plenty of high-quality open-source
| fonts available, whereas previously we had to make do
| with bitmap-font droppings from proprietary operating
| systems, Bitstream Vera, and illegal-to-redistribute
| copies of Microsoft's web font pack.
|
| I think this is because there are plenty of software
| nerds with an interest in typography who want to see more
| free fonts available.
| WD-42 wrote:
| I think the collaborative nature of open source software
| dev is unlike anything else. I can upload some software
| in hopes that others find is useful and can build on top
| of it, or send back improvements.
|
| Not sure how that happens with a painting, even a digital
| one.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Isn't there a lot more compensation available in
| software? Like as a developer, you can make a lot of
| money without having to even value money highly. I think
| in other fields you don't generally get compensated well
| unless you are gunning/grinding for it specifically. "For
| the love of the art" people in visual arts are painters
| or something like that, probably. Whereas with software
| you can end up with people who don't value money that
| much and have enough already, at least to take a break
| from paid work or to not devote as much effort to their
| paid work. I imagine a lot of open source people are in
| that position?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, early '90s Torvalds wasn't the wealthy fellow he is
| now and he was busy churning things out and then
| relicensed Linux under GPL.
| prepend wrote:
| I think most OSS projects are started by unemployed
| people as hobbies. Or ego projects to get jobs.
| 8note wrote:
| UX and interface designers are also nerds.
|
| i think the bigger issue is that the power users usecases
| are different from the non-power users. not a skillset
| problem, but an incentive one
| BinaryIgor wrote:
| True; that's why we have companies with paid product who
| devote a lot of their time - arguably majority - to make the
| exact interfaces people want and understand:) it's a ton, a
| ton of difficult work, for which there is little to no
| incentive in the free software ecosystem
| psunavy03 wrote:
| And this is precisely why desktop Linux has not knocked off
| Windows or MacOS.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| And that's fine. Those users who want something that's not
| like desktop Linux have plenty of options.
| ghaff wrote:
| And increasingly it doesn't matter because they just live
| in a browser anyway.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Which also makes it easier than ever for more users to
| run Linux as a desktop OS :)
| ghaff wrote:
| Absolutely. I still prefer MacOS/Mac hardware in some
| ways but running a browser on Linux on a Thinkpad or
| whatever works pretty well for a lot of purposes.
| ripdog wrote:
| I'd argue that's more because the average person has no
| interest in installing a new OS, or even any idea what an
| OS is.
|
| Most people just keep the default. When the default is
| Linux (say, the Steam Deck), most people just keep Linux.
| valyala wrote:
| Omarchy tries resolving this
| https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Overall, the development world does not intuitively understand
| the difficulty of creating good interfaces (for people that
| aren't developers.) In dev work, the complexity is obvious, and
| that makes it easy for outsiders to understand-- they look at
| the code we're writing and say "wow you can read that?!" I
| think that can give developers a mistaken impression that other
| peoples work is far less complex than it is. With interface
| design, everybody knows what a button does and what a text
| field is for, and developers know more than most about the
| tools used to create interfaces, so the language seems simple.
| The problems you need to solve with that language are complex
| and while failure is obvious, success is much more nebulous and
| user-specific. So much of what good interfaces convey to users
| is implied rather than expressed, and that's a tricky task.
| finghin wrote:
| It's also about keeping things simple, hierarchical, and very
| predictable. These do not go hand in hand with the feature
| creep of collaborative FOSS projects, as others point out
| here.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| IMO they just don't care enough. They want people to use it
| but it is not the end of world if it stays niche
| zahlman wrote:
| > I think that can give developers a mistaken impression that
| other peoples work is far less complex than it is.
|
| Not at all. Talented human artists still impress me as doing
| the same level of deep "wizardry" that programmers are
| stereotyped with.
| cenamus wrote:
| Trust me, there are enough people here that believe that.
|
| Other engineering disciplines are simpler because you can
| only have complexity in three dimensions. While in software
| complexitiy would be everywhere.
|
| Crazy to believe that
| analog31 wrote:
| There are many more than three "dimensions" if I may use
| the term loosely, in software or hardware engineering.
|
| Cost, safety, interaction between subsystems (developed
| by different engineering disciplines), tolerances, supply
| chain, manufacturing, reliability, the laws of physics,
| possibly chemistry and environmental interactions,
| regulatory, investor forgiveness, etc.
|
| Traditional engineering also doesn't have the option of
| throwing arbitrary levels of complexity at a problem,
| which means working within tight constraints.
|
| I'm not an engineer myself, but a scientist working for a
| company that makes measurement equipment. It wouldn't be
| fair for me to say that any engineering discipline is
| more challenging, since I'm in none of them. I've
| observed engineering projects for roughly 3 decades.
| dhosek wrote:
| In the 90s I did a tech writing gig documenting some custom
| software a company had built for them by one of the big
| consultancy agencies. It was a bit of a nightmare as the
| functionality was arranged in a way that reflected the
| underlying architecture of the program rather than the users'
| workflows. Although I suppose if they'd written the software
| well, I wouldn't have had as many billable hours writing
| documentation.
| sublinear wrote:
| > reflected the underlying architecture of the program
| rather than the users' workflows
|
| Is this an inherently bad thing if the software
| architecture is closely aligned with the problem it solves?
|
| Maybe it's the architecture that was bad. Of course there
| are implementation details the user shouldn't care about
| and it's only sane to hide those. I'm curious how/why a
| user workflow would not be obviously composed of
| architectural features to even a casual user. Is it that
| the user interface was too granular or something else?
|
| I find that just naming things according to the behavior a
| layperson would expect can make all the difference. I say
| all this because it's equally confusing when the developer
| hides way too much. Those developers seem to lack
| experience outside their own domain and overcomplicate what
| could have just been named better.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Good points, but to add to the sources of instability ... a
| first time user of a piece of software may be very appreciative
| of its simplicity and "intuitiveness". However, if it is a tool
| that they spend a lot of time with and is connected to a
| potentially complex workflow, it won't be long before even they
| are asking for "this little extra thing".
|
| It is hard to overestimate the difference between creating
| tools for people who use the tools for hours every day and
| creating tools for people who use tools once a week or less.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Right. For most people, gimp is not only overkill but also
| overwhelming. It's hard to intuit how to perform even fairly
| simple tasks. But for someone who needs it it's worth
| learning.
|
| The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and
| maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that
| they start to think of more advanced things and the simple
| tool starts to be seen as limiting.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and
| maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do
| that they start to think of more advanced things and the
| simple tool starts to be seen as limiting.
|
| Silksong Daily News went from videos of a voiceover saying
| "There has been no news for today" over a static image
| background to (sometimes) being scripted stop-motion
| videos.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| But the linked article addresses that. They're not
| advocating for removing the full-feature UI, they just
| advise having a simple version that does the one thing (or
| couple of things) most users want in a simple way. Users
| who want to do more can just use the full version.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Users don't want "to do more". They want to do "that one
| extra thing". Going from the "novice" version to the
| "full version" just to get that one extra thing is a real
| problem for a lot of people. But how do you address this
| as a software designer?
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Progressive disclosure? If you know your audience, you
| probably know what most people want, and then the usual
| next step up for that "one extra thing". You could start
| with the ultra-simple basic thing, then have an option to
| enable the "next step feature". If needed you could have
| progressive options up to the full version.
| devilbunny wrote:
| I'm not a coder, so I'm not going to pretend that this
| solution is easy to implement (it might be, but I
| wouldn't assume so), but how about allowing you to expose
| the "expert" options just temporarily (to find the tool
| you need) and then allow adding that to your new "novice
| plus" custom menus? I.e., if you use a menu option from
| the expert menu X number of times, it just shows up even
| though your default is the novice view.
| galagawinkle489 wrote:
| And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's
| first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest
| of the thousands of hours they might spend with it?
|
| I see people using DAWs, even "pro" ones made by companies
| presumably interested in their bottom lines. In all cases I
| have no idea how to use it.
|
| Do I complain about intuitiveness etc? Of course not. I don't
| know how to do something. That's _my_ problem. Not theirs.
| Qem wrote:
| > And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's
| first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest
| of the thousands of hours they might spend with it?
|
| Well, if people fail at that first five minutes, the
| subsequent thousand hours most often never happens.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It's my belief that much of this flavor of UI/UX degradation
| can be avoided by employing a simple but criminally
| underutilized idea in the software world (FOSS portion
| included), which is _feature freezing_.
|
| That is, either determine what the optimal set of features is
| from the outset, design around that, and freeze or organically
| reach the optimium and then freeze. After implementing the
| target feature set, nearly all engineering resources are
| dedicated to bug fixes and efficiency improvements. New
| features can be added only after passing through a rigorous
| gauntlet of reviews that determine if the value of the
| feature's addition is worth the inherent disruption and impact
| to stability and resource consumption, and if so, approaching
| its integration into the existing UI with a holistic approach
| (as opposed to the usual careless bolt-on approach).
|
| Naturally, there are some types of software where requirements
| are too fast-moving for this to be practical, but I would
| hazard a guess that it would work for the overwhelming majority
| of use cases which have been solved problems for a decade or
| more and the required level of flux is in reality extremely
| low.
| Cotterzz wrote:
| It does shed light on a possibly better solution though that
| gives the user a list of simple, common use case options or
| access to the full interface.
|
| I do feel quite strongly that this should be implemented in the
| app though.
|
| There must be examples of this approach already being used?
| duxup wrote:
| It always amazes me how even just regular every day users will
| come to me with something like this:
|
| Overly simplified example:
|
| "Can you make this button do X?" where the existing button in
| so many ways is only distantly connected to X. And then they
| get stuck on the idea that THAT button has to be where the
| thing happens, and they stick with it even if you explain that
| the usual function of that button is Y.
|
| I simplified it saying button, but this applies to processes
| and other things. I think users sometimes think picking a
| common thing, button or process that sort of does what they
| want is the right entry point to discuss changes and maybe they
| think that somehow saves time / developer effort. Where in
| reality, just a new button is in fact an easier and less risky
| place to start.
|
| I didn't say that very well, but I wonder if that plays a part
| in the endless adding of complexity to UI where users grasp
| onto a given button, function, or process and "just" want to
| alter it a little ... and it never ends until it all breaks
| down.
| uticus wrote:
| In my experience, this is a communication issue, not a
| logical or technical or philosophical issue. Nor the result
| of a fixation caused by an idea out of the blue.
|
| In my experience it may be solved by both parties spending
| the effort and time to first understand what is being
| asked... assuming they are both willing to stomach the costs.
| Sometimes it isn't worth it, and it's easier to pacify than
| respectfully and carefully dig.
| dmd wrote:
| You are describing a form of the XY problem.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
| duxup wrote:
| I think you are likely correct, thank you.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Don't fall into the trap of responding to the user's request
| to do Y a certain way. They are asking you to implement Y,
| and they _think_ they know how it should be implemented, but
| really they would be happy with Y no matter how you did it.
| https://xyproblem.info/
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I often will ask for a quick phone call and try to
| work from the top down, or the bottom up depending on the
| client. Getting to the thing we're solving often leads to a
| different problem description and later different button or
| concept altogether.
|
| Sometimes it's just me firing up some SQL queries and
| discovering "Well this happened 3 times ... ever ..." and
| we do nothing ;)
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| On the other hand, I've not uncommonly seen this idea
| misused: Alice asks for Y, Bob says that it's an XY problem
| and that Alice really wants to solve a more general problem
| X with solution Z, Alice says that Z doesn't work for her
| due to some detail of her problem, Bob browbeats Alice over
| "If you think Z won't work, then you're wrong, end of
| story", and everyone argues back and forth over Z instead
| of coming up with a working solution.
|
| Sometimes the best solution is not the most widely-
| encouraged one.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Bob saying "you should use Z end of story" it's just as a
| hardheaded and unhelpful as Bob saying "X doesn't do that
| end of story".
| exasperaited wrote:
| I think the XY problem thing is likely very common. But
| developers are tending to use the term in a very dismissive
| way, superior way now.
| graybeardhacker wrote:
| I always tell clients (or users): "If you bring your car to
| the mechanic because it's making a noise and tell them to
| replace the belt, they will replace the belt and you car will
| still make the noise. Ask them to fix the noise."
|
| In other words, if you need expert help, trust the expert.
| Ask for what you need, not how to do it.
| nerdponx wrote:
| If you tell the mechanic "my car is making a noise, fix the
| belt please" and then they just fix the belt, that's on the
| mechanic as well.
| duxup wrote:
| I would hope the mechanic would engage with the customer
| in more back and forth.
|
| But sometimes power structures don't allow for it. I
| worked tech support in a number of companies. At some
| companies we were empowered to investigate and solve
| problems... sometimes that took work, and work from the
| customer. It had much better outcomes for the customer,
| but fixes were not quick. Customers / companies with good
| technical staff in management understood that dynamic.
|
| Other companies were "just fix it" and tech support were
| just annoying drones and the company and customer's and
| management treated tech support as annoying drones. They
| got a lot more "you got exactly what you asked for"
| treatment ... because management and even customers will
| take the self defeating quick and easy path sometimes.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| It's a hypothetical to communicate an entirely different
| point. The mechanic is't real or important.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, I've had now a couple decades of experience dealing
| with this, and my typical strat is to "step back" from the
| requested change, find out what the bigger goal is, and
| usually I will immediately come up with a completely
| different solution to fulfill their goal(s). Usually
| involving things they hadn't even thought about, because they
| were so focused on that one little thing. When looking at the
| bigger picture, suddenly you realize the project contains
| many relevant pieces that must be adjusted to reach the
| intended goals.
| uticus wrote:
| > It takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of
| onerous management structure...
|
| I'd say it's even more than you've stated. Not only for
| defending an existing project, but even for getting a project
| going in the first place a dictator* is needed.
|
| I'm willing to be proven wrong, and I know this flies in the
| face of common scrum-team-everybody-owns approaches.
|
| * benevolent or otherwise
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > to prevent the interface from quickly devolving back into the
| million options
|
| Microsoft for a loooong time had that figured out pretty well:
|
| - The stuff that people needed every day and liked to customize
| the most was directly reachable. Right click on the desktop,
| that offered a shortcut to the CPL for display and desktop
| symbols.
|
| - More detailed stuff? A CPL that could be reached from the
| System Settings
|
| - Stuff that was low level but still needed to be exposed
| somewhat? msconfig.
|
| - Stuff that you'd need to touch very rarely, but absolutely
| needed the option to customize it for entire fleets? Group
| Policy.
|
| - Really REALLY exotic stuff? Registry only.
|
| In the end it all was Registry under the hood, but there were
| so many options to access these registry keys depending what
| level of user you were. Nowadays? It's a fucking nightmare, the
| last truly decent Windows was 7, 10 is "barely acceptable" in
| my eyes and Windows 11 can go and die in a fire.
| vayup wrote:
| Spot on. Defending simplicity takes a lot of energy and
| commitment. It is not sexy. It is a thankless job. But doing it
| well takes a lot of skill, skill that is often disparaged by
| many communities as "political non sense"[1]. It is not a
| surprise that free software world has this problem.
|
| But it is not a uniquely free software world problem. It is
| there in the industry as well. But the marketplace serves as a
| reality check, and kills egregious cases.
|
| [1] Granted, "Political non sense" is a dual-purpose skill. In
| our context, it can be used both for "defending simplicity", as
| well as "resisting meaningful progress". It's not easy to tell
| the difference.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| The cycle repeats frequently in industry. New waves of
| startups address a problem with better UX, and maybe some
| other details like increased automated and speed using more
| modern architectures. But feature-creep eventually makes the
| UX cumbersome, the complexity makes it hard to migrate to new
| paradigms or at least doing so without a ton of baggage, so
| they in turn are displaced by new startups.
| gmueckl wrote:
| If the last part was true, Autodesk and Adobe would have
| had to go under a decade ago.
| apitman wrote:
| I suspect in the short term users are going to start solving
| this more and more by asking ChatGPT how to make their video
| work on their phone, and it telling them step by step how to do
| it.
|
| Longer term I wonder if complex apps with lots of features
| might integrate AI in such a way that users can ask it to
| generate a UI matching their needs. Some will only need a
| single button, some will need more.
| cellular wrote:
| This is why i developed GatorCAM for CNC.
|
| FreeCAD is too complicated. Too many ways to accomplish the
| same task (nevermind only certain ways work too.)
|
| So everything is simple and only 1 way to create gcode. No
| hidden menus. No hidden state.
| andreldm wrote:
| If handbrake scares them, don't you dare to demonstrate how to
| use ffmpeg. I remember when I used handbrake for the first time
| and thought "wow, it's much more convenient than struggling with
| ffmpeg".
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Handbrake's UI is in the uncanny valley for me -- too
| complicated for use by laymen, and way too limiting for use by
| people who know what they're doing...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| My dad, a total layman, was able to use handbrake as a step
| in digitizing old family video tapes.
|
| I think in the context of this thread, we shouldn't
| overgeneralize or underestimate "normal people".
| sharperguy wrote:
| A "normal person" is just someone whose time and mental
| energy are focused on something other than the niche task
| your app is aiming to solve. With enough time and focus,
| anyone can figure out any interface. But for many,
| something which requires a smaller investment to achieve
| the results they need is preferrable.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Also, even the most arcane and convoluted interfaces
| become usable with repetition. Normal people learn the
| most bureaucratic business workflows and fly through them
| if that is their job. Then if you dare to "improve" any
| aspect of it you will hear them complain that you "broke"
| their system.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Was he able to use it correctly though to be able to
| digitize video with exacltly the correct setttings so that
| no notable loss of quality was introduced? How long did it
| take him to randomly test settings?
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| ffmpeg with disposable or llm backed dnd interfaces.
|
| for certain types of tooling UIs should be cheap, disposable
| and task/worlflow specific.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Actually I think this is a killer use case for local LLMs.
| We could finally get back to asking the computer to do
| something without having to learn how to string 14
| different commands together to do it.
| multjoy wrote:
| I've been computer touching since the mid eighties.
|
| Exactly what golden era of computing are you harking back
| to, and what are you doing that requires 14 different
| commands?
| jraph wrote:
| The last thing we want for a user-friendly interface is
| nondeterminism. Some procedure that works today must work
| tomorrow if it looks like you can repeat it. LLMs can't be
| the answer to this. And if you go to the lengths of making
| the llm deterministic, with tests and all, you might as
| well code the thing once and for all and not ship the local
| llm to the end user at all.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Sorry, I see how my post lacked sufficient clarity.
|
| The idea behind a cheap UI is not constant change, but
| that you have a shared engine and "app" per activity.
|
| The particular workflow/ui doesn't need to ever change,
| it's more of a app/brand per activity for non-power
| users.
|
| This is similar to how some apps historically (very
| roughly lotus notes springs to mind) are a single app but
| have an email interface/icon to click, or contacts, or
| calendar, all one underlying app but different ui entry
| points.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| imo LLMs make all of these UIs unnecessary, i'm happy to use
| ffmpeg now
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| At least with ffmpeg, for 99% of use cases you can just google
| "how do I do X with ffmpeg" and get a copypasta command line.
|
| Whereas with complicated GUI tools, you have to watch a video
| to learn how to do it.
| nicce wrote:
| One of the things LLM shines. For double checking the command
| explanations, I ask commands to grep the sections from manual
| instead of relying LLM output blindly.
| xnx wrote:
| Excellent point. Soon computer use AI agents will bridge this
| gap.
| left-struck wrote:
| I think GUI tools lend themselves more to being able to
| discover functionality intuitively without needing to look
| anything up or read a manual, and especially so if you're
| coming back to a task you haven't done in a while. With CLI I
| constantly have to google or ask an LLM about commands I've
| done many times, whereas with a gui if I do it once I can
| more easily find my way the next time. Anyway both have their
| place
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I think GUI tools lend themselves more to being able to
| discover functionality intuitively without needing to look
| anything up or read a manual
|
| Well, there are different issues.
|
| Reading a manual is the best you can do, theoretically. But
| Linux CLI tools have terrible manuals.
|
| I read over the ssh man page multiple times looking for
| functionality that was available. But the man page failed
| to make that clear. I had to learn about it from random
| tutorials instead.
|
| I've been reading lvm documentation recently and it shows
| some bizarre patterns. Stuff like "for more on this see
| [related man page]", where [related man page] doesn't have
| any "more on this". Or, here's what happens if you try to
| get CLI help:
|
| 1. You say `pvs --help`, and get a summary of what flags
| you can provide to the tool. The big one is -o, documented
| as `[ -o|--options String ]`. The String defines the
| information you want. All you have to do is provide the
| right "options" and you're good. What are they? Well, the
| --help output ends with this: "Use --longhelp to show all
| options and advanced commands."
|
| 2. Invoke --longhelp and you get nothing about options or
| advanced commands, although you do get some documentation
| about the syntax of referring to volumes.
|
| 3. Check the man page, and the options aren't there either.
| Buried inside the documentation for -o is the following
| sentence: "Use -o help to view the list of all available
| fields."
|
| 4. Back to the command line. `pvs -o help` actually will
| provide the relevant documentation.
|
| Reading a manual _would_ be fine... if it actually
| contained the information it was supposed to, arranged in
| some kind of logically-organized structure. Instead,
| information on any given topic is spread out across several
| different types of documentation, with broken cross-
| references and suggestions that you should try doing the
| wrong thing.
|
| I'm picking on man pages here, but actually Microsoft's
| official documentation for their various .NET stuff has the
| same problem at least as badly.
| xnorswap wrote:
| We're going full-circle, because LLMs are amazing for
| producing just the right incantation of arcane command-line
| tools. I was struggling to decrypt a file the other day and
| it whipped me up exactly the right openssl command to get it
| done.
|
| From which I was able to then say, "Can I have the equivalent
| source code" and it did that too, from which I was able to
| spot my mistake in my original attempt. ( The KDF was using
| md5 not sha ).
|
| I'm willing to bet that LLMs are also just as good at coming
| up with the right ffmpeg or imagemagick commands with just a
| vague notion of what is wanted.
|
| Like, can we vignette the video and then add a green alien to
| the top corner? Sure we can (NB: I've not actually verified
| the result here) :
| https://claude.ai/share/5a63c01d-1ba9-458d-bb9d-b722367aea13
| 8note wrote:
| > I'm willing to bet that LLMs are also just as good at
| coming up with the right ffmpeg or imagemagick commands
| with just a vague notion of what is wanted.
|
| they are. ive only used ffmpeg via llm, and its easy to get
| the LLM to make the right incantation as part of a multi-
| step workflow.
|
| my own lack of understanding of video formats is still a
| problem, but getting ffmeg to do the right thing only takes
| a vague notion
| pxc wrote:
| Yes. It's been a few years since I regularly used Handbrake,
| but I remember thinking of it as very simple, especially with
| its presets-based workflow. I was used to stuff like various
| CLI tools, mkvmerge and its GUI, and avidemux at that time.
|
| It struck me as a weird example in the OP because I don't
| really think of Handbrake as a power user tool.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| If you only care about converting media without tweaking
| anything, ffmpeg offers the simplest UI ever.
| ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4
| a_shovel wrote:
| Proposing a CLI command as a candidate for "simplest UI ever"
| is a great gag.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Come on. "type ffmpeg, then hyphen i then the input
| filename then the output filename". I would've understood
| this when I was 8. Because I was super smart? No, because I
| was making a genuine effort.
| pwg wrote:
| The portion you've overlooked is there is an entire
| population of users out there who have never seen, nor
| used, a command line, and telling them to "just type this
| out" ignores all the background command line knowledge
| necessary to successfully "just type this out":
|
| 1) They have to know how to get to a command line
| somewhere/how (most of this group of users would be
| stymied right here and get no further along);
|
| 2) They now have to change the current directory of their
| CLI that they did get open to the location in their
| filesystem where the video is actually stored (for the
| tiny sliver who get past #1 above, this will stymie most
| of them, as they have no idea exactly where on disk their
| "Downloads" [or other meta-directory item] is actually
| located);
|
| 3) For the very few who actually get to this step, unless
| they already have ffmpeg installed on their PATH, they
| will get a command not found error after typing the
| command, ending their progress unless they now go and
| install ffmpeg;
|
| 4) For the very very few who would make it here, almost
| all of them will now have to accurately type out every
| character in "a-really_big_filename with spaces .mov", as
| they will not know anything about filename completion to
| let the shell do this for them. And if the filename does
| have spaces, and many will, they now need to somehow know
| 4a) that they have to escape the spaces and 4b) how to go
| about escaping the spaces, or they will instead get some
| ffmpeg error (hopefully just 'file not found', but with
| the extra parameters that unescaped spaces will create,
| it might just be a variant of "unknown option switch"
| error instead).
| tester457 wrote:
| How are we so blind to these beginner hurdles?
|
| Few people are able to see through the eyes of a
| beginner, when they are a master.
|
| The 4th one is a pain to teach. Every other file and
| directory has spaces... so I encourage liberal use of the
| TAB key for beginners.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| This describes me somewhat. I use FEA software and only
| recently started using it to execute jobs in CLI. I still
| trip over changing directories. Fortunately notepad++ has
| an option to open CLI with the filepath of the currently
| open file. I also didn't know right-click is paste in
| CLI. Don't use ctrl+c accidentally. But ctrl+v does work
| in powershell (sometimes?). "Error, command not found" is
| puzzling to me. Where does the software need to live
| relative to the directory I am using? This is all still
| very foreign to me, and working in CLI feels like
| flipping light switches in a dark room.
| ThatFave wrote:
| To answer your last question, on your operating system
| there is something called "PATH". It is a user- or
| systemwide variable that dictates where to look for
| programs. It basically is a list of directories, often
| separated by ":" Further reading:
| https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.html (this may
| have Java references but still applies)
| jcranmer wrote:
| The GP here appears to be on Windows, given their
| reference to PowerShell. And on Windows, the path
| separator is ";", not ":".
|
| One of the things I've noticed is that people trying to
| help the true beginners vastly overestimate their skill
| level, and when you get a couple of people all trying to
| help, each of them is making a completely different set
| of suggestions which doesn't end up helpful at all.
| Recently, I was helping somebody who was struggling with
| trying to compile and link against a C++ library on
| Windows, and the second person to suggest something went
| full-bore down the "just install and use a Linux VM cause
| I don't have time to help you do anything on Windows."
| diabeetusman wrote:
| To add on to this, there's no standardized way of
| indicating what needs to be typed out and what needs to
| be replaced. `foo --bar <replace me>` might be a good
| example command in a README, but I had to help someone
| the other day when they ran `foo --bar <test.txt>`, not
| realizing they should have replaced the < and > as well
| as just the text.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| They are using text inputs, where you press enter to send
| stuff daily. Most of the hurdle is just overcoming the
| preconception that at black in put window means hard
| mode.
|
| They can right-click in the folder view of their OS file
| viewer. On Windows they can also just type the command
| into the path bar.
|
| When you tell them the command, you could also just
| install it. Also you could just tell them to type the
| name of the app 'ffmpeg' into the OS store and press
| install. They do this on their phone all the time.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| The reality is that we've been infantilizing users for
| far too long. The belief that people can't handle
| fundamental concepts is misguided and primarily serves to
| benefit abusive tech companies.
|
| Two decades ago, users understood what "C:\Documents and
| Settings\username\My Documents" meant and navigated those
| paths easily. Yet, we decided they were too "stupid" to
| deal with files and file paths, hiding them away. This
| conveniently locked users into proprietary platforms.
| Your point #2 reflects a lie we've collectively accepted
| as reality. Sadly, too many people now can't even imagine
| that a straightforward way to exchange data among
| different software once existed, but that's a situation
| we're deliberately perpetuating.
|
| This needs to change. Users deserve the opportunity to
| learn and engage with their tools rather than being
| treated as incapable. It's time we started empowering
| users for a change.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| To grab a random part of an ffmpeg command in my history:
| "-q:a 0 -map a"
|
| Sorry, that's pretty damn indecipherable.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Yes, your example that _completely ignores the premise_
| is pretty damn indecipherable.
|
| "If you only care about converting media without tweaking
| anything"
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I actually think ffmpeg's UI is simpler than Handbrake for
| those at all acquainted with the command line (i.e., for those
| who understand the concept of text-is-everything-everything-is-
| text). Handbrake shows you everything you can possibly fiddle
| with whether or not you plan on fiddling with it. Meanwhile
| ffmpeg hides everything, period, and you ask for specific
| features by typing them out. It's not great for discovery but
| once you get the hang of it, it is incredibly precise. One
| could imagine taking someone for whom Handbrake was too much
| and showing them "look, you just type `ffmpeg -i`, the input
| file, and the output file, and it does what you want". I
| imagine for many people this would be a perfectly lovely
| interface.
| zahlman wrote:
| FFMpeg's command line is practically a programming language.
|
| Someone who only wants to convert from one format to another,
| and isn't accustomed to CLIs, is far better served by "drag
| the file here -> type an output filename and extension in the
| text box".
|
| The problem (and the reason both FFMpeg and Handbrake exist)
| is that tons of people "only" want to do two or three
| specific tasks, all in the same general wheelhouse, but with
| terrible overlap.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Using ffmpeg to convert one file to another remains probably my
| main use of general LLM web searches. This isn't to say it does
| a good job with that, but it's still ahead of me.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| the issue is real, but i'm not sure this solves it; in this case
| you end up with an overly specific solution that you can't really
| recommend to most people (and won't become widely known)
|
| using the remote analogy, the taped versions are useful for
| (many!) specific people, but shipping the remote in that
| configuration makes no sense
|
| i think normal people don't want to install an app for every
| specific task either
|
| maybe a solution can look like a simple interface (with good
| defaults!!) but with an 'advanced mode' that gives you more
| options... though i can't say i've seen a good example of this,
| so it might be fundamentally flawed as well
| wrs wrote:
| Oh man, I have literally done that to my parents' remote
| controls. Actually more controls, because they still watch VHS
| tapes. But I have to admit it never occurred to me to do that to
| their software.
|
| Logic Pro has a "masking tape" mode. If you don't turn on
| "Complete Features" [0], you get a simplified version of the app
| that's an easier stepping stone from GarageBand. Then check the
| box and bam, full access to 30 years' accumulation of
| professional features in menus all over the place.
|
| [0] https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/advanced-
| settings-l...
| snovymgodym wrote:
| The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the
| functionality.
|
| Actual good UI/UX design isn't trivial and it tends to require a
| tight feedback loop between testers, designers, implementers, and
| users.
|
| A lot of FOSS simply doesn't have the resources to do that.
| dayvid wrote:
| For a lot of usecases there is a strong 80% functionality. E.g.
| For Handbrake, 80% of the time I am reducing the size of my
| video screen grabs from my computer or phone. Don't need any
| resolution change, etc.
|
| There are other times I want cropping or something similar, but
| it's really only 10-30% of the time. If people want to have a
| more custom workflow they can use an advanced UI
| ptmcc wrote:
| Resources or the care, tbh. FOSS is a big umbrella and a lot of
| it simply isn't meant for "customers". Some FOSS apps clearly
| are trying to build a user base, in which case yeah the points
| this post makes are worth thinking about.
|
| But many other projects, perhaps the majority, that is not
| their goal. By devs for devs, and I don't think there is
| anything wrong with that.
|
| Pleasing customers is incredibly difficult and a never-ending
| treadmill. If it's not the goal then it's not a failure.
| ageitgey wrote:
| > The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the
| functionality.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with your basic take, but I think this part
| is a little more subtle.
|
| I'd argue that 80% of users (by raw user count) do want roughly
| the same 20% of functionality, most of the time.
|
| The problem in FOSS is that average user in the FOSS ecosystem
| is not remotely close to the profile of that 80%. The average
| FOSS user is part of the 1% of power users. They actively want
| something different and don't even understand the mindset of
| the other 80% of users.
|
| When someone comes along to a FOSS project and honestly tries
| to rebuild it for the 80% of users, they often end up getting a
| lot of hate from the established FOSS community because they
| just have totally different needs. It's like they don't even
| speak the same language.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| There's a good report/study about the complexity of Microsoft
| Word floating around somewhere.
|
| It was something like:
|
| - almost everybody only uses about 20% of the features of
| Word
|
| - everybody's 20% is different, but
|
| - ~80% of the 20% is common to most users.
|
| - on the other hand, the remaining 20% of the 20% is widely
| distributed and covers basically all of the product.
|
| So if you made a version of Word with 16% of its feature set
| you would _almost_ make everybody happy. But really, nobody
| would be happy. There 's no small feature set that makes most
| people happy.
| uticus wrote:
| Yeah but MS Word is also designed with the guidance of an
| army of accountants and corporate shareholders. Your study
| plays into that, but there's a much bigger picture when you
| talk about analyzing how any product came to be that has MS
| as a prefix.
| ashtakeaway wrote:
| Kind of like how the author likely knows about the report
| and wanted to make a blog post about it without saying
| anything about or citing the report itself. IT seems like
| it but 80/20 can be found in lots of places, just like
| 60/40 can.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > tends to require a tight feedback loop between testers,
| designers, implementers, and users
|
| Some FOSS projects attempt something like this, but it can
| become a self-reinforcing feedback loop: When you're only
| testing on current users, you're selecting for people who
| already use the software. People who already use the software
| were not scared away by the interface. So the current users
| tend to prefer the current interface.
|
| Big software companies have the resources to gather (and pay)
| people for user studies to see what works and what does not for
| people who haven't seen the software before, or at least don't
| have any allegiances. If you only ever get feedback from people
| who have been using the software for a decade, they're going to
| tell you the UI must not change because they know exactly how
| to use it by now.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| FOSS is ~99% developers, ask anyone in UI/UX to contribute to
| free projects and they'll look at you like you have two heads.
| dayvid wrote:
| I'd argue most software scares normal people. They only learn
| because of a strong intrinsic motivation (connecting with other
| people/access to entertainment) or work requirements which come
| with mandatory trainings and IT support
| fallingfrog wrote:
| My number one principle of UI design is this:
|
| The things the user does most frequently need to be the easiest
| things to do.
|
| You expose the stuff the user needs to do quickly without a lot
| of fuss, and you can bury the edge cases in menus.
|
| Sadly a lot of software has this inverted.
| advisedwang wrote:
| Meanwhile, every time Gnome makes UI adjustments along these
| lines, there's an outcry that it's dumbed downed, copying apple,
| removing features etc etc.
| askonomm wrote:
| Well Gnome tells people that they should just know keyboard
| shortcuts for everything - which is literally something only
| power users know to do. Their entire design ethos is a weird
| opposition to itself where it is aiming to be so simple and
| minimal that in order to do basic things you have to memorize
| keyboard shortcuts as there is no visual interface possibility
| to do those things.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Its an entire desktop environment, its not as simple as
| choosing between two different apps. Although people who make
| this complaint should probably just use KDE, maybe they've used
| Gnome for a long time and don't want to change.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, and that's because the article's advice is bad.
|
| It works exactly for TV remote controls. Or, rather, it worked
| before everybody had an HDMI player or smart TVs. It doesn't
| work for TV remotes now either.
|
| Handbrake is a bit like TV remotes in the turn of the century.
| That's an exception even among free software, and absolutely no
| mainstream DE is like that.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a massive amount of compromise in a UI. Adding
| features adds complexity. If you need that feature you have to
| accept the complexity that goes with it, and generally you are
| happy to. However if you don't need that complexity you don't
| want it. The average person uses 5% of the features of there
| word processor - but there is very little overlap between any
| two random users, and each wants the other 95% they don't use
| hidden (or perhaps 90% as there is another 5% they will need or
| think they will need) Gnome seems to be focusing on the 1% of
| features that are common to everyone, which means you can't get
| your 5%.
|
| Note that I've always been a KDE user...
| advisedwang wrote:
| I don't think free software has to aim to be for everyone. It's
| OK to build software for yourself and people like you.
| ValdikSS wrote:
| Most people can't comprehend that. "If it's available publicly
| online and has a readme, it's DEFINITELY was created for me and
| for all other users, right?"
|
| This is so common, to the point that it's a FOSS misconception
| #1 for me. They can't get it that the developer can develop the
| software to solve only their specific problem and not
| interested in support, feature contributions, and other
| improvements or usecases.
| card_zero wrote:
| > I challenge you to make more of it.
|
| Huge amounts of dumbed-down software that won't do interesting
| things is made. There's no need to present this challenge.
|
| > a person who needs or wants that stuff can use Handbrake.
|
| That's the part that is often ignored: providing the version with
| the features.
| lolive wrote:
| Free software scares people until they have to pay for Windows.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Over the years I've gotten really tired of this obsession with
| "normal people" and not just because I'm one of the so called
| power users. This is really part of a growing effort to _hide the
| computer away_ as an implementation detail.
|
| https://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/
|
| That's what "UX" is all about. "Scripting the users", minimizing
| and channeling their interactions within the system. Providing
| one button that does exactly what they want. No need to "scare"
| them with magical computer technology. No need for them to have
| access to any of it.
|
| It's something that should be resisted, not encouraged. Otherwise
| you get generations of technologically illiterate people who
| don't know what a directory is. Most importantly, this is how
| corporations justify locking us out of our own devices.
|
| > We are giving up our last rights and freedoms for
| "experiences," for the questionable comfort of "natural
| interaction." But there is no natural interaction, and there are
| no invisible computers, there only hidden ones.
|
| > Every victory of experience design: a new product "telling the
| story," or an interface meeting the "exact needs of the customer,
| without fuss or bother" widens the gap in between a person and a
| personal computer.
|
| > The morning after "experience design:" interface-less,
| desposible hardware, personal hard disc shredders, primitive
| customization via mechanical means, rewiring, reassembling,
| making holes into hard disks, in order to to delete, to logout,
| to "view offline."
| ValdikSS wrote:
| Most people don't need _computer_ (full feature power, full
| power of choice) to solve their task, as could be seen with the
| smartphones, which are designed as _appliances_ more or less.
|
| I don't want most of consumer electronics to act like a
| computer, it is a deficiency for me. I chose "dumb" Linux-based
| eBook reader instead of Android-based, because I want it to
| read books, full stop.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Some people just like to eat food, they don't want to learn how
| to cook it. You or I may think that's a tragedy, but I don't
| think e.g a dentist has an obligation to become fluent in the
| things that I'm competent in.
|
| I'm no dentist, I go to dentists. I let them work, and try not
| to be too annoying. I learn the minimum that I need to know to
| follow the directions that they deliberately make very simple
| for me.
|
| This will result in generations of generally dentistry ignorant
| people, but I am not troubled by this.
|
| As technologically competent people, one of our desires should
| be to help people maintain the ignorance level _that they
| prefer,_ and at every level steer them to a good outcome. Let
| them manage their own time. If they want privacy and control,
| let 's make sure they can have it, rather than lecturing them
| about it. My grandmother is in her 90s and she doesn't want
| people reading her emails, listening to her calls or tracking
| her face. She is not prepared to deal with more than a couple
| of buttons, and they should be large and hopefully have
| pictures on them that explain what they do. It's my job to
| square that circle.
| binarysneaker wrote:
| Completely agree with the author. Would love most power tools to
| start off in "simple mode" so I could recommend them to
| friends/family, and have a toggle for advanced mode which shows
| everything to power users.
| radial_symmetry wrote:
| Makes a good point, but the headline bothers me. It isn't the
| free that is the problem, it is the complexity.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Yep, the Adobe tools and basically all professionally-used CAD
| software are incredibly intimidating to 'normal people', and
| they ain't free.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Same problem though. Half of UX is knowing which features to
| include, and the other half is knowing where to put them.
|
| Intuitive UX for the average non-nerd user is _task-based._
| You start with the most common known goals, like sending
| someone money, or changing the contrast of a photo, and you
| put a nice big button or slider somewhere on the screen that
| either makes the goal happen directly or walks you through it
| step by step.
|
| Professional tools are _workbench-based._ You get a huge list
| of tools scattered around the UI in various groups. Beginners
| don 't know what most of the tools do, so they have to work
| out what the tools are for before they can start using them.
| Then, and only then, can they start using the tools in a
| goal-based way. Professionals already know the tradecraft, so
| they have the simpler - but still hard - "Which menu item
| does what I need?" problem.
|
| Developer culture tends to be _script-based._ It 's literally
| just lists of instructions made of cryptic combinations of
| words, letters, and weird punctuation characters. Beginners
| have to learn the words, the concepts behind them, and the
| associated underlying computer fundamentals at multiple
| levels - just to get started. And if you start with a goal -
| let's say you want a bot that posts on social media for you -
| the amount of learning if you're coming to it cold is beyond
| overwhelming.
|
| FOSS has never understood this. Yes, in theory you can write
| your own almost anything and tinker with the source code. But
| the learning curve for most people is impossibly steep.
|
| AI has some chance of bridging the gap. It's not reliable
| yet, but it's very obvious now that it has a chance to become
| a universal UI, creating custom code and control panels for
| specific personal goals, generating workbench UIs and
| explaining what the tools do if you need a more professional
| approach, and explaining core concepts and code structures if
| you want to work at that level.
| davisr wrote:
| And the very freedom they got with free software let them
| change it to suit their fit, which would have been impossible
| with proprietary or otherwise restricted software.
| waffletower wrote:
| Would be nice for an inverse article -- which is often harder to
| achieve -- case in point: I wish iCloud had a power user
| interface.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Oh, it has one, it's just not available to you.
|
| FOSS's issue isn't that they trust users too much, it's that
| they aren't taking different types of users into account.
|
| Corporate-built software that's locked down or limited like
| iCloud is 100% about not trusting the users.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| _" I am new to GitHub and I have lots to say I DONT GIVE A FUCK
| ABOUT THE FUCKING CODE! i just want to download this stupid
| fucking application and use it._
|
| _WHY IS THERE CODE??? MAKE A FUCKING .EXE FILE AND GIVE IT TO
| ME. these dumbfucks think that everyone is a developer and
| understands code. well i am not and i don 't understand it. I
| only know to download and install applications. SO WHY THE FUCK
| IS THERE CODE? make an EXE file and give it to me. STUPID FUCKING
| SMELLY NERDS"_
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Wow, it's actually real.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to...
|
| https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock/issues/2011
| ValdikSS wrote:
| But that's another issue: developers make software for
| themselves vs "digital public goods for everyone".
|
| UI/UX (which the article is about) is part of the broader
| approach.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| I know of one company that explicitly didn't make downloads
| available to dissuade this kind of hard-to-support user from
| using their time without materially contributing anything
| rlue wrote:
| The better example for this design principle is the big green
| button on copy machines. The copier has many functions, but 99%
| of users don't bother with 99% of them.
|
| For a little history on this design, see
| https://athinkingperson.com/2010/06/02/where-the-big-green-c...
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| A good product manager could make a big difference to many open
| source projects. Someone who has real knowledge of the problem
| space, who can define a clear vision of what problem is being
| solved for which user community and who can be judicious in
| weighing feature requests and developing roadmaps.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| > claude --dangerously-skip-permissions -p "convert happy.blarf
| to a small mp4 file that will work on my ipad and send it to my
| email"
| longnguyen wrote:
| This has been a major UX problem for me when building my app [0]
| (an AI chat client for power user).
|
| On the one hand, I want the UI to be simple and minimal enough so
| even non savvy users can use it.
|
| But on the other hand, I do need to support more advanced
| features, with more configuration panels.
|
| I learned that the solution in this case is "progressive
| disclosure". By default, the app only show just enough UI
| elements to get the 90% cases done. For the advanced use cases,
| it takes more effort. Usually to enable them in Settings, or an
| Inspector pane etc. Power users can easily tinker around and
| tweak them. While non savvy users can stick with the default,
| usual UX flow.
|
| Though even with this technique, choosing what to show by default
| is still not easy. I learned that I need to be clear about my
| Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and optimize for that profile only.
|
| [0]: https://boltai.com
| jfengel wrote:
| As a UX guy, I'd like to note that the normal people aren't so
| great at knowing what they want, either.
|
| I dread "Can you add a button..." Or worse, "Can you add a check
| box..." Not only does that make it worse for other users, it also
| makes it worse for you, even if you don't realize it yet.
|
| What you need is to take their use case and imagine other ways to
| get there. Often that means completely turning their idea on its
| head. It can even help if you're not in the trenches with them,
| and can look at the bigger picture rather than the thing that is
| interfering with their current work flow.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Sometimes we really do just want a checkbox toggle though :D
|
| Eg an app to prevent MacOS going to sleep. I want a checkbox to
| also stop an external display sleeping. I don't need my entire
| usage of the app and my computer-feature desires analysed and
| interpreted in a way that would make a psychoanalyst look like
| a hack.
|
| But yes in a professional setting people do use "Can we add a
| button" to attempt to subvert your skillset, your experience,
| to take control of the implementation, and to bypass solid
| analysis and development practices
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Although I wish Linux were easier to use -- and there are distros
| that aim for this, I do agree that FOSS is mostly by nerds for
| nerds, but it doesn't prevent other people making changes --
| which is exactly what the author did.
|
| So I'd like to welcome the author to make more apps based on
| FOSS.
| lutusp wrote:
| > Although I wish Linux were easier to use [ ... ]
|
| We're getting there. I run Linux Mint with an XFCE desktop --
| an intentionally minimal setup. The system performs automatic
| updates and the desktop layout/experience resembles older
| Windows desktops before Microsoft began "improving" things. No
| ads, no AI.
|
| I'm by no means an end user, but in Linux I see incremental
| progress toward meeting the needs of that audience. And just in
| time too, now that Microsoft is more aggressively enshittifying
| Windows.
|
| What's really missing are online fora able to help end users
| adjust to Linux -- helpful without being superior or
| condescending. Certainly true for Windows, not yet true for
| Linux.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Yeah I agree that the difference of usability between Linux
| and Windows is getting much smaller, now that MSFT is
| trashing Windows.
|
| I do have a Linux box, and I only have complaints about small
| things. Double screen works, VSCode works, Firefox works too.
| Not much to complaint for a personal dev box. The ability to
| just `apt install` a bunch of stuffs and then start compiling
| is pretty nice.
|
| But again, I'm pragmatic, so if I'm doing something Windows
| related, I'd definitely use my Windows box.
| 8note wrote:
| > What's really missing are online fora able to help end
| users adjust to Linux -- helpful without being superior or
| condescending. Certainly true for Windows, not yet true for
| Linux.
|
| claude-code actually does this really well, having used it to
| set up gnome on my phone, and fix all my problems without
| having to learn anything
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > What's really missing are online fora able to help end
| users adjust to Linux -- helpful without being superior or
| condescending. Certainly true for Windows, not yet true for
| Linux.
|
| That can be a problem with Linux but in my experience
| searching for Windows help is usually not good either.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I think there is something deeper here: people have become scared
| of the unknown, therefore we need to hide things for them. But
| people don't have to be scared. In fact even for people who are
| using Handbrake comfortably, a lot of things Handbrake presents
| in its UI are probably unknown to them and can safely be ignored.
| The screenshot in the article shows that Handbrake analyzed the
| source video and reported it as 30 FPS, SDR, 8-bit 4:2:0, 1-1-1.
| I think less than a tenth of a percent of Handbrake users
| understand all of that. 30 FPS is reasonably understandable but
| 4:2:0 requires the user to understand chroma subsampling, a
| considerably more niche topic. And I have no idea what 1-1-1 is
| and I simply ignore it. My point is, when faced with unknown
| information and controls, why do people feel scared in the first
| place? Why can't they simply ignore the unknown and make sense of
| what they can understand? Is it because they worry that the part
| of the software they don't understand will damage their computer
| or delete all their files? Is it just the lack of computer
| literacy?
|
| I do not readily empathize with people who are scared of
| software, because my generation grows up tinkering with software.
| I'd like to understand why people would become scared of software
| in the first place.
| bugsliker wrote:
| How do you gain the confidence that what you choose to ignore
| is safe to ignore?
|
| Computer damage is one potential consequence on the extreme
| end. On the conservative end, the software might just not work
| the way you want and you waste your time. It's a mental model
| you have to develop. Even as a technical power user though, I
| want to reduce the risk of wasting my time, or even confront
| the possibility that I might waste my time, if I don't have to.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| How do you know the software in the article will do what you
| want?
|
| For handbrake you can pick a preset and see what happens. Or
| don't even do that: when you open it it'll make you pick a
| video file, then you can just jam the green start button and
| see if it gives you what you need. _Very_ little time spent.
| bugsliker wrote:
| i mean i don't know that the green button does what i want
| either so what's your point?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Right, you don't know if _either_ program is the right
| thing just by looking at it. The reason you 're uncertain
| isn't all those options handbrake shows. You have that
| uncertainty no matter what. You need the same confidence
| with or without options. So that problem, while real,
| isn't an argument against showing options.
|
| And as far as time goes, it only takes a few seconds in
| either scenario. You hit go, you see the progress bar is
| moving, you check your file a few minutes later.
| bugsliker wrote:
| if the UI is forcing me to look at these options before
| pressing Go, it is a signal that someone thought these
| were important to consider before i pressed Go. this is
| the gricean maxims of quantity and relation.
|
| the decision to ignore this signal is a learned behavior
| that you and i have, is all i'm saying
| thadt wrote:
| Not _scared_ , time limited.
|
| The world is a complicated place, and there is a veritable
| mountain of things a person could learn about nearly any
| subject. But sometimes I don't need or want to learn all those
| things - I just want to get one very specific task done. What I
| _really_ appreciate is when an expert who _has_ spent the time
| required to understand the nuances and tradeoffs can say "just
| do this."
|
| When it comes to technology 'simple' just means that someone
| else made a bunch of decisions for me. If I want or need to
| make those decisions myself then I need more knobs.
| 8note wrote:
| its complexity. assuming binary flags, the amount of different
| ways the tool might operate is O(2^n) if the tool isnt doing
| what you want, thats a gigantic search space for fixing it.
| hiding options, and putting sane defaults makes n smaller and
| exponentially reduces the search space.
|
| people arent _afraid_ of doing 2^n stuff, its just that we have
| a gut sense that its gonna take more time than its worth. im
| down to try 10-100 things, but if its gonna be 100 million
| option combinations i have to tinker with, thats just not worth
| it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Couldn't agree with this more. I'm even an advocate for
| simulating walled gardens with Free Software. Let people who need
| to feel swaddled in a product or a brand feel swaddled.
|
| It also opens up opportunities for money-making, and employment
| in Free Software for people who do not program. The kind of hand-
| holding that some people prefer or need in UX is not easy to
| design, and the kind of marketing that leads people to the
| product is really the beginning of that process.
|
| Nobody normal cares that it's a thin layer over the top of a
| bunch of copyleft that they wouldn't understand anyway (plenty of
| commercial software is a thin layer over permissively licensed
| stuff.) Most people I know barely know what files and directories
| are, and the idea of trying to learn fills them with an anxiety
| akin to math-phobia. Some (most?) people get a lot of anxiety
| about being called stupid, and they avoid the things that caused
| it to happen.
|
| They do want privacy and the ownership of their own devices as
| much as everyone else however, they just don't know how much
| they're giving up when they do a particular software thing, or
| (like all of us) know that it is seriously difficult if not
| possible to avoid the danger.
|
| Give people mock EULAs to click through, but they will enumerate
| the software's obligations to _them_ , not their obligations to
| the software. Help them remain as ignorant as they want about how
| everything works, other than emphasizing the assurances that the
| GPL gives them.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| When I used to be active on reddit I was following
| r/graphicdesign (me being a graphic designer) and one day someone
| asked a question about Inkscape.
|
| Not 5 minutes after that someone else on the comments went on a
| weird rant about how allegedly Inkscape and all FOSS was
| "communist" and "sucked" and capitalist propietary stuff was
| "superior".
| graemep wrote:
| You get weird people on social media. best ignored.
|
| IN this particular case someone things more competition is
| communist...
| glitchc wrote:
| Yeah, MS took this lesson to heart with Office, and now it's a
| disaster for everyone, not just the power-users.
| dogleash wrote:
| We been knowing that.
|
| Dunno why people assume that FOSS developers are just dummies
| lacking insight but otherwise champing at the bit to provide the
| same refinement and same customer service experience as the "open
| source" projects that are really just loss leaders of some
| commercial entity.
| glitchc wrote:
| Yeah, MS took that lesson to heart with Office, and now it's a
| disaster to use for everyone, not just power-users.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| I think you can see this already with websites, like there is
| dozens of websites like convert video to MP4, ompress this or
| that. And I think they are just building an UI on top of open
| source tools
| defanor wrote:
| The advice looks sensible, but not sure if it does more good than
| harm. I recall simplified user interfaces standing in the way,
| hiding (or simply not providing) useful knobs or
| information/logs. They are annoying both when using them directly
| as a "power user", and when less tech-savvy users approach you
| (as they still do with those annoyingly simplified interfaces),
| asking for help. Then you try to use that simplified interface,
| it does not work, and there is no practical way to debug or try
| workarounds, so you end up with an interface that even a power
| user cannot use. I think generally it is more useful to focus on
| properly working software, on documentation and informative logs,
| sufficient flexibility, and maybe then on UI convenience, but
| still not making advanced controls and verbose information
| completely inaccessible (as it seems to be in the provided
| examples).
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I agree, that having better documentation and properly working
| software is a much better idea, and that simplified user
| interface have many problems.
| cardanome wrote:
| > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features
|
| Yes, but those 80% all use a different subset of the 20% of
| features. So if you want to make them all happy, you need to
| implement 100% of the features.
|
| I see the pattern so often. There is a "needlessly complicated"
| product. Someone thinks we can make it simpler, we rewrite
| it/refactor the UI. Super clean and everything. But user X really
| needs that one feature! Oh and maybe lets implement Y. A few
| years down the line you are back to having a "needlessly
| complicated" product.
|
| If you think it could easily be done better, you don't understand
| the problem domain well enough yet. Real simplicity looks easy
| but is hard to achieve.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I guess instead of a separate application, maybe some of these
| programs would benefit from having 'dumb' mode where only
| basic/most used functionality is available. I.e. when I run gimp,
| I most often just use it rescale the image, cut a piece and
| insert into a new image and every time I have to look for the
| right options in the menu.
| andai wrote:
| The article complains there's too many old school Windows-type
| power user GUIs in the free software space. Most of which were
| not actually FOSS, but Freeware, or sometimes Shareware!
|
| My criticism of Free Software is exactly the reverse. There _isn
| 't_ enough of that kind of stuff on Linux!
|
| Though to be sure, the Mac category (It Has One Button) is even
| more underserved there, and I agree that there should be more!
| Heck, most of the stuff I've made for myself has one button. Do
| one thing and do it well! :)
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I agree there isn't enough. Some programs are OK (especially
| command-line programs), some aren't as good as the actual good
| quality ones.
|
| > Do one thing and do it well!
|
| This does not necessarily mean that it would have only one
| button (or any buttons). Depending on what is being done, there
| may be many options for being done, although there might also
| be default settings. A command-line program might do it better
| that you only need to specify the file name, but if there are
| options (what options and how many options there will be
| depends what program it is) then you can also specify those
| options if the default settings are not suitable.
| lutusp wrote:
| I like this idea -- a simple interface/frontend for an otherwise
| complicated topic, for the less skilled among us. It has
| intriguing possibilities beyond technology ...
|
| Q: Why does God allow so much suffering?
|
| A: What? There is no God. We invented him.
|
| Q: Doesn't this mean life has no purpose?
|
| A: Create your own purpose. Eliminate the middleman.
|
| Q: But doesn't atheism allow evil people free rein?
|
| A: No, it's religion that does that. A religious evil person can
| always claim God either granted him permission or forgave him
| after the fact. And he won't be contradicted by God, since ...
| but we already covered that.
|
| Hmm. If it works for HandBrake, it might work for life.
| lateforwork wrote:
| You don't need two different versions of the software, one that
| is easy and one that is powerful. You can have one version that
| is both easy and powerful. Key concepts here are (1) progressive
| disclosure and (2) constraints.
|
| See Don Norman's Design of Everyday things.
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure/
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/videos/positive-constraints-in-ux-wo...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's easy to make the powerful version
|
| It's a little harder to make an easy version
|
| Making the progressive version is very difficult. Where you can
| please one audience with the powerful and easy versions, you
| can often disappoint both with the progressive version despite
| it taking much more effort.
|
| In my personal experience, you're lucky if free software has
| the budget (time or money) to get to easy. There's very little
| free software that makes it to progressive.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Relevant Steve Jobs quote: "Simple can be harder than
| complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to
| make it simple."
|
| So yes, it is hard to make the simple version. You have to
| have a very good understanding of what the user wants out of
| your product. Until you have this clarity, every feature
| seems important. Once you have this clarity you understand
| what the important features are. You make those features more
| prominent by giving them prime real estate, then tuck away
| the less important features in a less visible place. Simple
| things should be simple. Complex things only need to be
| _possible_.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It can get very complicated when you've built an audience
| where you have 10 segments that think their 10% of the use
| case is very important and you can only focus on a couple
| of segments at a time!
| uticus wrote:
| this is the way
| strix_varius wrote:
| Progressive disclosure can be intensely annoying to actual
| power users.
|
| Definitionally, it means you're hiding (non-disclosing)
| features behind at least 1 secondary screen. Usually, it means
| hiding features behind several layers of disclosures.
|
| Making a very simple product more powerful via progressive
| disclosure can be a good way to give more power to non-power
| users.
|
| Making a powerful product "simpler" via progressive disclosure
| can annoy the hell out of power users who already use the
| product.
| autoexec wrote:
| Just add an option for "advanced mode" that if clicked
| toggles to "basic mode". Power users are going to be looking
| for advanced features and only have to click it once. People
| who can barely read and are scared by anything advanced will
| get the interface they can use best the first time they open
| the app
| otikik wrote:
| I have tried to use GPG several times but the UX got in the way
| so much. I feel it did a disservice to privacy. It gatekeeps it
| behind an arcane UX.
| gspencley wrote:
| A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to.
|
| My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user,
| however. When we started a new business, we needed certain
| applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at
| the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could
| multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to
| Windows.
|
| She hated it and begged for us to get a dedicated Windows laptop
| for that stuff so she could go back to Linux.
|
| Some of you might suggest that she has me for tech support, which
| is true, but I can't actually remember the last time she asked me
| to troubleshoot something for her with her laptop. The occasions
| that do come to mind are usually hardware failure related.
|
| Obviously the thing about generlizations is that they're never
| going to fit all individuals uniformly. My wife might be an edge
| case. But she feels at home using Linux, as it's what she's used
| to ... and strongly loathed using Windows when it was offered to
| her.
|
| I feel that kind of way about Mac vs PC as well. I am a lifelong
| PC user, and also a "power user." I have extremely particular
| preferences when it comes to my UI and keyboard mappings and
| fonts and windowing features. When I was forced to use a Mac for
| work, I honestly considered looking for a different position
| because it was just that painful for me. Nothing wrong with Mac
| OS X, a lot of people love it. But I was 10% as productive on it
| when compared to what I'm used to... and I'm "old dog" enough
| that it was just too much change to be able to bear and work
| with.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Familiarity is massively undersold in the Linux desktop
| adoption discussion. Having desktop environments that are near
| 1:1 clones of the commercial platforms (preferably paired with
| a distribution that's designed to be bulletproof and
| practically never requires its user to fire up a terminal
| window) would go so far for making Linux viable for users
| sitting in the middle of the bell curve of technical
| capability.
|
| It's one of those situations where "close enough" isn't. The
| fine details matter.
| zahlman wrote:
| What do you see as wrong or missing "fine details" in, say,
| Cinnamon?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Assuming that the point of comparison is Windows (since
| it's a rough XP/7 analogue), any difference in behaviors,
| patterns, or conventions that might differ from what a long
| time Windows user would expect, including things that some
| might write off as insignificant. In particular, anything
| relating to the user's muscle memory (such as key
| shortcuts, menu item positions, etc) needs to match.
|
| The DE needs to be as close to a drop-in replacement as
| possible while remaining legally distinct. The less the
| user needs to relearn the better.
| mort96 wrote:
| For example, practically every text box in practically
| every Linux system handles ctrl+backspace by deleting a
| word. This clashes with a Windows user's expectation that
| ctrl+backspace deletes a word in some system applications
| while inserting a small square character in others.
| singhrac wrote:
| One summer in middle school our family computer failed. We
| bought a new motherboard from Microcenter but it didn't come
| with a Windows license, so I proposed we just try Ubuntu for a
| while.
|
| My mom had no trouble adjusting to it. It was all just computer
| to her in some ways.
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| Same, my mom ran Linux for years in the Vista days cuz her PC
| was too slow for Windows. She was fine. She even preferred
| Libreoffice over the Office ribbon interface.
| chasing0entropy wrote:
| I feel like the author wants everything to be Apple simplified.
| That all users should dumb down to on off go and stop. Ask chat
| got for anything else. I disagree for so many obvious reasons
| it's pointless to iterate them. We as a society need to get MORE
| capable, more critical, and improve our cognitive abilities; not
| the opposite.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd describe Apple products as simplified any
| more, take a look at the settings in iOS for example, it has
| grown in complexity with each release.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I'm the person my friends and family come to for computer-
| related help. (Maybe you, gentle reader, can relate.)
|
| I proactively stopped that decades ago.
|
| "Oh, you use Windows? Sorry, I haven't used it in over a decade
| so I can't help. If you have any Linux questions, let me know!"
| smallstepforman wrote:
| I go one step deeper, a BSD or Haiku. No support calls ever ...
| tehnub wrote:
| Are we at the point yet where we can advise people to ask ChatGPT
| how to install something called "FFmpeg" and have it tell them
| what to copy-paste into an app called "Terminal"?
| croisillon wrote:
| i don't have a TV at home and hence very rarely "have to" use a
| remote (or 2 or 3 at once, as it happens), but it's a nightmare
| everytime
| forshaper wrote:
| Love the example with the remote! People do need that!
| zkmon wrote:
| Banks. Won't touch any free software, unless backed by some real
| humans signing huge contracts for support.
| linhns wrote:
| Hyperbole. I'm working at a bank, we use many free software.
| Cotterzz wrote:
| This is useful for everyone not just non-techy types. I can't
| help but compare this to sites like shadertoy that let you
| develop with a simple coding interface on one half the screen and
| the output on the other (as opposed to the regular complexity of
| setting up and using a dev environment) Code goes here>{} , Press
| this button>[] , Output here>() , Which I think we need more of
| if we want to get kids into coding.
| ProfessorZoom wrote:
| ffmpeg wrappers be like
| fschuett wrote:
| > Free audio editing software that requires hours of learning to
| be useful for simple tasks.
|
| To be fair, the Audacity UX designer made a massive video about
| the next UX redesign and how he tried to get rid of "modes" and
| the "Audacity says no" problem:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38
|
| So this problem should get better in the future. Good UX (doesn't
| necessarily have to have a flashy UI, but just a good UX) in free
| software is often lacking or an afterthought.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| UX is the biggest debt.
|
| You're making application for yourself and somewhere down
| pipeline you decide that it could benefit others, so you make
| it open-source.
|
| People growl at you "It's ugly UX but nice features" when it
| was originally designed for your own tastes. The latter, people
| growl at you for "not having X feature, but nice UX".
|
| Your own personal design isn't one-fits-all and designing mocks
| takes effort. Mental strain and stress; pleasing folks is hard.
| You now continue developing and redesign the foundations.
|
| A theming engine you think. This becomes top-priority as
| integration of such becomes a PITA when trying to couple it
| with future features later.
|
| That itself becomes a black hole in how & schematics. So now
| you're forever doomed in creating something you never desired
| for the people who will probably never use it. This causes your
| project to fail but at least you have multiple revisions of the
| theming engine. Or you strike it lucky and gain a volunteer.
| immibis wrote:
| The problem with the new Audacity isn't the new version, it's
| that it replaces the old version. If the new version came out
| but it was called "DARing" and Audacity continued to be the
| thing we have now, people might question the name but no other
| eyes would be batted.
|
| Pre-emptive anti-snark: yes, the old version will still
| exist... if you can dig up the right github commit and still
| make it compile in 2030.
| fschuett wrote:
| Well, Tantacrul did answer that objection: it just shows you
| a popup dialog on first start: "which theme do you want"
| (colorful or colorless, light / dark) and "which experience
| do you want" (classic / new). So if you pick the "colorless,
| light, classic" option, it's going to look pretty much like
| the current Audacity, except that they moved from wxWidgets
| to Qt.
| jrmg wrote:
| Handbrake scares me and I'm a big nerd!
|
| I've been ripping old DVDs recently. I just want something that
| feels simple from Handbrake: a video file I can play on my Apple
| TV that has subtitles that work (not burned in!) with video and
| audio quality indistinguishable from playing the DVD (don't scale
| the video size or mess with the frame rate!), at as small a file
| size as is practical. I'm prepared for the process to be slow.
|
| I've been messing with settings and reading forum posts (probably
| from similarly qualified neophytes) for a day now and think I've
| got something that works - though I have a nagging suspicion the
| file size isn't as small as it could be _and_ the quality isn't
| as good as it could be. And despite saving it as a preset, I for
| some reason have to manually stop the subtitles from being burned
| in for every new rip.
|
| Surely what I want is what almost everyone wants!? Is there a
| simple way to get it? (I think this is a rhetorical question but
| would love it not to be...)
| RajT88 wrote:
| I like the design pattern of a "basic mode" and an "advanced
| mode".
|
| The "advanced mode" rarely actually covers all the needs of an
| advanced user (because software is never quite everything to
| everyone), but it's at least better at handling both types of
| users.
|
| Not all free software has this problem... Mozilla and Thunderbird
| I've had my parents on for years. It's not a ton to learn, and
| they work fine.
|
| Taking the case of Photoshop vs. Gimp - I don't think the problem
| is complexity, lol. It's having to relearn everything once you're
| used to photoshop. (Conversely, I've never shelled out for Adobe
| products, and now don't want to have to relearn how to edit
| images in photoshop or illustrator)
|
| Let's do another one. Windows Media Player (or more modern -
| "Movies & TV"). Users want to click on a video file and have it
| play with no fuss. VLC and MPC work fine for that! If you can
| manage to hold onto the file associations. That's why Microsoft
| tries so hard to grab and maintain the file associations.
|
| I could go on... I think the thesis of this article is right for
| some pieces of software, but not all. It's worth considering -
| "all models are wrong, but some are useful".
| robenkleene wrote:
| > Taking the case of Photoshop vs. Gimp - I don't think the
| problem is complexity, lol. It's having to relearn everything
| once you're used to photoshop. (Conversely, I've never shelled
| out for Adobe products, and now don't want to have to relearn
| how to edit images in photoshop or illustrator)
|
| I don't think this comparison is really accurate, Adobe's suite
| is designed for professionals that are working in the program
| for hours daily (e.g., ~1000 hours annually for a creative
| professional). There are probably some power users of The GIMP
| that hit similar numbers, but Creative Cloud has ~35-40 million
| subscribers, these are entirely different programs for entirely
| different classes of users.
| devmor wrote:
| I wanted to scoff at this, but the remote example is pretty on-
| point.
|
| The majority of users probably want the same small subset of
| features from a program and the rest are just confusing noise.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Some TV remotes or air conditioner remotes now have a "boomer
| flap" which when engaged, hides 90% of all the buttons. The
| scanner software I use has something similar, novice mode and
| expert mode.
| smallstepforman wrote:
| Ah yes, the infamous "klabing" feature. You open the manual and
| read "Press Kabling to kabling the whatchanathjng".
| brian626 wrote:
| Someone once told me "every setting you expose to your users is a
| decision you were too scared to make."
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| User: I'd like to be able to change my password
|
| Dev: I'm too brave to let you do that
| autoexec wrote:
| That gets less true the more utility your software is expected
| to have.
|
| When it comes to software intended for the general public it
| doesn't take bravery to decide that every user should only ever
| be allowed to do things exactly how you'd want them done. I
| might be more likely to attribute that to arrogance. Really,
| for something like converting audio/video I'd just see the
| inflexible software with few if any options as too limited for
| my needs (current, future, or both) and go looking for
| something more powerful.
|
| It's better to not invest my time on software that is overly
| restrictive when more useful options are available, even if I
| don't need all of those options right now because it'll save me
| the trouble of having to hunt down something better later since
| I've already got what I need on my systems.
| meanfield wrote:
| There are literally thousands of wrappers for ffmpeg (other
| examples: imagemagick, ghostscript) that do exactly that. E.g.
| all commercial and dozens of open source video converters. So
| there is no lack of simple software for people who know little
| about the problem they're trying to solve (e.g. playing a
| downloaded mkv their shitty preinstalled video player doesn't
| accept), the problem is rather one of knowing that open source
| software exists and how to find it. Googling or asking an LLM
| does mostly present you software that costs money and is inferior
| to anything open source (and some malware).
| ido wrote:
| Does it? I often ask ChatGPT such things and specifying I want
| free software options is enough (it often mentions which
| options are and aren't free on its own).
| whoooboyy wrote:
| Free software is an anarchist mindset -- wellbeing for all, take
| what you need, contribute back where you can.
|
| It's scary for folks who are used to transactional relationships
| to encounter these different mindsets.
| initramfs wrote:
| True in many ways.
|
| I wanted to write an article or short blog post about how Windows
| 10, menus and javascript, increasingly tuck away important
| tools/buttons in little folds. This was many months ago.
|
| I want to write it and title it, "What the tuck?" But tuck refers
| exactly to the kind of hidden menus that make those so called
| sleek and simple UIs for the the 80% of users.
|
| The problem is that it stupefies computing literacy, especially
| mobile web versions.
|
| Perhaps not every casual web browser needs to sit at a desk to
| learn website navigation. Then again, they may never learn
| anything productive on their own.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| People want features, and they're willing to learn complicated
| UIs to get them. A software that has hyper simplified options has
| a very limited audience. Take his example: we have somebody who
| has somehow obtained a "weird" video file, yet whose
| understanding of video amounts to wanting it to be "normal" so
| they can play it. For such a person, there are two paths: become
| familiar enough with video formats that you understand exactly
| what you want, and correspondingly can manipulate a tool like
| handbrake to get it, or stick to your walled-garden-padded-room
| reality where somebody else gives you a video file that works. A
| software that appeals to the weird purgatory in the middle
| necessarily has a very limited audience. In practice, this small
| audience is served by websites. Someone searches "convert x to y"
| and a website comes up that does the conversion. Knowing some
| specialized software that does that task (and only that one
| narrow task) puts you so far into the domain of the specialist
| that you can manage to figure out a specialist tool.
| robenkleene wrote:
| For this example:
|
| > we have somebody who has somehow obtained a "weird" video
| file
|
| Why are you arriving at the conclusion that this requires
| complex software, rather than just a simple UI that says "Drop
| video file here" and "Fix It" below? E.g., instead of your
| conclusion "stick to your walled-garden-padded-room reality
| where somebody else gives you a video file that works", another
| possibility is the simple UI I described? That seemed to me the
| point of the post.
| dusted wrote:
| I think we need to stop this madness.
|
| The disaster that is "modern UX" is serving no one. Infantilizing
| computer users needs to stop.
|
| Computer users hate it - everything changes all the time for the
| worse, everything gets hidden by more and more layers until it
| just goes away entirely and you're left with just having to suck
| it up.
|
| "Normal people" don't even have computers anymore, some don't
| even have laptops, they have tablets and phones, and they don't
| use computer programs, they use "apps".
|
| What we effectively get is:
|
| - For current computer users: A downward spiral of everything
| sucking more with each new update.
|
| - For potential new computer users: A decreasing incentive to use
| computers "Computers don't really seem to offer anything I can't
| do on my phone, and if I need a bigger screen I'll use my tablet
| with a BT keyboard"
|
| - For the so-called "normal people" the article references (I
| believe the article is really both patronizing and infantalizing
| the average person), there they're effectively people who don't
| want to use computers, they don't want to know how stuff works,
| what stuff is, or what stuff can become, they have a problem they
| cannot put into words and they want to not have the problem
| because the moving images of the cat should be on the place with
| the red thing. - They use their phones, their tablets, and their
| apps, their meager and unmotivated desire to do something beyond
| what their little black mirror allow them is so week that any
| obstacle, any, even the "just make it work" button, is going to
| be more effort than they're willing (not capable of, but willing)
| to spend.
|
| Thing is, regardless of particular domain, doing something in any
| domain requires some set of understanding and knowledge of the
| stuff you're going to be working with. "No, I just want to edit
| video, I don't want to know what a codec is" well, the medium is
| a part of the fucking message! NOTHING you do where you work with
| anything at all allows you to work with your subject without any
| understanding at all of what makes up that subject. You want to
| tell stories, but you don't want to learn how to speak, you want
| to write books, but you don't want to learn how to type, write or
| spell ? Yes, you can -dictate- it, which is, in effect, getting
| someone competent to do the thing for you.. You want to be a
| painter, but you don't care about canvas, brushes, techniques, or
| the differences between oil, acrylic and aquarelle, or colors or
| composition, just want to make picture look good? You go hire a
| fucking painter, you don't go whining about how painting is
| inherently harder than it ought to be and how it's elitist that
| they don't just sell a brush that makes a nice painting. (Well,
| it _IS_ elitist, most people would be perfectly satisfied with
| just ONE brush, and it should be as wide as the canvas, and it
| should be pre-soaked in BLUE color, come on, don't be so hard on
| those poor people, they just want to create something, they
| shouldn't have to deal with all your elitist artist crap!) yeah,
| buy a fucking poster!
|
| I'm getting so sick and tired of this constant attack on the
| stuff _I_ use every day, the stuff _I_ live and breathe, and see
| it degenerated to satisfy people who don't care, and never will..
| I'm pissed, because, _I_ like computers, I like computing, and I
| like to get to know how the stuff works, _ONCE_ and gain a deep
| knowledge of it, so it fits like an old glove, and I can find my
| way around, and then they go fuck it over, time and time again,
| because someone who does not want to, and never will want to, use
| computers, thinks it's too hard..
|
| Yeah, I really enjoy _LISTENING_ to music, I couldn't produce a
| melody if my life depended on it (believe me, I've tried, and
| it's _NOT_ for lack of amazingly good software), it's because I
| suck at it, and I'm clearly not willing to invest what it takes
| to achieve that particular goal.. because, I like to listen to
| music, I am a consumer of it, not a producer, and that's not
| because guitars are too hard to play, it's because I'm
| incompetent at playing them, and my desire to play them is vastly
| less than my desire to listen to them.
|
| Who are most software written for? - People who hate computers
| and software.
|
| What's common about most software? - It kind of sucks more and
| more.
|
| There's a reason some of the very best software on the planet is
| development tools, compilers, text editors, debuggers.. It's
| because that software is made by people who actually like using
| computers, and software, _FOR_ people who actually like using
| computers and software...
|
| Imagine if we made cars for people who HATE to drive, made
| instruments for people who don't want to learn how to play..
| Wrote books for people who don't want to read, and movies for
| people who hate watching movies. Any reason to think it's a
| reasonable idea to do that? Any reason to think that's how we get
| nice cars, beautiful instruments, interesting books and great
| movies ?
|
| Fuck it. Just go pair your toaster with your "app" whatever seems
| particularity important.
| PeaceTed wrote:
| As one of the main developers of Krita said, just being free
| isn't good enough, the software needs to be great.
|
| I am in favour of simplified apps like this, maybe it can be a
| simple toggle switch in the top right corner between simple and
| advanced. Similar to that stupid new version of outlook I have to
| constantly switch back to the old version.
| charlie90 wrote:
| maybe there just isn't a solution? people don't ask for a hammer
| that magically assembles every piece of furniture. sometimes the
| user of the tool needs skills to use it. UI/UX only takes you so
| far.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest
| from them and you'll make them more productive and happy.
|
| True but with a caveat: Those people rarely need the same 20% of
| your features.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > People benefit from stuff like this
|
| While I agree that people generally feel better by getting
| something with little effort, I think that there is a longer-term
| disservice here.
|
| Once upon a time, it used to be understood that repeated use of a
| tool would gradually make you better at it - while starting with
| the basics, you would gradually explore, try more features and
| gradually become a power user. Many applications would have a
| "tip of the day" mechanism that encouraged users to learn more
| each time. But then this "Don't Make me Think" book and
| mentality[0] started catching on, and we stopped expecting people
| to learn about the stuff that they're using daily.
|
| We have a high percentage of "digital natives" kids, now reaching
| adulthood without knowing what a file is [1] or how to type on a
| keyboard [2]. Attention spans are falling rapidly, and even the
| median time in front of a particular screen before switching
| tasks is apparently down from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 40 seconds
| in 2023 [3] (I shudder to think what it is now). We as a
| civilization have been gradually offloading all of our technical
| competency and agency onto software.
|
| This is of course leading directly to agentic AI, where we
| (myself included) convince ourselves that the AI is allowing us
| to work at a higher level, deciding the 'what', while the
| computer takes care of the 'how' for us, but of course there's no
| clear delineation between the 'what' and 'how', there's just a
| ladder of abstraction, and as we offload more and more into
| software, the only 'what' we'll have left is "keep me fed and
| entertained".
|
| We are rapidly rolling towards the world of Wall-E, and at this
| pace, we might live to see the day of AIs asking themselves "can
| humans think?".
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
|
| [1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems ,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526
|
| [2] https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/gen-z-typing-computers-
| keyboar... , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41402434
|
| [3] https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-
| psychology/att...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is a good write-up.
|
| In addition to this issue, I've also had good conversations with
| a business owner about why he chose a Windows architecture for
| his company. Paying money to the company created a situation
| where the company had a "skin-in-the-game" reason to offer
| support (especially back when he founded the company, because
| Microsoft was smaller at the time). He likes being able to trust
| that the people who build the architecture he relies on for his
| livelihood won't just get bored and wander off and will be
| responsive to specific concerns about the product, and he never
| had the perception that he could rely on that with free software.
| prepend wrote:
| 80% of people only use 20% of the functionality. But it's a
| different 20%.
| kiitos wrote:
| i think what the author is characterizing as "free software" is
| probably better described as "software with bad UX"
| warkdarrior wrote:
| The Venn diagram is a circle!
| alganet wrote:
| Photoshop is a clustershit of UI mess and _professionals_ use it.
| Then, _home users_ , following the popularity, also use it.
|
| Maybe we should just say free software is amazing and not a tool
| for home users, in order to get home users to use it.
| mr_toad wrote:
| ffmpeg -i example.mkv example.mp4
|
| Works in almost all cases.
|
| In almost all cases I don't want to mess with the defaults,
| because I know diddly about video formats.
| victor22 wrote:
| I'd be scared too if I see a check box for iPod support, I mean,
| when was this software less updated, the 80's?
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Completely agree, that's why I love old mac software. Things were
| easy enough to understand for the average user, but power user
| still get lots of features.
|
| These kind of ui are extremely hard to make.
| agcat wrote:
| Love it.
| Andrex wrote:
| OP should check out Gnome Circle:
|
| https://circle.gnome.org
|
| The problem with why so many OSS/free software apps look bad can
| be demonstrated by the (still ongoing) backlash to Gnome 3+. It
| just gets exhausting defending every decision to death.
|
| Sometimes projects need the spine to say "no, we're not doing
| that."
| NoPicklez wrote:
| I struggle to link the title with the article. Aren't both
| Handbrake and Magicbrake both free? There are plenty of free
| tools which are very simple to use.
|
| In this particular case I'd just tell people to download and use
| VLC Player. But I get the point.
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